Browse Items (290 total)

In this recording, Thurman asks whether our lives are canals, reservoirs, or swamps. Lives like canals connect people, movements, and purposes. Reservoirs have inlets and outlets in order to store up resources and provide them to others when needed. Swamps are without outlet, only taking in and becoming stagnant and rotted.

Thurman asks what form our lives take, and suggests that we become reservoirs, finding ways to replenish our resources "so that there will be an outgoing from us to…

Thurman explains the mood, quality, and symbol of Christmas. This contrasts with viewing Christmas as merely a day on the calendar, or a commemoration of an event. He uses sharp imagery to describe each of these features. For example, the mood of Christmas is “an iridescent of sheer delight that bathed one's whole being with something more wonderful than words can ever tell.” The quality is “the calm purple of grapes.” The symbol is “the promise of tomorrow at the close of every day” and “that…

In this third sermon on "Community and the Will of God," Thurman illustrates what it means to be a living creature. According to Thurman, life is always unfolding towards the fulfillment of community. Looking at human beings, Thurman sees that there is an organic harmony in our bodies, each organ working towards biological community. The mind, however, has been separated from this harmony, and must learn again how to be at home in the body. By this, both mind and body together can fulfill the…

In this first sermon on "Community and the Will of God," Thurman describes community as a structure and a goal that is inherent in life. Everything is striving to fulfill itself in community. This movement towards harmony is what binds and interconnects the lives and actions of living beings. With this intertwining comes the reality of personal responsibility. To know that we are connected to others in this way is to lose a degree of innocence. Drawing on the story of the Garden of Eden, Thurman…

In this sixth sermon on "Community and the Will of God," Thurman explores the ideas that influence our search for community. There is the idea that the meaning of human life is to be found beyond humanity, in the God that both moves in history and transcends history. Thurman says that this idea inspires our belief in universal order and the infinite worth of human beings. This is the foundation of democracy and our dreams of utopia, but Thurman says that this belief is disintegrating in society.…

In this final sermon on "Community and the Will of God," Thurman finishes with the prophet's dream of lion and lamb lying down together. Thurman says that those who dream of utopia and community often make them on the basis of discrimination – there are insiders and there are outsiders who stand as threat to community. For this reason, Thurman says that the dream of community must extend to all living things, a dream in which no manifestation of life will be a threat. In this sermon, Thurman…

In this fourth sermon on "Community and the Will of God," Thurman talks about the notion of the Self. At some point in our development, we begin to discriminate between ourselves and the rest of the world. When we build the bounds of Self, we also meet the social community in which our Self is embedded. We have a deep, original need for the fulfillment of community. To develop the Self in community is to reclaim this sense of inner wholeness in which we find ourselves as a part of the whole of…

In this fifth sermon on "Community and the Will of God," Thurman reads from several pieces, each pertaining to the realities of war and the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. Thurman says that, for the first time in human history, a single man could extinguish the entire human race, even accidentally. Religious tradition has always kept alive the possibility that, even with great destruction, some human remnant would pick up the pieces and continue the redemptive…

Thurman addresses the manifestations of the principle of alternation in life, ranging from the experiences of the individual to changes that affect the world. This alternation requires a “fallow period” from man, as life wanes, and a period of quiet restoration before it prepares to wax again. Thurman explains that this anxiety-inducing ebb is part of a natural, contradictory cycle, and that when man understands that the flow will come again, they can be at peace knowing that the contradictions…

This recording is a part of a wider series of conversations from September to October of 1980 where Howard Thurman met with a variety of young men and women who were discerning their calling to ministry. Thurman poses the intent of this group as an opportunity to "open up for one's self the moving, vital, creative push of God, while God is still disguised in the movement of God's self." This recording consists of preliminary introductions from various participants in the conversation, responding…