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Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
394-767.mp3
This is tape number ET5 from the library of the Howard Thurman Educational Trust, Two
Meditations by Howard Thurman. This is side one, entitled, "The Child and Religious Meaning."
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
[CHURCH BELLS CHIMING]
[INAUDIBLE].
[MUSIC PLAYING]
"Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord,
my strength and my Redeemer."
[MUSIC PLAYING]
For many years, I have used the thing that I am about to read now as the important element in the
dedication services that are held in connection with the dedication of children, particularly
babies. And I want to read it and make one or two simple comments about it.
"Thus a child learns, by wiggling skills through his fingers and toes and to himself, by soaking
up habits and attitudes of those around him, by pushing and pulling his own world. Thus a child
learns, more through trial than error, more through pleasure than pain, more through experience
than suggestion, more through suggestion than direction. Thus a child learns, through affection,
through love, through patience, through understanding, through belonging, through doing,
through being.
Day by day your child comes to know a little bit of what you know, to think a little bit of what
you think, to understand your understanding, that which you dream and believe and are in truth
becomes your child. As you perceive clearly or dully, as you think fuzzily or sharply, as you
believe foolishly or wisely, as you dream drably or goldenly, as you are unworthy or sincere,
thus your child learns."
And then, "I am the child. All the world waits for my coming. All the earth watches with interest
to see what I shall become. Civilization hangs in the balance. For what I am, the world of
tomorrow will be. I am the child. I have come into your world, about which I know nothing.
Why I came, I know not. How I came, I know not.
I'm curious. I'm interested. I am the child. You hold in your hand my destiny. You determine
largely whether I shall succeed or fail. Give me, I pray you, those things that make for happiness.
Train me, I beg you, that I may be a blessing to the world."
"The truth of God shall be upon thy heart, and thou shalt teach them to thy children, and shall
talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest in the way, and when thou
liest down, and when thou risest up. Train your child in the way he should go. And even when he
is old, he will not depart from it."
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The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
In presenting your child for dedication to God, you acknowledge your responsibility to your
generation and to future generations to see to it that his life will have a free chance to be a
blessing, and not a bane. You will develop and keep alive in him a sturdy confidence in the truth,
positive faith in life, and an abiding trust in God. You will not lie to your child, nor deceive your
child, so that under all circumstances, your child may depend upon the integrity of his mother
and his father.
And then there follows these words, I dedicate you to God, and to the fulfillment of your life in
the religious faith and tradition of your mother and your father. May it be said of you, as it was
said of the baby Jesus long ago, that you increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with
God and man, so that all who come to know you in the days ahead will find in you a benediction
breathing peace.
Now it is very important, I think, that children should grow up in the religious faith and tradition
of their parents, in order that the roots in which the family's life is sustained and by which it is
nurtured can be available as resources for the child. This is not to say that when the child
matures, when the child rounds out his development, and goes on his way with all of life opening
out before him in many of its splendors and many of its disillusionments, that he will not want to
make the authentic decision for himself. He will not want to say yes to this or no to that. I think
this is important.
But the most crucial thing, it seems to me, is for the child to have a sense of being rooted, being
grounded in some kind of holding tradition, so that when he is ready to deal creatively and
effectively with what, to him, will be increasingly the meaning of life, when he is ready to
project the lines along which he expects to live his life, he will have a sense first of being at
home somewhere, being grounded in something. So that when he moves, he moves from
something that has contained him, has steadied him, has given to his organism, as it were, the
same kind of rhythmic beat that sustained his mother and his father through the generations.
For I believe, you see, that a man cannot be at home anywhere, anywhere, unless he is at home
somewhere, standing from within the context of belonging. He can project himself into the
unexplored, into the unknown. And feel his way always having a kind of monitor, which will not
be a judge, but will provide perspective in the light of which he can define the movements of his
life.
Very simply put, if you were moving your furniture from one home to another, and if the movers
brought all the furniture that is to go into the living room, and put it in the middle of the floor,
and then you came in to arrange it, it would mean that you would have to set the furniture up in
some kind of order. And then decide what is the order that will be satisfactory to you. You look
at this chair, said, oh no, that chair doesn't belong there, but belongs over here. Or the divan
doesn't belong there, but it belongs at this place. In other words, if you have an order to start
with, then standing within that order, you are able to determine what, for you, is the authentic
order.
But if you have no order out of which you are trying to make order, then you must make some
order out of the chaos. And then from that order that you make out of the chaos, fashion an order
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that is more in keeping with your heart's desire. And again and again, we find that there isn't
perhaps enough concern, enough energy, enough vitality, in order to make all of these steps.
Therefore it seems to me that the birthright that every child is entitled to have is a context of
religious meaning that will define for him what it is that he is seeking and where he may find it.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
[MUSIC PLAYING]
"Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord,
my Rock and my Redeemer."
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This program was prerecorded.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This is tape number ET5, from the library of the Howard Thurman Educational Trust. This is
side two, entitled, "Our Children Are Not Things."
[MUSIC PLAYING]
"Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord,
my strength and my Redeemer."
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I'm reading from Meditations of the Heart. It is in order to think about children and our
relationship to them. Often we underestimate both our influence and our responsibility with
reference to children because they do not seem to be mindful of our presence, except in terms of
something to resist. The world of the adult is in some ways a different world from that of a child.
We bring to bear upon life the cumulative judgment garnered from our years of living of trial and
error, of many, many discoveries along the way.
It is from that kind of context that we judge the behavior of children. But they have not lived.
And there is much that can be known and understood only from the harvest of the years. This
fact should not blind us to the profound way in which we determine, even in detail, the attitudes
and the very structure of the child's thought. If we are good to the child, and to other people, he
will get from us directly a conception of goodness more profound and significant than all the
words we may use about goodness as an ideal.
If we lose our temper and give way to hard, brittle words which we fling around and about, the
child learns more profoundly and significantly than all the formal teaching about self-control
which may be offered him. If we love a child, and the child senses from our relationship with
others that we love them, he will get a concept of love that all the subsequent hatred in the world
will never be quite able to destroy. It is idle to teach the child formerly about respect for other
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people or other groups, if in little ways we demonstrate that we have no authentic respect for
other people and other groups.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
The feeling, tone, and insight of the child are apt to be unerring. It is not important whether the
child is able to comprehend the words we use, or understand the ideas that we make articulate.
The child draws his meaning from the meaning which we put into things that we do and say. Let
us not be deceived. We may incorporate in our formal planning all kinds of ideas for the benefit
of the children. We may provide them with tools of various kinds. But if there is not genuineness
in our climate, if in little ways we regard them as nuisances, as irritations, as things in the way of
our pursuits, they will know that we do not love them, and that our religion has no contagion for
them.
Let us gather around our children and give to them the security that can come only from
associating with adults who mean what they say and who share in deeds, which are broadcast in
words. It is in order to make the first casual comment about how we relate to children to say that
so often the most fundamental relatedness to the child is an unconscious one. We are functioning
all the time as adults, creating a climate in which our children live, from which they get
important clues as to what things mean.
A child can gather so much more from the tone of our voice, or from what we do with our eyes,
when we are saying our thing, than from all the formal words that we may utter directly to the
child, which words, as they move from our lips, have as their purpose the shaping of an image
and the mind of the child. No, the image again and again is shaped almost unconsciously. The
child absorbs it from the environment.
We may say all of the words that we can conjure up about how wonderful it is to have respect for
other people and to love people, or even to love someone who is close at hand. But if the child
sees the deed, if the child is present when the sharp word is given, if the child is there when the
conversation goes on behind the other person's back, all of this goes into the shaping of the
inward parts of the mind and the spirit of the child. I learned so much more about prayer, for
instance, from my mother than any of the words that she ever used in teaching me little prayers,
or in teaching me to pray by something that I saw one night when I rushed into her room, and
was so excited that I forgot my manners and did not knock at the door beforehand. I simply burst
into the room.
And there she was kneeling beside her bed in prayer. And the moonlight came through the
window across her face. And what I saw in her face said to me about the inner meaning of the
prayer experience what all the teaching in the world could never have said. Now over and above
these unconscious teachings, and these unconscious influences, something must be said about the
direct and the conscious thing that is done. For instance, it is of absolute and-- how shall I [? say
it?-- ?] crucial importance that we do not ever lie to our children.
So that the child knows that even though his words may be weak, his words may be full of
mixtures of fantasy and fancy and imaginings, all of the things that come out of the magic of the
child's mind, but if he knows that when his mother speaks, or when his father utters the word,
that this is dependable, that this is the truth, so that the child has something against which he can
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Transcription
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put all of the pressure of his life, of his days, of his energies, and not feel that this thing gives,
that here is something that is dependable.
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The night may come, and the night may be long, and the night may be dark. And the next day, it
may be raining. Or the child may have a sore toe, or a sore foot. Or he may be disappointed
because of this thing or the other thing. But always back in the shadows of his mind is the deep,
rock-like confidence that my father is true. My mother is true. And what my mother says or what
my father says can be depended upon. And this provides an emotional security that in my
judgment, at any rate, is as profound and as stabilizing as the emotional security about which we
hear so much that comes from tender loving care, and from being regarded kindly and tenderly
and graciously by the parents.
The child wants to know consciously and unconsciously that there is something upon which he
can depend that has solidity, that against which he can put all of his tantrums, and all of his
pressures, and all of his little anxieties. And this thing holds. And this he gets directly from his
mother and his father, so that their words are yes and no. And when they speak, the child knows
that he is standing in the presence of that which is dependable. And it is this that gives him his
clue as to what God means in the world.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
"Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord,
my Rock and my Redeemer.
The preceding was prerecorded.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
5
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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
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We Believe (Television Series, 1958-1965)
Description
An account of the resource
<em>We Believe</em> was a color television program that aired on WHDH-TV, Channel 5, in Boston on weekday mornings at 11:15. From 1958 to 1965, while Howard Thurman was Dean of the Chapel at Boston University, he was the host of the Friday morning show. Each message has a brief introductory section with bells and music before Thurman delivers his short meditation. Some recordings have been edited to remove the intro. In some cases, the Howard Thurman Educational Trust produced tapes with two messages on one recording.<br /><br />"These meditations are no longer than 15 minutes, but highly representative of his style, influence, and search for common ground." - <a href="http://archives.bu.edu/web/howard-thurman">the Howard Thurman and Sue Bailey Thurman Collections at Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.</a><br /><br />
<p style="text-align: right;"><em>We Believe</em> program listing in the TV Guide, March 29, 1958</p>
<img src="http://pittsviva.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/webelieve-whdh-boston.png" style="float: right;" alt="webelieve-whdh-boston.png" />
Contributor
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Descriptions by Dustin Mailman
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/394-767.html" ></iframe>
Internal Notes
Notes for project team
Edited - GL 7/26
Original Title
Title as transcribed from tape cassette
The Children and Religious Meaning; Our Children Are Not Things (ET-5; GC 11-16-71), 1971 Nov 16
Time Period
The decade in which the recording was produced.
1960s
Location
The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon
WHDH-TV, Boston, Massachusetts
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
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394-767
Creator
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Thurman, Howard
Title
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The Child and Religious Meaning (1964-01-24); Our Children Are Not Our Things (1963-11-01)
Source
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<a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a>
Format
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audio
Publisher
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<a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a>
Date
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1964-01-24
1963-11-01
Description
An account of the resource
In this recording within the We Believe Series; Howard Thurman utilizes Frederick J. Moffitt's "Thus A Child Learns," as a point of departure for his liturgy for the devotion of a child. Thurman notes that it is the "birthright" of every child to be given the tools "define for them what it is that they are seeking and where they may find it."
In this recording within the We Believe Series; Howard Thurman reflects from his text, "Meditations of the Heart," to "think about children and our relationship to them." Throughout this meditation, Thurman explores the ways in which adults should listen to, teach, and learn from children.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Dustin Mailman
behavior
belonging
children
community
creativity
curiosity
dedication
dependability
development
developmental psychology
divan
experience
faith
family
Frederick J. Moffitt
furniture
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goodness
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imagination
influence
intention
learning
life
love
meditations of the heart
moonlight
prayer
relationship
responsibility
self-control
teaching
Thus a Child Learns
tone
tradition
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