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In this seventh lecture in the Discipline of the Spirit series, Thurman uses Matthew 5:39 as a framework for discipline as it relates to our decision to act. Thurman reminds listeners of the responsibility to act or react in integrity centered around core values as we are responsible for the actions we initiate as well as the reactions we initiate in other people. One must always be careful when deciding to act lest our deeds are out of character with our core beliefs.

In this eighth installment of the Discipline of the Spirit, Howard Thurman uses Goethe's Faust to set the tone as he discusses the principles of dualism and redemption. Thurman goes on to discuss whether our contradictions in life are final considering the righteousness of God. The movement of the creator through the experience of man is also discussed.

In this first installment of Readings From Deep is the Hunger, Howard Thurman uses Matthew 5 as a framework to discuss the sufficiency of God as we wrestle with the concepts of kindness, mercy, and humility. Thurman goes on to discuss the need for God as we navigate challenges internally and externally with the world around us.

In Part 1 of this sermon series, Thurman claims that freedom and failure are twins. The gift of life is also the gift of failure, which is also the gift of freedom. Without the ability to choose, there can be no failure. Thus, human beings are free and fallible creatures. The ultimate and inevitable failure for a living organism is death. Thurman says that the human spirit must confront death and failure. From this confrontation arises a new perspective on life, a renewed understanding of…

In this second sermon in the Freedom and Suffering series, Thurman adds grace into his discussion on freedom and failure. Human beings have the freedom to fail again and again, however we never fail totally and absolutely. In this there is grace. For Thurman, grace is our experience of something dealing with us beyond balance and beyond merit; it is an unexplainable outpouring that sustains, redeems, and reassures us. Grace is found in God who does not give up on us, who sees us beyond the…

In this third sermon in the Freedom and Suffering series, Thurman focuses in on the suffering aspect. Suffering is the common experience of human beings, and perhaps all living beings. Thurman says that the Christian tradition itself was born out of pain and suffering, and represents the human project of squeezing optimism from pessimism. Thurman adds that we are always trying to deduce the logic of our suffering, but even still there are times when the balance of reaping and sowing does not add…

In the fourth and final sermon of the Freedom and Suffering series, Thurman takes his exploration of suffering a step further. Thurman suggests that we must learn to be worthy of our suffering. We should not seek out suffering, but when it comes to us, we must search for the meaning and dignity in it. Thurman also considers that human beings can only suffer because we are capable of loving. To love is to identify with another's suffering, to enter into it and yet remain as ourselves. Religion,…

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 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…

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…