Browse Items (351 total)

In this 12th sermon on "The Men Who've Walked With God," Thurman talks about our outer and inner lives through Jacob Böhme, a Lutheran of the 16th century. Böhme felt that understanding the world entails more than simply experiencing it, but also relating to it from a center point. In dealing with the world, we need to bring a "double view" to all things. We must see one another in the reality of our circumstances, but also in our completeness as manifestations of life. For Böhme, this double…

In this seventh lecture on "The Men Who've Walked with God," Thurman examines Gandhi. For Thurman, Gandhi illustrates what it looks like to bring mystical insight into politics and the traffic of life. In the work of Gandhi, one sees that "it is possible to achieve effective, worldly ends by the use of... techniques that are, themselves, unworldly." By shining the light of spiritual truth onto the conflicts and frustrations of life, new creative synthesis is made possible. For Thurman, Gandhi is…

In this tenth sermon on "The Men Who've Walked with God," Thurman explores painter, Fra Angelico. Angelico's life shows us what is possible when we dedicate our skills and disciplines totally to God. Angelico, painting out of the ultimate loyalty of his heart, did not worry about judgments or critics or making money; for him, painting was the way in which the living God was projected. Thurman says that Angelico made his life into a tool for God to reveal God's glory. When our lives are dedicated…

In this fourth lecture on "The Men Who've Walked with God," Thurman talks about the Buddha and his wrestling with human existence. Thurman says that the Buddha saw the aging and hunger in the world and equated life with suffering. The Buddha's response to this was to root out desire, to renounce attachment to the self. Thurman says that the insight here is that the self is not so much important as much as the act and the deed of the self. The ethical insight of the Buddha is in the purification…

In this third lecture on "The Men Who've Walked with God," Thurman examines mysticism through the Brahmanic mystics and the development of Hinduism. The insight of the mystics was that one's soul was identical with the world-soul. However, this presented an issue. If dying means that one will merge back into the world-soul, does life have any meaning? Thurman explains how the Doctrine of Reincarnation was made to answer this. What we do in this world has an effect on our souls; living makes a…

In this second lecture on "The Men Who've Walked with God," Thurman summarizes his teachings on mysticism and supplements it with a conversation on Laozi and the Dao. Laozi affirmed the Dao to be the creator of life that has no name or category. The Dao manifests itself in all of life. Thurman explains that experiencing the Dao requires detachment – not withdrawal from life, but rather finding the center of your being, a discipline we rarely make time for. Thurman says that we must parse through…

In this first sermon on "The Men Who've Walked with God," Thurman explores the dynamics of mysticism. Mystical experience is deeply personal, and yet always urging one out towards life. The mystic cannot be lost in transcendence, because the mystic must test their insights in the outer world. Mysticism is better experienced than it is explained. In this experience, there is direct contact with the Spirit of God. For this reason, as Thurman says, the mystic goes against the grain of institutions…

This sermon is the fourth of nine in a series of sermons given in Marsh Chapel that are titled "The Inward Journey." Utilizing the intersections between Jane Steger, Jacob Boehme, and Meister Eckhart, Thurman explores what Steger calls "the inner light." He notes that the inner light within humanity is first, the "ground of God that is present in humanity," and second, a phenomenon that is "imposed upon the personality" without consent. He holds this definition in juxtaposition with a religious…

This sermon is the third of nine in a series of sermons given in Marsh Chapel that are titled "The Inward Journey." In this sermon, Thurman reflects upon Meister Eckhart's description of the Godhead. In his dissection of Eckhart's Godhead, Thurman wrestles with the tension between the external Godhead that exists in the world, and the internal Godhead that wrestles within the self, noting "The Godhead is trying to break through to the Godhead that is within me." Considering this sermon series'…

In this recording within the We Believe series; Howard Thurman reflects upon Oswald W.S. McCall's "Hand of God." Here, Thurman ponders the centrality of hope in the life of faith, and the ways in which hope is grounded in a myriad of contradictions. He continues by defining hope, noting that hope is deeply experiential and the central marker of making sense of the Hand of God.