1 10 4 https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/f47146aaa6535fbf50251c05b397a132.pdf 73a4f076d298171755e5e2a904ad4364 PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-049_A.mp3 Pitts Theology Library Emory University And that God has not left himself without a witness in our spirits. There is a spirit in us that contains our spirit, that provides the secondary consolations which float the big anxieties that sustains the effort beyond the calculated endurance, that makes the case for the good impulse when the rational judgment sends the mind spinning in the opposite way, that brooks over all weariness, and all despair, until the change comes and the heart is revived, that holds the confidence in the integrity of the self, when the deeds that contradict will not be stilled. And the act that destroys goes on its relentless way. It is good to remember that God has not left himself without a witness in our spirits. It is good to remember that God has not left himself without a witness in our lives. There is at work in life much that seems so circumstantial that the release of explanation can come only by the simple word, coincidence. Even the most cursory examination of what may be regarded as the most commonplace act shows that at many points, startling things have occurred that altered the entire direction of the life. Some chance word, heard at a critical moment, some single encounter along the way, a paragraph tucked away in an ordinary book, a stray thought out of nowhere, finds a cuddling place in the mind, and there begins to live and breathe and reproduce its kind until something emerges as a new look, a different way of thinking. It is good to remember that God has not left himself without a witness in our lives. Despite all the wanderings of our footsteps, despite all the ways by which we had sought to circumvent the truth within us, despite all the weaknesses of our spirits and our minds, despite all the blunders by which we have desolated ourselves from our fellows, or proven unworthy of the love and the trust, the confidence by which again and again our faltering lives are surrounded. Despite all these things, it is good to remember that God has not left himself without a witness in our spirits. In every life, there are a few special moments that count for more than all the rest, because they meant the taking of a stand, a self-commitment, a decisive choice. It is this that creates the person. It is by this that man reveals his essential humanity. It is the pressing need to find meaning for one's own life, to subordinate the whole of one's life to that meaning. It is this need, this inner aspiration, which is from God. All the ideologies, all the doctrines, all the formulae drawn up by men will pass. Every ideal, too, grows old in its turn. Only the true and the living God remains. Thus, the knowing encounter with the living God is the greatest possible human event. The circumstances and forms of the encounter may be infinite in their variety. It always comes, perhaps, as such a surprise that the conviction is inescapable, that it is the doing of God. It is his direct initiative. A curse on him who relies on man, who depends on mere human aid, for he is like some desert scrub that never thrives, except in a salt, solitary place in the steppes. But happy is he who relies on God. For he is like a tree planted beside a stream, sending his roots down to the water. 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu He has no fear of scorching heats. His leaves are always green. He goes on bearing fruit when all around him is barren. And he looks out on life with quiet eyes. Jesus and the religious experience. And there is something that is always very private and solitary, and intimate in the religious experience. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And the intimacy is so thorough-going. And sometimes, so all-inclusive in its aloneness, that to talk about it seems strangely irreverent. The solitariness of it is inner. And therefore, it may take place-- it meaning the religious experience-- may take place in the midst of the multitude, in the midst of the congregation, in the midst of the traffic of life. But always there is this dimension of profound privacy. And it is to the credit of the genius of the religious experience that because of its uniqueness in the life of the particular individual, such an individual does not become full of pride and arrogance. The mood being, thank God, I have it. Something deep within the core of the religious experience always pushes against that, until the very boundaries of the self melt away. And what, at first is one's own private, intimate experience, finds its ultimate validity in its universality. And this is the paradox and the miracle. If I were to attempt to put into words in another way what it is that is in my mind and spirit, I would say that the religious experience is the act in which the individual becomes aware of the givenness of God. Aware of the givenness of God-- the religious experience does not create this, but it is in the religious experience that the individual becomes aware of the givenness of God. And this awareness is really what is meant by faith. So that faith is the awareness of the givenness of God. And it is this awareness, the consciousness here, that is the religious experience. This means that at many levels of life, the individual may be conscious of this gratuitous expression that is at the heart of life. Sometimes, without awareness, without direction, without anticipation, as a word-- we become aware of some additional meaning, some extra increment, some radiation, some glow that comes over an ordinary experience. At any turn in the road, I may suddenly come upon the burning bush, and hear with my inner ear, a voice, saying, take off your shoes. This is holy. Therefore the religious experience is not a creation of the mind. It is not at the behest of the will. There is a grace in it. For it is the manifestation of the givenness of God. The givenness of God in the human spirit. When the religious experience then, as I feel it and think it-- when the religious experience becomes that object of thought, so that I begin to reflect upon what I experienced, it is out of that kind of reflection that dogma, theology, creeds-- these are inventions of the mind. It is what the mind does with the raw stuff of the awareness of the givenness of God. But in order for religious experience to become an object of thought, it has to become temporarily frozen. It 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu has to be fenced around, so that the mind can draw a bead on it. If it's moving too fast, the mind can't deal with it, because the mind has to deal with the whole process of structuring of things. Structure. Pitts Theology Library Emory University So that when the mind finally distills out of the religious experience that it has trapped, the mind clings to this with a sense of authority. And that's why the creed, the dogma, the doctrine, has in it the profound element of inflexibility, of finality. It is what the mind does with religious experience that was. That was. Meanwhile, the religious experience has kept on experiencing. Flowing. New levels of awareness. So that what I think about my religious experience, my belief, my dogma, with reference to my religious experience, must always be just a little out of date. It is what was. And the critical and devastating process is the agony of having to move from the destination that gave so much security to the life, to that zone of treacherous quiet, when a new pinning down must take place. And perhaps this is why the master felt that we must in some real sense be as fluid as the little child, as vulnerable and as safe. In the religious experience, I recognize that there seems to be-- and I move with great caution here, because I do not know my way very well-- there seems to be a relationship between making ready for the religious experience, preparing the way for the religious experience, all the things that we mean by spiritual exercises, by spiritual discipline, brought into the center of focus, as that which seeks to inform the will. There is an element here that seems to suggest that the religious experience itself is at last contingent upon, or rests upon, the integrity of the spiritual discipline. And there is something here. That when I ready myself by all of the ways that are a part of the grain in my wood, it would seem that when I am inwardly prepared, that he would come, and sup with me and I with him. And yet something else keeps working away here. Sometimes, I exhaust all of my resources in making ready the stillness-- all the things that ready my spirit. And he doesn't come. He doesn't come. And then I spend time trying to excuse him. So to save his face. And not embarrass him with my thoughts. And then in the midst of that kind of thinking, it suddenly dawns upon me that God has his own built-in autonomy. He is not at the end of my string, my cry, my despair, my agony, so that if I pull it right, he must move. No. I don't think so. Even though Meister Eckhart felt so. For he said, if I empty myself of creatureliness, then God automatically must fill me. No. Not quite. There is something inscrutable about the mystery. And I'm very glad. Because my little mind, and my little soul, could not be trusted with that kind of power. 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu So I learned to wait. In season and out of season, with the most exhaustive preparation, the most horrid preparation, he comes when he's ready to come. But I, I must be ready to receive. The responsibility of his coming is not mine. This is what I am trying to articulate. Pitts Theology Library Emory University The results are not mine. They're his. The [INAUDIBLE] is this. In the parable of the talents, you will remember the man who was going away on a journey. And he knew that he would need his funds recouped when he returned. So he called three of his most prestigious representatives. And he made the announcement, and he said, I am leaving. I will give you so much money. I will give you so much money. I will give you so much money. And when I return, I want you to report. I will need the money. He came back. And then the first man reported. And he said, thus to paraphrase it, you gave me $25. Here is $37.50. Good, he said. The second man, you gave me $20. Here is $22.50. Good. Now, the only man who made a speech was the third man. He said, you know, you have a bad reputation. You reap where you haven't sown. You clip coupons where you haven't invested. I knew this. So I took every precaution. I hid what you gave me, so that I could watch it every day against the time of your return. And when the word came that you had come back, I brought it. Here it is. And Jesus says, that the man was cast into outer darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth-- not because he did not show any increase. No. But he was cast out because he did not work at it. This was his only responsibility. The result-- God's. My responsibility-- work at it. My responsibility is to ready myself. To become aware of the givenness of God-- and so deeply aware of the givenness of God that in that awareness, I encounter God. The word had come to the village in which Jesus lived, that John the Baptizer was preaching at the Jordan. Then he went. And I wonder what was going through his mind as he took the journey. Why did he go? But he went. And he presented himself to John to be baptized. And it is written in the book that when he came up out of the water, after the experience of baptism, the heavens opened. And he-- not the disciples, not John-- he heard the voice. Thou art my son. My beloved. In thee, I am well-pleased. Private, personal, intimate, awareness of the givenness of God, with such utterless that at the heart of that awareness, comes the encounter. And in the encounter, I hear, in my own tongue, in accordance with the grain in my wood, against my background, with my word of meaning-- I hear the voice say, I am very happy to greet you. And to act [INAUDIBLE] in you in the trysting place. 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Pitts Theology Library Emory University Happy is he who relies on God. For he is like the tree planted beside a stream, sending his roots down to the water. He has no fear of scorching heat. His leaves are always green. He goes on bearing fruit when all around him is barren. And he looks out on life with quiet eyes. 5 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Friends Five-Year Meeting (1969, Earlham College, Richmond, IN) Description An account of the resource This collections includes three lectures from the series delivered at the Friends Five-Year Meeting in 1969 at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. Three more lectures from the series are not present in this collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1969 AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-049_A.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1960s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Friends Five-Year Meeting (I): Jesus and the Religious Experience, 1969 Jul 20 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-049_A Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Title A name given to the resource Friends Five-Year Meeting, Part 1: Jesus and the Religious Experience, 1969 July 20 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1969-07-20 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img style="border-width:0;" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" alt="80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>. 2019. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-9452505.0815557 4840286.4351711)) Description An account of the resource In this sermon given at a Quaker conference, Howard Thurman gives words to religious experience as an encounter with the living God. For Thurman, religious experience is a moment in which one becomes personally and privately aware of God as a fact. This is an experience that cannot be controlled or willed, but rather it is given by grace, by God's own autonomy. Our responsibility is not about holding tightly to religious experience of the past, but rather to be open and prepared to encounter God in our lives, and to be transformed by divine presence. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Rodell Jefferson III. https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/afa17e4c8464bdebe300edceb91dc77d.pdf 2fb969a9c78eb89b77428242f86cf5f7 PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-049_B.mp3 The climax of man's life has come at last. The oriental despot sits in enthroned. Before him come the peoples of the earth. Here are no men, no women, boys or girls struggling for rank, wealth, class, or power. No race or tribe has standing here. Pitts Theology Library Emory University All walls that separate divide by this moving drama are pushed aside. Each life is freed of all pretext. Each shadowy seeming swept away by the mighty spread of ceaseless light. I was sick, comfortless. I was hungry and desperate. I was lonely and wretched. I was in prison for Satan. The strange, awful words from him, words more searching followed after. I know your tasks were many fold, unyielding claims consumed your thoughts. There was no time to be at ease with deeds to give yourself beyond your creeds. Oh, I know about your temperament and your health. Somehow you could not manage all your chores. Excuses came to reinforce the empty feeling of your heart. I know how hard it was for you. You did not want to be an easy touch. Beyond all else, your ties of blood. Charity must begin at home. And besides, you didn't know. But are you sure? Do you recall the flashes of concern that held you in your place that day? I see you do remember well. Again there came and then again until at last there came no more. Only the hollow darkness of the self, cut off from all the pain and pathos of the world. No word of mine can alter what your days have done. The story of your life is what the judge reveals. From this relentless judgment, is there no appeal? And there is a unity that binds all living things in a single whole. This unity is sensed in many ways. Sometimes when working alone in the woods far from the traffic which makes up the daily experience, the stillness settles in the mind. The imprisoned self seems to slip outside its boundaries and the ebb and flow of life is keenly felt. One become an indistinguishable part of a single rhythm, a single pulse beat. Sometimes there is the moment of complete and utter identity with the pain of a loved one. All the intensity and all the anguish are felt. One enters through to a single door of suffering into the misery of the whole human race with no margin left to mark the place which was one's own. What is felt belongs nowhere but is everywhere, binding and holding in a tight circle of agony until all of life is gathered into a single timeless gas. There are other moments when one becomes aware of the thrust of a tingling joy that rises deep within until it bursts forth in radiating happiness that bathes all of life in its glory and its warmth. Pain, sorrow, grief are seen as joy becoming, and life gives a vote of confidence to itself, defining its meaning with a sureness that shatters every doubt concerning the broad, free purpose of its goodness. 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu There are times of personal encounter when the knowledge of sharing binds two together, and what is felt is good. There is nothing new nor old, only the knowledge that what comes as the flooding inside of love binds all living things into a single hold. Pitts Theology Library Emory University The felt reverence spreads and deepens until to live and to love are to do one thing. To hate is to desire the non-existence of the object of hate. To love is the act of adoration and praise shared with the creator of life as the be all and end all of everything. Of everything that is. And yet, there always remains the hard core of the self, blending and withdrawing, giving and pulling back, accepting and rejecting, yielding and unyielding. What may this be but the pulsing of the unity that binds all living things in a single hold. The God of life extending Himself in all the manifold glories of His own creation. The darkness and the light are both the light to be. In thy book all my numbers were written and in continuance of fashion when as yet they did not exist. O, where shall I go from thy spirit? Where shall I flee from thy presence? And Jesus and the Gothic principle. The concept of the Gothic arch is one of the great creative visitations of the mind of God manifesting itself in the minds of men. Here is a grand, binding conception. The pillars grounded in the earth, locked into the earth holding, steadying, guaranteeing, sustaining, supporting. The arches vaulting into infinity. The finite, the infinite, the boldness, the bond, the timeless, the time bond, the universal, the particular, the mind, the body, what a moment in the history of man when this almost terrifying insight became a part of his tool for understanding and interpreting the meaning of his pilgrimage and he meaning of his journey. For man is a creature. He is earth-bound. His body has affinities with the other bodies of aliveness on the planet. In important ways he does have the body of an animal. The face of a man, and something in him deep at his center that always wants to fly. This is man. This is man. Creature. And whenever he ignores his creatureliness, this other dimension of him, [INAUDIBLE] is threatened, and then as some guarantee against a sense of complete oblivion. If this happens, the mind spins dreams, and aspirations, and fantasies as it were, that will continue the transcendent of his creatureliness. But he is a creature. He is a space binder. This is man. And a part of his security is in establishing affinity with all of the other space-binding units in existence. And if he prostitutes this aspect of his life, he threatens everything else. Go wondrous creature, mount where science guides, state the planets and regulate the sun. Instruct the planets in the jobs to run. Then drop into thyself and be a fool. This is what the poet is talking about. The sensus has to be there, because man is not only a space-blinder, but man is a time binder 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu There is some aspect of his personality that can never be imprisoned by the events of his life. Nothing that can happen to him can quite contain him. No expression of his life can ever fully and adequately say who he is. Pitts Theology Library Emory University If I were to ask you, name one thing that you can do now that totally and completely represents you. You've gone through your mind, you'd select the choicest thing, and you'd project it. But before it left you, you'd see that something wasn't included that was very important. So all over again, no experience, and this is so important. No experience can quite contain all of me. No event can quite hold all of me for I am a time binder. Some aspect of me is always the observer of me in my space-binding activity. I am an observer of myself as a participant in what I'm doing. Since we have been sitting here, some of you have been back home looking straight at me, through me, into next week. And yet you seated here, something, something of you stands outside of the event and the eventful. And this is the essential experiential ground for the notion that has come up again and again in all great religion that even death cannot hold man's spirit. Because if death is an event in life, and man is never quite contained in any event in life, then even in death which is eventful, there is an aspect of man that stands outside of it watching it, watching it, watching it. After 40 days and 40 nights, Jesus was hungry. And the tempter said to Him, if You are the Son of God, command that these stones become breads. Breads. Breads. The most natural thing for a hungry man to want. And the Master said, "It is written that man, man must not live by bread alone. But by every word that issues out of the mouth of God." Now I said that in about a minute. But perhaps the Master was trying to get this out over a long stretch of agonizing interval for I think it must happened this way. I'm hungry. What does that have to do with what I experienced at the baptism when the heavens opened, and the Spirit of God descended upon me like the dove? And I heard with my [INAUDIBLE], My Father, tell me yes. What does bread have to do with that? But I'm fortunate. What about those who are hungry and have not heard My Father's voice? What is there that can give to them a hold? So man must not live by breads. But everything in him knew that this was not right. Man does live by bread, but man does not live by bread. Over and over this must have gone on through all the late watches of the night. Something is here, but it escapes me. But I can't keep from seeking to ferret it out, to woo it out, to willow it out. Somewhere is this fever in my spirit is the cure for the fever. Man, man does not live by bread. And then it happened. Out of nowhere, but from everywhere, one word was heard at all the levels of his awareness and that word was alone. That's it. Man does not live by bread alone. 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Which says that he does live by bread, but not bread alone. How then may some balance be made between these two necessitous pressures? And it comes at the answer. Man does not live by bread alone. Yes. Yes. Yes. Pitts Theology Library Emory University But or in addition to every word that issues from the mouth of God, there more to man than his creature needs even though man is a creature. There is a part of the life of man that is rooted in the earth. The pillars of the arch grounded. But there also is the great sweep of his spirit. The great insistent hungers of his heart to know and be known, to trust and be trusted, to understand and be understood, to love and be loved. The mind to be nourished by ideas upon which it feeds. This is the sweep of the arches. Man then does not live by bread alone, but he does live by bread. The world is, if I may say, this which reflects the effect of the Greek on our whole Western civilization and culture that practically the practical side of life is bread. And other side of life is something else. This is [INAUDIBLE] doers that destroys the heart of religious experience. But at any rate, life is practical. I must have bread to eat. I must find some way by which I can protect myself from the impersonal operation of the social order upon me that dehumanizes and flattens me out. I must protect myself against the impersonal apparition of the world of nature, so that even if I go into an alien environment, I can carry with me a built-in environment on my back. For I must have a wind break of protection behind which I might know nestle and reproduce my kind, and live with some measure of tranquility and dignity against the impersonal violences that surround me. I must have this. So the Master comes through, to borrow a phrase, trailing clouds of glory. I recognize that He, in substance, that life is practical. That men must have bread to eat, that men must make the creature adjustment to the creature dimension of their total life. They must find ways by which they can honor their creatureliness, their creature-hood. But the bias, the accent, the leaning, the emphasis of His life must be on the sweep of the arches. The things that nourish the heart, the mind, and the spirit. And this is so difficult. Because things are so real. It is sobering to know that long after I am dead, somebody will be wearing my wrist watch, just as if I'd never been. And it may be, you'll see, that in a moment of weakness if I can find some way by which I can feel within myself the kind of permanency that superficially I recognize to be an attribute of things. Then I might insulate myself against the final violation of my life by planting my persona on something that will be here when no longer am I remembered. So I want to fling my private defiance into the face of that which seems to be declaring finally my non-existence. 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu I know how that the only way finally that I can honor the demands of my creatureliness is to recognize that in a very important way they are the pillars of the temple. And they support and sustain the great, sweet [INAUDIBLE] into the heavens. So I love the Master. for the way he worried this insight into existence. And gave to our profoundest awareness a sense of timeless significance. Pitts Theology Library Emory University So the timeless and the time bound, the universal and the particular, become one river. The eternal and the time bound, the infinite and the finite one pulse beat, life, death. One pulse beat. And God contains it all. I saw, I saw a man pursuing the horizon. Round and round he sped. I was disturbed at this. So I accosted the man. I said it is futile. You can never. You lie, he cried, and ran on with a, shall I go from thy spirit? With a, shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, thou art there. If I take the [INAUDIBLE] to the mooring and fly to the utmost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand hold me, and thy right hand shall steady me. If I say surely the darkness shall cover me, even the night shall be light above me. The darkness and the light are both a light to Thee. The finite the timeless and the time bond. The pillars and the grave create a sweep of arches. One creative beat. Therefore, I shall have no fear. 5 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Friends Five-Year Meeting (1969, Earlham College, Richmond, IN) Description An account of the resource This collections includes three lectures from the series delivered at the Friends Five-Year Meeting in 1969 at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. Three more lectures from the series are not present in this collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1969 AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-049_B.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1960s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Friends Five-Year Meeting (II): Jesus and the Gothic Principle, 1969 Jul 21 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-049_B Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Title A name given to the resource Friends Five-Year Meeting, Part 2: Jesus and the Gothic Principle, 1969 July 21 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1969-07-21 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img style="border-width:0;" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" alt="80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>. 2019. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-9452505.0815557 4840286.4351711)) Description An account of the resource In this second sermon from the Friends Five-Year Meeting, Thurman parallels the insights of Jesus with the principles of Gothic architecture. In the iconic Gothic arch, Thurman sees pillars that are grounded in the earth, and yet stretch up into infinity. This, he says, reflects human beings in both our earth-bound creatureliness and the reality of the human spirit which seeks trust, understanding, and love. Thurman ties this insight to the temptation story in which the tempter urges Jesus to turn stone to bread, to which Jesus responds that man does not live by bread alone. Here, Thurman says, Jesus affirms that human beings have both creaturely and spiritual needs, and that the two are indeed part of one creative beat. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Rodell Jefferson III. https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/db2feed8740452df6b4698b13db0eac8.pdf 52740502c490f08fec5e7d119249e061 PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-050_A.mp3 Pitts Theology Library Emory University Looking out of the window, watching his little daughter play in the yard, this huge beast jumped the fence, attacked the daughter, and killed her. And the villagers decided that they would have nothing to do with the man who owned the dog. They would surround him with silence. They would cut him off. They would isolate him. Not only would they do that, but they would not give him any grain with which to plant his field, so that, in the absence of food, he and his wife, through the long winter night, would slowly starve to death. And then one night, the man who had lost his child got up, dressed, took a basket full of grain, climbed the fence, sowed to field. And he was so absorbed in what he was doing, he didn't realize that his wife had joined him. And she said, why did you do this? He said, standing on the promontory of existence, in the vast, limitless spaces of nature all around me, I felt an almighty responsibility. If there be no eyes in nature, if there be no heart in nature, I will be heart, I will be eyes. I planted my enemy's field with grain that God might exist. Somehow, I must be honored by the natural order, and not destroyed by it. I must sense the undertow of rhythm so that all of my own consciousness is a manifestation of the consciousness of the order in which I am rooted and ground. This may be, finally, the religious insight. And the tempter carried him to the pinnacle of the temple. And he said, if you are the Son of God, jump. You will not get hurt. God will give His angels charge of you. They will bear you up on their wings lest you dash your foot against a stone. There is no structure of dependability in life. There is no grounding in order and structure, in existence, if you are smart enough to get the clue, for the world really is not orderly. This is what the tempter says. And the master replied, thou shalt not tempt God. I know that. I know that. Or he may have said, thou shalt not tempt God. Thou shalt not tempt God. To state it in terms of its implications, in a paraphrase, it would be something like this, that if I go up to the pinnacle of the temple, and jump down the great possibility is I will break my neck. Son of God to the contrary notwithstanding, because this is a world of order. And if I act as if I am not bound by that order, I can ignore that order, then the order itself destroys me. Thou shalt not tempt God. All through the days and months of the life of Jesus Christ, up to the final end, when elusive moments, as he was dying on the cross, he heard as if they were voices coming across a stormy sea, if thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross. Come down. And I imagine, it his mind, he said, I thought I had won that battle months and months and months ago, and here it is again. 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu This is the great illusion of the good man. Somehow, because I have glimpsed God's face, in a transcendent moment when he revealed himself, I can do as I please. I am not bound, rooted, grounded, planted, deposited, stayed in the order of existence. I'm over here. Pitts Theology Library Emory University For it may be that I can understand the order so thoroughly, I can be so skill in knowledge concerning the way it operates. With my creative mind, I can brood over the stuff of nature, until at last I can woo out of it it's secrets, and make these secrets become the vehicles of my mind, and instruments in my hand, for the affirming of my will may do this. And if I'm able to do this, then I transcend them, I'm not bound by them. My knowledge is my guarantee. My knowledge of the natural order is my insulation against the natural order. I have written somewhere about my doctor who illustrated this. I went to see him for the reasons that you go to a doctor. And he gave me my usual examination. And then he sent me to somebody to do this and that and the other, all the reports to be sent to him. And then the day came when I got the telephone call to come to see him. And as always, churning inside when you sit in the chair and he has the Manila folder. And he began looking at it, and then he looked at me and nod his head, grunt a little. And then, at one point, he took a report out and held it up, took it out of the folder and held it up and knitted his brow, and looked at me quickly, and then looked back. And of course, everything stopped for me at that moment. And then he finally nodded and put the report back. And then he closed it. And he said, you are in pretty good shape for your age. But, he said, you are getting too heavy. And then he talked to me very learnedly about what the extra pounds were doing to my heart all kinds of technical and scary things. He talked about, and as he talked, I felt weaker and weaker. And then I looked at him. Now, he wasn't as tall as I was, and he weighed about 225 pounds. And then it occurred to me, he thought that his body knew that he was a doctor. His body did not know that he was a doctor. His body knew precisely what my body knew, it was storing up more caloric units than it was burning up. He thought that his knowledge of physiology, anatomy, pharmacology, all the rest of the discipline, gave him immunity against the relentless logic of reaping and sowing the dynamics of the order. If I'm a good man, being as true to my light as I can in my blindness, if with full consciousness I have tired to respond the the gentle or the strong pulling of the Spirit of the Living God, and if I have walked in the path which seems to stretch out before my eyes, then, unless I keep very close to Him, I will think that my goodness will cause life to make an exception in my case. No, no, there are other ways by which the Spirit of the Living God may reassure and help restore calm, bequiet, stabilize, steady. But God does not violate his context. He causes the sun to shine on the good man and the bad man, the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. So much about this, I do not understand. And all the rationalizations of my mind turn to ashes in my hand. Why is it that this is the kind of world in which the evil do prosper? 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Pitts Theology Library Emory University I don't know. The only thing I do know is that my assignment as a creature, my endowment, better, as the creature cannot be separated from my endowment as a child of God. Though the fig tree may not blossom, though there be no fruit on the vine, though there be no cattle in the stall, nevertheless, says the prophet, I will rejoice in the Lord and glory the God of my salvation. I shall trust that I shall not be tempted into tempting God to destroy me, even as my nation is today. Think of it. Caught up with a good life, infernal valleys between two great oceans, blessed with the uniqueness of being launched as a land under the aegis of the most creative and significant interpretations of the meaning of human life and human history, grounded in a tradition that breathes with all the fragrance of the love of God. And we think that because of our favored position, as a nation, we can do as we please, we are not bound by the order, the logic of reaping and sewing that binds the little people, the hungry people, the inarticulate, dumb people of the age. Let them abide by the moral order. It's all they have. We can transcend the order and defy the order. And in so doing, we tempt God to destroy us. if you do not believe it, ask Rome, ask Greece, ask the British Empire, ask the story of your own life. If thou be the Son of God, nothing will happened to you. Life will make an exception in your case, even if you do violate the structure of dependability that provides the context in which the Living God operates. It is written don't do it. Don't tempt God to destroy you. Our little systems have their day. When they have their day, and cease to be, and they are but broken light of thee, but thou, oh Lord, are more than they. God causes His sun to shine on the good man and the bad man, His rain to fall on the just and the unjust. Jesus and the natural order, I'm reading a very significant passage from the African Genesis. It is a fine expression of a dimension-- a rather insightful dimension of natural religion. And the second thing that I should read is from The Inward Journey. I brought the wrong piece of paper. Man without God is a seed upon the wind, a tiny, living thing awaiting its moment of fulfillment, caught up in the movement of tremendous energy, is at the mercy of forces that are not responsive to its own ends. There is a grand unconscious vitality unfolding with mounting energy, it's impersonal purpose. In the grip of something like this, what is a tiny seed? No more than a particle of dust, a nameless nothing. Here in the abandonment of all purpose, stark helpless without mooring or anchor. The fact that there is, locked within the seed, a private world of pattern and design makes no difference to the fierce velocities that sweep it on its reckless and relentless way. Man without God is a seed up on the wind. He is a victim of the currents of life that carry him where they will with a bland unmindfulness of purposes and ends which belong to him as a living, thinking, feeling creature. It means that such a man has no sense of center. He takes his clue to all meaning and values from the passing moment, the transitory event, the immediate issue of the day. He is at home nowhere because he is not a home somewhere. The master speaks of this in his direct question, what would a man give in exchange for his soul? 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu But there is a sense in which a man with God is a seed upon the wind, a man who has made the primary surrender, the commitment, the yielding of God is the core of his being. He is one who has relaxed his will to exercise and hold firm the initiative over his own life. And this does not come without exacting struggle of the soul. Pitts Theology Library Emory University One by one, the outposts of his spirit captured, retaken, and lost again through hours, months, even years of warfare. Until the last, the very citadel of his spirit is under siege, and he is subjected to an utter yielding. There follows, often, the long silence when nothing stirs. And then out of the quiet of his vanquished spirit, something stirs, and a new life emerges that belongs more to God than to self. The movement now rests, with purposes that are beyond the literal purposes, with ends that transcend the private ends, the purposes and the ends of God. There is a sense in which a man with a seed upon the winds. There are miracles in the spirit of which the world knows nothing. Such is the testimony that comes to us from the lips of George Fox. Our lives are surrounded day by day, and night after eventful night, by the stupendous revelations of what man is discovering about the world around him. Each day, we seem to penetrate more deeply into the process of nature. Thousands of men and women, with utter devotion, give themselves to the pursuit of the secret disclosures from the chamber of mysteries of which they themselves are apart and from which they have come forth. It is as if there is a mighty collective and individual effort to remember what they were before the mind became mind, and the body became flesh and blood. So successful has then the appropriation of the knowledge of the mysteries of air and wind and earth, that, what a decade ago would have stopped and frightened the most mature adult, is today take for granted by the simplest child. We speak of going to the moon, not as denizens of the shadows where unrealities tumble over one another in utter chaos. Rather we speak of going to the moon and back again with voices that are brimming over with an arrogance that even God could not command. But let one arise in our midst to speak of secrets of another kind. Let one say that the world of the spirit has vast frontiers which call to us as our native heath. At once, the deep split in our spirits reveals itself. Out of the eyes as we listen, there leaps the steady glow of recognition, while our lips speak of superstition and delusion. Can the miracles of the spirit be real or truth? Because they seem always to be personal and private, does this not add to their unreality? The miracles of the spirit, what are they? The resolving of inner conflict upon which all the lances of the mind have splintered and fallen helplessly from hand. The daring of the spirit that puts to route the evil deed and the decadent unfaith, the experiences of new purposes which give courage to the weak, hope to the despairing, life to those burdened by sin and failure. The quality of reverence that glows within the mind, illumining it gives incentive to bring under the control of the spirit all the boundless fruits of knowledge, the necessity for inner and outer peace the meaning of all men striving. The discovery that the covenant of brotherhood is the witness of the work of the Spirit of God in the life of man, and the hymn of praise offered to Him as thanksgiving and as glory. 4 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Friends Five-Year Meeting (1969, Earlham College, Richmond, IN) Description An account of the resource This collections includes three lectures from the series delivered at the Friends Five-Year Meeting in 1969 at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. Three more lectures from the series are not present in this collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1969 AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-050_A.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1960s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Friends Five-Year Meeting (III): Jesus and the Natural Order [Side A], 1969 Jul 22 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-050_A Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Title A name given to the resource Friends Five-Year Meeting, Part 3: Jesus and the Natural Order, 1969 July 22 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1969-07-22 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img style="border-width:0;" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" alt="80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>. 2019. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-9452505.0815557 4840286.4351711)) Description An account of the resource In this second sermon from the Friends Five-Year Meeting, Thurman returns to the temptations of Jesus. The tempter urges Jesus to jump off a tower. Thurman says that the logic behind the tempter's dare is that there is no order or structure to existence; the tempter tries to convince Jesus that he is above the natural order. However, the truth is that if we do not act in accordance with the order, the order itself will destroy us. "Thou shalt not tempt God." Thurman relates this to America and the empires of history that have deemed themselves favored and thus unbound by the order that other peoples are bound to. Thurman says that the miracles we must seek are the unseen miracles of the spirit: the resolution of the inner conflicts which keep us separate and despairing. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Rodell Jefferson III. https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/a05dee8af805ece78e4b4e7e2e562741.pdf 13c59975227073e3921ab483e1471c6c PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-050_B.mp3 [STATIC] Pitts Theology Library Emory University Jesus and the natural order-- to pick up a thread from our meditation yesterday morning, man is the child of nature. He is a part of the natural order. But because of his mind and the quality or kind of self-consciousness that the mind makes possible, man to himself seems ever to be, in one very pragmatic sense, other than nature, over against nature, not a part of it. And yet, perhaps because of the mind and because of self-consciousness, man in his awareness seems constantly threatened by nature. Because there does not seem to be anything in the natural world that recognizes that man is present. There is a great fear at the very center of man's mind that, at last, he will be isolated, cut off, closed in, by himself alone. And there is something else in the human spirit that cannot abide isolation, for we are nourished as creatures first by creatures. There's something very puzzling in this divine mind. And I'm constantly harassed by it. I am myself alone. And I am not myself alone. I must not have finally the intimacy of my privacy invaded. And yet, I must keep always open. And I might be nourished by the flow of life that may not even know that I am present. It's a strange, and cruel, and an awful paradox. Yet, somehow the world of nature could manage to know that I'm here, that I have an intimate, primary, personal world of hopes, and dreams, and longings, and aspirations. They're all mine. But the world of nature-- of which I am a part and from which, at last, I can not be separated-refuses to acknowledge the privacy of my existence. So always, I'm going around trying to put the face of a man on the world of nature so there will be somebody with which I can treat, something with which I can deal, something with which I can speak and will be answered, something that will affirm and confirm my presence. And there's the long silence, gifts. But somehow I could be recognized by the wind, and the rain, and the stars. When I was a boy, I spent much of my time alone of the shores of the Atlantic. And the long nights, the stars seemed so close that I could reach up and touch them. And the ocean seemed so gentle and so friendly. And I found myself often talking to the ocean, talking to the stars. And I thought that I was comforted. And I think I was. I also thought that I was losing my mind. If somehow I could be answered and my isolation would be broken. I cannot stand this. And the human spirit does all kinds of things in an effort to compensate for this. You remember in Bojer's Great Hunger there is the story of the man who had lost his health and had decided with his only daughter to move up into the northern part of Europe in order to try to recoup his health. By profession, he was an engineer. And he moved into a very small town and became the neighbor of the one man in town who was the mender of parts. 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu The economy of the village was so simple that there was no need for money. Services were exchanged instead so that the man who was the part mender had his fields supplied with greens. They may be planted. And the barber cut his hair, and so forth, and so on. In exchanged, he mended all the parts. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Now the only thing that the hero of Bojer's story knew how to do was mend parts. So now there were two part menders in a village that could contain only one part mender. It also happened that the original part mender a vicious dog. And one day, the hero of Bojer's story, as he set-- 2 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Friends Five-Year Meeting (1969, Earlham College, Richmond, IN) Description An account of the resource This collections includes three lectures from the series delivered at the Friends Five-Year Meeting in 1969 at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. Three more lectures from the series are not present in this collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1969 AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-050_B.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1960s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Friends Five-Year Meeting (III): Jesus and the Natural Order [Side B], 1969 Jul 22 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-050_B Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Title A name given to the resource Friends Five-Year Meeting, Part 3: Jesus and the Natural Order (continued), 1969 July 22 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1969-07-22 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img style="border-width:0;" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" alt="80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>. 2019. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-9452505.0815557 4840286.4351711)) Description An account of the resource In this brief add-on to Thurman's sermon on Jesus and the Natural order, Thurman discusses the paradox that human beings are at once a part of the natural order, and yet also seem to be over and against nature. Human beings always feel themselves to be threatened by the impersonal forces of nature, which ultimately feeds the fear that perhaps we are alone, cut off, isolated in this world. If only the world could acknowledge us, to know our private world of hopes, dreams, and aspirations, perhaps we would feel comforted and assured. For this reason, Thurman says we are always trying to put a human face onto the world of nature so that we may be in conversation with it. For this reason, Thurman spoke to the ocean and to the stars as a boy, hoping to break his isolation. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Rodell Jefferson III.