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In this recording within the We Believe series; Howard Thurman reflects upon the line "How precious are thy thoughts, O God," found within Psalm 139. Thurman uses this verse in order to poetically wax the miracle that is having a mind. In this recording, Thurman suggests that because the mind orders the body, that it is significant to discern what the mind of God consists of. It is in the discerning of God's mind that one finds the content of devotional posturing: wisdom, tenderness, and love.…

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In this recording within the We Believe series, Howard Thurman reads from his text, Deep is the Hunger, speaking to his understanding of love. He defines love as "the experience of being dealt with at a point in one's self that is beyond all good and evil." Embedded in this definition are notions of trust and forgiveness. He indicates that love is the antithesis of isolation, with isolation being the very essence of having a lack of access to another person.

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In this recording within the We Believe Series; Howard Thurman uses Oswald W.S. McCall's "Hand of God" to reflect upon Good Friday. Thurman utilizes a historical interpretation to makes sense of the life and death of Jesus, stating that "the event of his death cannot be separated from the logic of his life."

In this recording within the We Believe Series; Howard Thurman uses Oscar Wilde's "De Profundis" to make sense of Good Friday. He again dwells upon the historical Jesus, the implications…

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Thurman references colorful allegories and metaphors in this recording to remind us that focusing on the past can prevent one’s self from achieving fulfillment and helping those yet-to-come. His most powerful reference is to the “new and old wood” of an apple tree. He states clearly that fruit is only born on the new wood, and that the function of old wood is to bear that new wood. He connects this metaphor to the book of Hebrew to explain that without the past, the present has no meaning, and…

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In the introductory sermon to “A Faith to Live By,” Thurman reflects on the sense of instability humans experience when confronting the fact of their finiteness within the expansive universe. He argues, that when an existential awakening occurs, what anchors the religious believer is becoming conscious of God as a "categorical fact" that exists at the center of all reality. It is the fact of the divine and its relation to the human spirit that allows one to be lifted from the despair of…

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In the second sermon of this series, Thurman extends his commentary on God as a centering force in human experience. For Thurman, the awareness of God always arises out of some present stirring, passion, concern, or, anxiety. The religious spirit, he says, emerges to “focus on the ultimate destiny” of the human race whenever there is “moral confusion” in the world. In these instances, God is the reference point enabling creative and dynamic faith. One must turn to the altar of the divine to…

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In the third sermon of this series, Thurman offers commentary on Jesus as a resource for faithful living into the fact of God. Thurman says that Jesus offered to his disciples a vision of God – not a metaphysic, not a theology, not a dogma – but an embodied vision of God. This vision revealed that God is near, and God is love, two principles that cannot be separated. No degradation, no waywardness can rub out God's signature on us. We are redeemed, not by our own individual character, but by…

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In the first of two sermons entitled “Man,” Thurman considers what it means for the human to be a spirit-possessing being. The spirit is fundamental to understanding all things that a person thinks and feels. It is what enables the human to respond to one's experiences. Thurman imagines spiritual consciousness as an elevated level of awareness, whereby a person resists being imprisoned within moments and events so that possibilities beyond immediate experience become visible. Here, one can speak…

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In the fifth sermon of this series, Thurman invites us into a reexamination of what it means to be human beings. "What am I? What are you?" he asks. Thurman suggests three answers to the question: 1.) We are dreamers, and our vitality is sustained by our dreaming. 2.) We are builders of worlds, and though our building never fulfills its blueprint, the greatness of our plans feed our dreams and hopes, and 3.) We are children of God, beings of infinite worth. Thurman ends saying that a culture,…

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Do you “believe in democracy?” Thurman poignantly begins his sermon by asking the congregation to give serious thought to their commitments to the democratic process. Democracy, he claims, rests on a fundamentally metaphysical presupposition that the world is “grounded in creativity.” Human thought experiments with the raw material of life and of living that exist all around us, which is “shaped and reshaped” in accordance with “great aspiring and great hoping and great dreaming.” Human…
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