In both of these recordings within the We Believe series; Howard Thurman reads from his text, "Meditations of the Heart." In them, we hear Thurman reflecting upon citizenship and right action. Thurman's central question throughout these reflections is: What does it me to be a full, free, and responsible citizen? He claims that by having a moral praxis that rejects hatred in every way it manifests itself, one is able to resist means that contradict the end they are seeking.
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…
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…