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Pitts Theology Library
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394-781.mp3
This is tape number ET28, from the library of the Howard Thurman Educational Trust. Two
meditations by Howard Thurman. This is side 1, entitled Creative Order in Life.
Pitts Theology Library
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[BELLS RINGING]
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 continuing from Jane Steger, Leaves from a Secret Journal. About the tree, what I want to
know is why the sap ever started to run up the tree, up the trunk, along the limbs into the buds to
spread them out into leaves. Perhaps the way to find out would be to get inside the tree one's
self-- a nebulous personality to run with the sap up the trunk, out the limbs, into the leaves and
maple keys. And there, hear the command to stop.
The end is as amazing as the beginning. Why does the urge of life cease with leaves and seed
vessels? How does it know when to stop when its type is completed? If this command to halt
didn't come at the right moment, the breath of life that is in the tree might go on beyond leaves
and bloom into all sorts of green, fantastic abortions that would spoil the type.
The beginning is a marvel. The ending is an amazement. And I suppose that was, in the mind of
God, the finished thought of a maple tree, as definite and complete as its spark of life in the seed,
although He no doubt sent the thought forth in several types before the present one was achieved.
It is a miracle that trees stop with themselves, that maple trees are only apple trees-- that maple
trees are only maple trees, that apple trees are only apple trees, and oak trees are only oak trees.
The urge of life might so easily have flowed on into a green maelstrom of confusion-- a sort of
wild, crazy quilt of creation.
The same, of course, is true of every type. Why do pigs stop at pigs and human beings at human
beings? Of course, we human beings still have animal tendencies, and no doubt we are potential
angels, but in spite of what we have, then, or may be, we are human beings. Each type may have
come up from something else and be slowly drifting on to another development.
Nevertheless, at each stage, it is itself and not a confused medley. As I sit writing, I am
surrounded by numberless finished articles-- books, chairs, tables, desks-- all of which were
conceived by the mind of man. Then, as I look out into the garden, I see infinitely more things.
An innumerable company-- grass, trees, flowers, bushes-- all of which the mind of God created
and all of which are separate, distinct, and finished, with no confusion, no intermixing of forms.
Truly, the finished type is an astonishment. I never really thought of it before. The urge of life
always amazed me, but I never until now realized the marvel of it stopping when each creation is
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completed. It might so easily go on into confusion or shatter the type as a child breaks his bubble
by blowing too much breath into it.
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It might, that is, if at the back of creation was nothing but a blind force. How can anyone believe
that? One might possibly if one thought only of the initial urge of life, but surely not when one
sees it always stopping in definite forms and definite types.
Look at that fat dictionary over there on the shelf, so solemn and well-informed. Do I think that it
was created out of chaos? No, I don't think so. Did anyone ever see a trumpet vine forget its type
and try to overflow into something else-- into a maple tree, for instance? Or a maple tree forget
that its urge to life should stop with sharply pointed leaves rather than with round edges of an
oak?
Nobody ever did unless the types had been crossed by outside interference. What keeps them all
so loyally true to their own plan? Surely, if there were nothing but a blind urge at the back of
them, they would long ago have lost their way in the maze of life and gone off into a confusion
of all kind of chaos.
This is a rather extraordinary and exciting notion to my mind, and it is well worth our reflecting
upon. It is true that the beginning of life is quite miraculous. As a matter of fact, the big the idea
of beginning is itself as a concept almost beyond the grasp of the mind.
But as fundamentally exciting as may be the notion of beginning, it is even more astonishing-this built in quality that seems to be inherent in any particular form of life that tells that form of
life how it is to shape itself and when it is to stop developing. Suppose your foot did not ever
stop growing, that there wasn't anything that you could do to stop it. It would be quite a fantastic
arrangement.
But there is built in the very life structure of the body something which, in recent times,
biologists, or cytologists more specifically, have discovered. And they call it a certain quality in
the cell. A coding, C-O-D-I-N-G-- a coding in the cell that determines what the development of
the organism will be-- which cells will become eyes and legs and feet and hair and what the
dimensions are.
This is a part of the Constitution that is inherent in the cell itself. And in reading some time ago
about the growth and development of eels, I was amazed at the discovery that some of the
investigators were trying to determine, why was it that certain eels that came up from the
Sargasso sea, born there, five miles below the surface of the sea, found their way all the way up
to the Atlantic?
And some of the eels moved to the right and went to Europe. Some of the other eels came to the
United States-- to Virginia and North Carolina, to the fresh waters there. What determined which
way the eel should go? What determined the European eel and the American eel, as it were?
Well, these scientists discovered that the eels that had 11 or fewer vertebrae always came to
Virginia and North Carolina. If they had 12 or more vertebrae, they always went to Europe. The
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ticket-- the ticket-- was in the vertebrae. Now, this means that all of life is fundamentally
structured and grounded in order, that there is inherent in the creative process that which when
life realizes itself, its potential has been actualized.
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Now, this gives to us-- it should give to us a very simple but profound confidence in the life
process itself. And in my language, it should give us the confidence in the Creator, confidence in
God, for it would seem to me that if all other manifestations of life, including my own body,
have this order built into it, why should not the experiences of my life, the growth of my life, all
of the things would have to do with my mind and spirit, why should not they then be in
accordance with what to me is the will and the purpose-- and for my mind-- the creative dream of
God?
[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 is tape number ET28, from the library of the Howard Thurman Educational Trust. This is
side 2, entitled, The Great Exposure.
[BELLS RINGING]
[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. Sometimes, there's only a 60 second divide between
youth and maturity, childhood and adulthood, strength and weakness, life and death. That life is
vulnerable is the key to its longevity.
We are surrounded every day by the exposure to sudden and devastating calamity. Despite all
efforts to the contrary, there is no device by which we may get immunity from the slings and
arrows of outrageous fortune. Here is a man in the full prime of active life, with all the strength
and vigor of a rounded maturity. Disease strikes. He withers and dies quickly, without warning
and often without premonition.
Here is a carefree, happy child, surrounded by all the love that wise devotion and careless rapture
can give. A plane crash. Both parents perish. And what at 10 o'clock was a child becomes at
10:01 a desolate creature shunted across the great divide that separates hope from hopelessness,
dependence from independence. Thus it goes in one vein.
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Or here is a person from whom all the lights had long since gone out. The way ahead is no way.
A sharp, sudden turn in the road or a chance encounter in the darkness and everything's changed.
Life is vulnerable. Always, there is the exposed flank.
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Sometimes much energy is spent in a vain attempt to protect oneself. We try to harden our fiber,
to render ourselves safe from exposure. We refuse to love anyone, for instance, because we
cannot risk being hurt. We withdraw from participation and the struggles of our fellows because
we must not get caught in the communal agony of those around us.
We take no stand where fateful issues are at stake because we dare not run the risk of exposure to
attack. But all this, at long last, is of no avail. The attack from without is missed. And we escape
only to find that the life we have protected has slowly and quietly sickened deep within because
it was cut off from the nourishment of the great exposure.
It is the way of life that it be nourished and sustained by the constant threat, the sudden rending,
than welcome each rebuff that makes life's smoothness rough. It is a very commonplace
observation to say that as we live, our lives are caught up in a pattern of logic and order, reward
and punishment, reaping and sowing.
So fundamental is this kind of rhythmic balance in the very grain of our feeling tones and our
thought patterns that automatically we elect, as it were, to project this generalization in to an allinclusive way of life, so that when we do something, we expect it to balance itself in something
else.
I remember when I was a little boy, I broke my arm. It was in the summer. The doctor put my
arm in splints, as it were. And for three or four weeks, I was unable to participate in the things
that ordinarily engaged my time and attention.
And I wondered why, if I had to break my arm, it would not happen during the school year when
I could get mileage out of it. But it happened at the time when school was out and all the
wonderful things were going on in the summer. And then I began to go over in my mind-tutored, you see, by this balance about which I'm talking, reward and punishment, action and
reaction, antecedent and consequence-- and I wondered, what deed had I committed that was of
such enormous consequence that it had to be balanced by a broken arm at the peak of the
summer time?
This notion, you see, that we are in a rhythm of reward and punishment, and it operates
sometimes in our working philosophy. We say that if we are very good, then good things will
come to us as a result of it; that a good man, a worthy man, a man who has integrity and who
lives up to the most far reaching demands of his integrity, that man would not be subject to the
great exposure as a man who pays no attention to these things.
Now, this is one of the aspects of our experience, but it does not exhaust the possibilities. It is
true that there is reward and punishment, that the law of antecedent and consequence does
operate. But as it would seem to me, that over and above this kind of balance or this kind of
order, this kind of moral structure, there is what may be called a random movement in existence-
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- a movement which does not seem to take into account the private predicament, the situation of
the individual as an individual, but it involves him because he happens to be present and
available at the critical moment.
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The Master talks about this when someone ask him concerning a child that was born blind. His
disciples said, was this child born blind because of the sins of his parents? And the Master
countered with a very interesting comment. He said, the people on whom the tower at Siloam fell
and were killed, were they any more guilty than the people on whom the tower didn't fall?
And the inference is, no, they were not more guilty, but they were under the tower and the others
were not. This is an extraordinary something with which you are dealing. There is no protection
against the great exposure. We as living beings in this world, again and again, are exposed to the
operation of impersonal forces over which we are unable to exercise any control-- forces that are
not responsive to our wills, however good and insistent those wills are.
Given this situation, which is a part of the human predicament, it is within the resources of the
individual and it is one of the tremendous insight of religion that there is always available in God
strength, sufficient for our needs, whatever they may be. And this is not some Pollyanna remark,
but it is the studied wisdom and the garnered experience of generations of men that the test of
life is often found in the degree to which we are able to absorb the hammerings of the great
exposure without at the same time destroying our joy.
There is in God strength, sufficient for our needs, whatever they may be.
[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]
The preceding program was prerecorded.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
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Dublin Core
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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" />
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Descriptions by Dustin Mailman
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Audio with Transcription
<iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-781.html" ></iframe>
Original Title
Title as transcribed from tape cassette
Creative Order in Life; The Great Exposure (ET-28; GC 11-23-71), 1971 Nov 23
Time Period
The decade in which the recording was produced.
1960s
Location
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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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394-781
Creator
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Thurman, Howard
Title
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Creative Order in Life (1963-09-27); The Great Exposure (1963-02-15)
Source
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<a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a>
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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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1963-09-27
1963-02-15
Description
An account of the resource
In this recording within the We Believe Series; Howard Thurman reads from Jane Steger's "Leaves from a Secret Journal." He attempts makes sense of the makeup of one's own life through the lens of ecology and biology. Using examples such as trees and DNA, Thurman explores the depths of the "order" of human existence.
In this recording within the We Believe Series; Howard Thurman reads from his text "Meditations of the Heart." His reading reflects upon the impact of trauma, and how it effects the development of the individual. He develops his ideas based off of personal experience and his own psychological findings. In this recording, Thurman suggests that it is in the exposure to the reality of existence that one can begin to mature.
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An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Dustin Mailman
angels
balance
biology
chaos
childhood
coding
completion
confidence
consequence
constitution
creativity
death
development
ecology
epistemology
experience
Jane Steger
journey
leaves from a secret journal
life
maturity
meditations of the heart
moral structure
North Carolina
personality
pigs
Sargasso Sea
seasons
snakes
trauma
tree
urge of life
Virginia
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394-770.mp3
This is tape number ET10 from the library of the Howard Thurman Educational Trust. Two
meditations by Howard Thurman-- this is side one entitled "The Country of the Heart."
Pitts Theology Library
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I'm continuing my reading from Jane Staeger's "Leaves from a Secret Journal." Last night, as I
was thinking intently about the spirit of God within each one of us-- and especially of that spirit
as within myself and in life-- a curious, quite definite feeling came over me as though I had
entered into another country, flowed out into something wider, past, as it were, to another plane.
There was nothing strange or unnatural about it, nor was there the slightest mental confusion.
I was perfectly aware of myself and of the surroundings of my room. But the point of
consciousness appeared to have slipped from my head to my heart-- from thought to emotion,
perhaps. This is the country of the heart, I found myself exclaiming. It was a further glimpse of
an experience I had had several months ago, which was half a dream, and half the thoughts
following immediately upon awakening.
In the dream part, I saw a sort of field or prairie dotted over with what appeared to be the
burrows of animals leading into the ground. But I seemed to know that in reality, these were not
animal runs, but were human personalities through which, if one walked, one would emerge into
another world. I waked them, but still strong upon me was the belief brought back from the
illuminating depths of sleep that every human being is a gateway into another world-- a world
which we enter by walking through ourselves.
That is-- by sinking deeper and deeper into ourselves, pressing open one door of consciousness
after another, I am convinced that there is a wonderful world-- a wider, richer life, a more intense
joy and beauty close at hand-- almost in touch of us-- which our blind eyes and blinder hearts
have not the grace to perceive. As we plod along our anxious road, we never lift up our eyes to it
or open our ears to its melody. And yet, sometimes, our hearts tell us in a vague wistfulness that
we have missed the way-- have somehow wandered from the path, and are very far from home.
When I sit on the porch of an evening in late summer, the air is filled with the rasping of the
Katydids. There they are in the locust trees almost in hand's reach of me and, yet, we are in two
different worlds. I have some small knowledge of their world, but what have they of my world?
They might, indeed, entirely deny my very existence, yet there we are out in the same summer
night side by side. Just as I am close to the Katydids, so I believe that there is another world and
other beings as close to me of whose existence I guess as little as those jolly green fiddlers in the
locust streets guess of mine.
This world, which I believe to be there just beyond the gray veils of our present consciousness, I
have called the country of the heart. Every now and again, we catch glimpses of it and know that
if we might enter into it, we should not find ourselves as here strangers and wanderers, but spirits
returned to our larger selves in the place where we belong unutterably and exquisitely at home.
The higher we get in the scale of development, the further we seem to get away from this. This is
because our own self-consciousness-- our trying, as it were-- to manage things for ourselves
confuses our consciousness of him.
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Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
There is another dimension to the insight with which Jane Staeger is wrestling here, she talks, of
course, about the thin veil that separates our world from another world-- the feeling that the
consciousness of the individual is the opening from a larger world of life and meaning is not a
new idea. It has been expressed in many ways. And the thing that is so amazing and exciting to
my kind of mind is the fact that this sort of notion is a part of the materials of much of what is
going on in the whole scientific development that is upon our world.
We have discovered, for instance, over and over again that there is a way by which it is possible
to communicate with animals, even though we do not speak their language as such-- they do not
speak our language. But it seems as if any form of conscious life is but a manifestation of life.
And the difference in expressions of life is the difference in the context of the manifestation.
Now, when I was a boy living in Florida, I had a rather extraordinary experience that illustrated
this at another level. One day, I went across the way to visit my chum. And, as I started around
the house, his father rapped on the window pane and urged me to come around and come through
the front door. And when I came into the front door and into a room where the father was
standing, he pointed through the open window to the backyard. And there in the backyard, my
chum's little baby sister, about three or four months old, was sitting in the sand playing with a
rattlesnake.
She would pull the snake back as he would try to crawl away. She would turn him over on his
back, and they were having a delightful time. The father sent me out to stand on the other side of
the house and my chum was standing on the left hand side so that we would not let any adult
come around to introduce in to this elemental experience of the ground of vitality, a principle of
disturbance, fear, anxiety. So that when this principle is introduced, each form of life jumps, as it
were, back into the tight context of its manifestation and looks out through that context at the
other. And this creates fear and enmity.
Now this is one of the extraordinary things about life that my life and your life represents a
separate and distinct consciousness. My thoughts, the history of my life-- all of the manifold
context by which my life gets its meaning and its significance and the manifold context by which
your life gets its meaning and significance-- these are but the facades of life.
But, whenever you have an intimate, primary experience with another human being and you get
past the point when you are trying to relate to each other by the symbolism of words or by tokens
of testing, there does come a moment in the relationship when it seems as if you and the other
person relate to each other by going down and coming up on the inside of the other person rather
than trying to relate across this way.
Now, this notion is that all of life is one, and that wherever I am able to penetrate behind the
particular facade-- wherever I am able to go behind the context of differentiation, I come upon
the same ebb and flow of creativity, the ground of being, the ground of vitality in which all of the
individual expressions have their meaning and their significance. And, in the language of
religion, it is this ground that God provides, and those who are expressive of it are expressions of
him.
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Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, oh, Lord,
my Rock and my Redeemer.
This is tape number ET10 from the library of the Howard Thurman Educational Trust this is side
two entitled, "Death-- a Part of Life."
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, oh, Lord,
my Strength and my Redeemer.
I'm beginning today another facet of our discussion of working philosophies of life. And we'll do
the broadcast, which was interrupted last week. The leaves were falling from the great oak at the
meadow's edge. They were falling from all the trees. One branch of the oak reached high above
the others and stretched far out over the meadow.
Two leaves clung to its very tip. It isn't the way it used to be, said one leaf to the other. No, the
other leaf answered, so many of us have fallen off tonight, we are almost the only ones left on
our branch. You never know who's going to go next, said the first leaf. Even when it was warm
and the sun shown, a storm or a cloudburst would come sometimes, and many leaves were torn
off, though they were still young. You never know who's going to go next.
The sun seldom shines now, sighed the second leaf. And, even when it does, it gives no warmth.
We must have warmth again. Can it be true, said the first leaf-- can it really be true that others
come to take our places when we are gone? And, after them, still others, and more and more? It
is really true, whispered the second leaf. We can't even begin to imagine-- it's beyond our
powers. It makes me very sad, said in the first leaf. They were silent a while and then the first
leaf said quietly to herself-- why must we fall?
The second leaf asked, what happens to us when we have fallen? We sink down, down. What is
under us? The first leaf answered, I don't know. Some say one thing, some another, but nobody
knows. The second leaf asks, do we feel anything? Do we know anything about ourselves when
we are down there? The first leaf answered, who knows? Not one of all those down there has
ever come back to tell us about it. They were silent again.
Then the first leaf said tenderly to the other-- don't worry so much about it. You're trembling.
Oh, that's nothing, the second leaf answered. I tremble at the least thing now. I don't feel so sure
of my hold as I used to. Let's not talk anymore about such things, said the first leaf. The other
replied-- no, we'll let it be, but what else shall we talk about? She was silent but went on after a
little while-- which of us will go first?
There's still plenty of time to worry about that, the other leaf assured her. Let's remember how
beautiful it was, how wonderful when the sun came out and shown so warmly that we thought
we'd burst with life. Do you remember? And the morning dew and the mild and splendid nights-now the nights are dreadful, the second leaf complained, and there is no end to them. We
shouldn't complain, said the first leaf gently, we've outlived many, many others.
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Have I changed much? Asked the second leaf, shyly but determinedly. Not in the least, the first
leaf assured her. You only think so because I've gotten to be so yellow and ugly, but it's different
in your case. You're fooling me, the second leaf said. No, really, the first leaf exclaimed eagerly.
Believe me, you're as lovely as the day you were born. Here and there maybe a little yellow spot,
but it's hardly noticeable and only makes you handsomer-- believe me.
Pitts Theology Library
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Thanks, whispered the second leaf, quite touched. I don't believe you, not altogether, but I thank
you because you're so kind. You've always been so kind to me. I'm just beginning to understand
how kind you are. Hush, said the other leaf, and kept silent herself, for she was too troubled to
talk anymore. Then they were both silent-- hours passed.
A moist wind blew cold and hostile through the treetops. Ah, now, said the second leaf. Then her
voice broke off. She was torn from her place and spun down. Winter had come. And then one
other thing to go along with this-- this is called "A Song of Living."
Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die. I have sent up my gladness on wings to
be lost in the blue of the sky. I have run and leaped with the rain. I have taken the wind to my
breast-- my cheek, like a drowsy child, to the face of the earth I have pressed. Because I have
loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die. I have kissed young love on the lips, I've heard her song
to the end, I have struck my hand like a seal in the loyal hand of a friend. I have known the piece
of heaven, the comfort of work done well. I have longed for death in the darkness and risen alive
out of hell. Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die.
I give a share of my soul to the world where my course is run. I know that another shall finish the
tasks I must leave undone. I know that no flower, no flint was in vain on the path I trod. As one
looks on a face through a window through life, I have looked on god. Because I have loved life, I
shall have no sorrow to die.
Death is a common part of the experience of all living things. It represents a radical form of
failure-- the failure of the organism. All life moves in a cycle from birth to its end, and the cycle
is a very logical one-- birth, babyhood, childhood, youth, manhood, maturity, old age. But death
is not a part of this cycle.
Death, in some sense, is outside of the cycle, for it may invade the cycle at any particular point-babyhood, childhood, youth, manhood, old age-- death is outside the cycle. Soon or late, than,
every human being must come to grips with the fact of death as a part of his experience of life.
Now, this does not mean that the contemplation of death should bring morbidity. It does not
mean that it is something of necessity that needs to be dreaded. But it is something which has to
be faced.
Therefore, all religions of any kind, however significant they may be, know that they must at
some point, if they are to meet the deepest needs of the human spirit, they must give to the
human spirit some insight, some feeling tone, some preparation for dealing with this fundamental
and basic aspect of life. There are two or three very simple suggestions that I would make about
the meaning of death.
4
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Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
In the first place, death is something that belongs in the human experience-- and all experience,
whatever the nature of the experience may be, each person is aware that he deals with his
experiences at two levels-- as a participant, as a person who's doing what he is doing, and also as
a person who is observing himself as he does what he is doing. So that this two-fold dimension is
the way in which all human beings relate to the experiences of their lives-- as an observer of
themselves participating in the things that they are doing.
Now, it seems to me all aspects of life, every phase of life in this sense is episodic. It is
something that the individual is experiencing, but no phase of life is capable of containing all
that the individual is. There is a margin left in which the individual as the observer is never
completely involved in the thing that he is doing. Now, death is one of the events in life, and it
belongs in the category of events and the scale of events. And, therefore, even with reference to
death, the individual is a participant in his own death, but there is a sense in which he stands
outside of it.
For the human spirit has the ability to detach itself from the body. Now, this means, then, that
death is something that takes place in life. There is a sense, you see, in which life and death are
twins, are aspects of something larger that we call life. But, unfortunately, we must use the same
word. So that there is a sense in which life and death are one. There is a sense in which life
contains both life and death.
Therefore, death is a thing which happens not to life, but which happens in life. It is an
experience in life, but there is a sense in which a man knows that something within him is never
quite penetrated, never quite touched, never quite involved in the experience which he is going
through. Therefore, all religions insist, then, that which is most fundamentally representative of
the human spirit is that which transcends both time and space, transcends all events. And it is this
dimension that is eternal, and it is this fulfillment through which human life goes that causes
them to feel that they are experiencing eternal life.
Because I have loved life in this sense, then, I shall have no sorrow to die.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, oh, Lord,
my Rock and Divine Redeemer.
5
�
Dublin Core
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We Believe (Television Series, 1958-1965)
Description
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<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" />
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Descriptions by Dustin Mailman
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<iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-770.html" ></iframe>
Original Title
Title as transcribed from tape cassette
The Country of the Heart; Death - A Part of Life (ET-10; GC 11-19-71), 1971 Nov 19
Time Period
The decade in which the recording was produced.
1960s
Location
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WHDH-TV, Boston, Massachusetts
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394-770
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Thurman, Howard
Title
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The Country of the Heart (1963-09-20); Death - A Part of Life (1961-05-12)
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<a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a>
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audio
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<a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a>
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1963-09-20
1961-05-12
Description
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In this recording within the We Believe Series; Howard Thurman reads from Jane Steger's "Leaves from a Secret Journal." He attempts makes sense of the makeup of one's own life through the lens of ecology and biology. Using examples such as trees and DNA, Thurman explores the depths of the "order" of human existence.
n this recording within the We Believe series; Howard Thurman draws upon a parable of two leaves at the end of the Fall season. The two leaves are in conversation with one another, pondering questions of why they must die and who will take their place when they die. After reading this parable, Thurman reflects upon the ways in which all of creation's lived experience participates in death; rendering death as an event that happens in one's life, not something that happens to oneself.
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Dustin Mailman
A Song of Living
angels
biology
chaos
coding
common experience
completion
confidence
constitution
creativity
ecology
epistemology
experience
Jane Steger
journey
leaves
leaves from a secret journal
life
North Carolina
Oak Tree
parable
peace
personality
pigs
Sargasso Sea
seasons
snakes
transcendence
tree
urge of life
Virginia
working paper
-
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80af8a1d910698d5c897d21cea2e00ba
PDF Text
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Pitts Theology Library
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Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
394-094_B.mp3
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
The basics then to any understanding or appreciation of what it is that the mystic is seeking to
affirm, I think, is the knowledge that all of life is one, but all of life is not identical. And what
one does with one's self-consciousness is to seek to reestablish a sense of continuity that has
been lost or eclipsed in the experience of self-consciousness. And the mystic then finds that his
approach to meaning, to religious meaning, are two meanings. It's through the gateway that
connects one form of life with every other form of life.
When we undertake to classify mysticism in the conventional ways-- nature mystics, other kinds
of mystics-- what we are really saying initially is that behind the flower, or the dog, or the cat, or
the man, is always, at all times, the one thing. And it may be, you see, that if he can-- "he,"
meaning the mystic-- can become aware of this ground in himself, then this becomes the clue to
making the same discovery in other manifestations of life.
And he says that using an analogy of the river. That all the water in all the land comes out of the
sea, and all the water in all the land goes back to the sea. And that out of which the river comes is
that into which the river goes. Whether the stream is a rivulet, or a lake, or a sea, or heavy
clouds, snow, dew, moisture in any of its manifestations, all of it comes out of the sea and all of
it is on its way back to the sea. Every stream hears and feels the pull of the sea.
Now, this is essentially the ground of the mystic's position. That we shall see as we work along
together that the categories by which he defines his position may, in themselves, seem to be
absolute.
Many years ago when I was in India, I went to visit, to spend two or three days at [INAUDIBLE]
University. And I had wanted to go there because I wanted to spend some time with a Dr. [?
Singh, ?] who was the head of the Department of Oriental Studies at Santiniketan.
And he was the greatest living authority in Hindu in India on the medieval period and Hindu
mysticism period of the poet Kabir who wrote, "I laugh when you say that a fish in the water is
thirsty. Do you see the real or the true? Go where you will from [INAUDIBLE] to
[INAUDIBLE]. If you have not found your soul, the world is unreal to you." It was [? Singh's ?]
great translation of some of the poetry of Kabir that [INAUDIBLE] followed.
But at any rate, the time came and I went to see him. And we sat on the floor, which was the
custom. And we began talking for three hours. We visited.
And when 12 o'clock came, or 12:15, he said, we'd better stop now because the young people are
coming to take you to lunch, and then we will get together after lunch. And as I was getting up
off the floor, sort of massaging my charlie horses, he said, I see that you are smiling. I said, yes,
and you're smiling also. And he said, I think we're smiling about the same thing, but suppose you
tell me first?
So I said, I'm smiling because we've spent three hours of our lives that we will never get again
sparring for position. You from behind your Hindu embattlement will step aside and draw a bead
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on my Christian citadel, and then dodge back behind your embattlement, and I'm doing the same
thing. So he said, yes, that's it. When we come back this afternoon, let's be wiser than that.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
So when we came back and we began talking, a very curious thing happened. Something
happened to me then that had not consciously happened to me before. In one creative sweep of
my mind, I took his Hindu fact into account. And with one creative sweep of his mind, he took
my Christian fact into account. Now, having rid ourselves in that sense of the binding intensity of
our context, we were free then to relate to each other out of the same ground.
Now, it is for this reason I jump way ahead, two to three weeks from now [INAUDIBLE], that a
mystic is always a threat to the formal structure that the religious institution takes. How to say
this? You can understand how he would want, he would feel the necessity for bypassing any go
between that would stand at the gate of entrance into his holy of holiness.
He is also puzzled and bedeviled by the necessity for having to reduce his experience to units of
comprehension for the mind. It is also for this reason that he finds it most difficult to deal with
any demand for proof. And it is his insistence that all categories of whatever comes-- and these
categories include dogma, theologies, all categories of any kind, in essence, are creations of the
mind. They are what the mind does when it draws a bead on the dynamic character of religious
experience and is forced to extract from its dynamism that which is conceptual.
And this at once creates what is perhaps the most embarrassing dilemma for the mystic. How
may he establish an empirical validation for his religious experience? Another way of putting it
is, how may he protect himself from self-deception? How can he deal with the fact that in
something as [INAUDIBLE] as is his sense of participating in an ultimate destiny, how can he
deal with that in a manner that will guarantee that he's not mistaken?
It may be, you see, that we are not old enough on the planet yet to know how to protect ourselves
from self-deception. And the mind does all kinds of things in an effort to do this. We set up all
kinds of categories, all kinds of little labs for doing dry runs on our insights. But it may be, it just
may be, that there is no guarantee of getting self-deception.
And it may be further that it is the nature of mind, M-I-N-D, to insist that there be established
categories for protecting yourself from being deceived. How may I be sure in any manner that is
external to myself? Or am I driven to accept the integrity of the experience itself as its own
validation? Of course, what is characteristic of the mystical's experience is also characteristic of
religious experience.
We wanted to be sure. But in the nature of the case, how may a person be sure when he's dealing
with that which to him is ultimate? There are no categories of the mind by which this can be
embraced for validation. Well, that's enough.
I'd like to begin by taking a quick look in retrospect concerning the basic assumptions about
which we talked last time. I am approaching it from a slightly different angle in order that more
likely be thrown on it, hopefully.
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Man is a space binder and a time binder. As a space binder, he is concerned with phenomena that
take place within the sweep of his senses. He's concerned with sense data. He's concerned with
trying to make sense out of the external world of fact by which he's surrounded.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
And this predisposition to make fact out of the stuff, the conglomerates of his experience and his
world, is characteristic of mind itself. It is the way the mind deals with the data of experience.
Everything that he sees, every contact that he has, external to himself, he is concerned about
giving some rationale to it so that when he observes it, or when he reacts to it, he does not seem
to himself to be stupid. It is the nature of mind.
And I think-- of course, I'm not sure. I don't think anyone knows, really. But I think that this
characteristic of mind to reduce everything to intellection, to units of understanding and
comprehension, is rooted in the reference that I made yesterday to the fact that for a long time,
how long we do not know, the mind, as a separate experience of the individual, did not exist.
This characteristic for order, for rational understanding, I think, is a holdover from the time when
the mind, without any distinction, was a part of the organism. And since-[DOOR OPENS AND CLOSES]
This is the right place.
[LAUGHTER]
No, he'll find it. Now, where was I? Oh, yes.
Since the body, through millions of years, committed harmony, integration, order, to memory, as
it were, so that we become aware of any part of our body only when that part of our body is out
of community. For instance, as long as my little fingers, I'm not aware of it. I become aware of it
only when the harmony is broken. I may be an idiot, borderline or actual. I eat and digest my
food without any reference to mind, to conscious deliberation as such, because there is an
automatic process that seems to take place.
Now, it seems reasonable to me that if through millions of years when the mind was body-bound,
it, too, was a part of this organic harmony, this organic integration, this organic synthesis. Now,
when self-consciousness came and the mind began to act as if it were a separate entity-- "it"
meaning the mind-- carried into this new expression, this new form of activity, the inherent
structural conditioning that makes it always look for some kind of order.
So the little child asks, why? Why? Why? And then when you tell him or her why, that is simply
the prelude to the next "why." Always, the mind is trying to make sense, order, harmony out of
the conglomerates of its experience.
Now it would seem then, to me, that there is a-- I can't think of the word I want-- that there is a
half-used harmony. That isn't what I mean, exactly. There is a relationship that's vague which
doesn't say anything. A relationship between the external world of things and objects, and the
mind that observes these things. The mind, therefore, is always trying to find in the external data,
the rational principles so that it can understand it.
3
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This is the basic philosophy for all therapy. When you go to the shrink, for instance, and you
start to tell him your story, he insists that you take him by the hand and lead him backwards
through your story. Because he is trying to find where in your past did the divisive principle
occur that results now, 25 years after, of a certain kind of behavior that you can't integrate.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
Now this is the nature of the mind. And this is the characteristic behavior of man, the space
binder. He is a denizen of the world. He is a part and parcel of all of the objects in the world that
was external to himself. But he always feels that he can penetrate the mystery that these
represent to his mind and understanding.
Now this presupposes a-- in my thought, at any rate-- single continuum out of which all the
objects arise, and of which all the objects emerge, and this is a part of what we were talking
about yesterday. But you see, the things-- to jump-- the things that are true, for instance, in any
religion are to be found in that religion because the things are true. They're not true because
they're in the religion.
Now, let me say it again. The things that are true in any religion are to be found in that religion
because the things are true. They're not true because they're found in the religion.
It is not the context-- back again to yesterday. It is not the context that determines the integrity of
the observation. It is not the context that ultimately gives meaning to the significance of the
phenomenon. Now, if this is true, then wherever you find these things, they're true without
regard to the context. So anywhere, anytime, doing anything, a man may come upon the burning
bush and hear a voice say, take off your shoes because the place where you are now standing is a
holy place.
Now man, the space binder, is a part and parcel organically and time-space wise of the world in
which he's living and functioning. And he looks for order. He looks for harmony. But he tries to
penetrate the object to see if, in the mystery of the object, he can behold the clue to its meaning.
And this is very important and very necessary.
But man is more than this. Man is a time binder. That there is a dimension in man and the human
spirit that cannot be bound-- or contained is a better word, perhaps-- by any state, condition, any
property, properties, that the organism may have. And it is this time binding quality of mine, and
from my point of view of the spirit, that enables the mind to project itself in all sorts of ways that
transcend the things that separate it from the object that it is beholding [INAUDIBLE].
Since we've been sitting here, you have gone into all yesterday, into 5 o'clock. You go back and
forth. Space means nothing. You move at will.
There's a quality about personality that transcends all external boundaries. That equality that
recognizes that in all experience, the man himself is not merely a participant, an actor, but he is
also an observer of himself as an actor. There is a margin of you that is never quite contained in
anything that you may be about, or anything that you may be doing at a given time.
For instance, suppose I ask you, name one deed which you can perform or you performed which
represents you-- completely, totally, utterly. One deed that contains all that you mean by "you."
Whatever your name, before the sound leaves your lips, you will remember that, oh, that doesn't
4
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include so and so and so. This aspect of me is not included there, so you start over again. You are
never quite able to be completely absorbed in the action, or the act.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
Now, before we are through with our journey, you will see that there are some mystics who in
the mystic's experience of union seem to indicate that this has happened. As a time binder, you
are an observer and a participant in your acts. And if we think of all life as being made up of that
which is eventful, a series of events, and in as much as no single event is quite able to contain all
that you are, there is a sense that in which you stand outside of the event. And this has farreaching significance in man's interpretation of death, just to-- what's the word-- to digress a
minute.
If death is an event in a series of events to which the human spirit is exposed, or in which human
life is involved, and if it be true that always a margin of me stands outside of the event,
observing the events, then it seems reasonable to me that death and the sequence of the eventful
would not be an exception to the rule. And I think for this reason a man may be aware of his
dying to the last solitary fraction of a time-space interval as if it was something taking place that
he is observing, but not consumed totally, utterly and completely by it.
Now, we may regard this aspect of man's personality as time binder as a part of the mystery of
human life. I don't know, but it may be. The only thing of which I am confident is that there is an
aspect of personality that cannot ever be contained in the context in which that personality is
living and functioning.
And this is why, for instance, to digress again, all tyrannies are bound to fail, because there is a
margin of the self that cannot ever be contained. In the event, however terrifying and terrible the
event may be, and a part of the whole psychology that energizes the effort of men to control
other men is wrapped up right there. If we can find a way to reduce the personality and to the
grapple of a time-space interval and hold, then the life's going to be destroyed. But as long as
there is this margin, it threatens anything it undertakes to control it and dominate it.
What is a [INAUDIBLE]? Stone walls do not a prison make, or-- what is it-- iron bars, the cage-what's the rest of it? You're all students. You know.
[LAUGHTER]
If-- oh, come on, somebody. You don't know that? I don't remember it, but-[LAUGHTER]
Stone walls do not a prison make, or iron bars, a cage. If I have-- well, I'll make it up. If I have
freedom in my mind and in my soul, I'm free. The angels alone who dwell above enjoy such
liberties. That's the notion, that there is a dimension of me that can never be contained in any
time-space interval to which my life is exposed, because I am a time binder.
Now, when we deal with the major assumption about life that seems to me to be fundamental to
the mystic's quest, we come upon this notion expressed in other ways and at other levels. You
may have read in Life magazine before the funeral that--
5
�
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<iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-094_B.html" ></iframe>
Location
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University of Redlands, Redlands, California
Internal Notes
Notes for project team
Tagore's university; Dr. Singh; Benares to Mathura; Singh's great translation; Tagore followed; whatever it is; as critical as - GL 5/20/19
Time Period
The decade in which the recording was produced.
1970s
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394-094_B
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Thurman, Howard
Title
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On Mysticism, Part 2 (University of Redlands Course), 1973
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>
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img style="border-width:0;" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" alt="80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>. 2019.
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GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-13042600.321303 4037296.9410534))
Date
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1973-02
Description
An account of the resource
This recording is the second lecture in our collection of ten that Howard Thurman gave at the University of Redlands in 1973 on the topic of mysticism. Thurman indicates that this lecture functions as a means to point the listener towards practical approaches to mysticism through lenses of psychology, philosophy, and religious experience. In this recording, Thurman notes that innate within the human identity are the categorizations of "Space Binder" and "Time Binder." Space Binder speaks to meaning making in reference to the external world. Time Binder speaks to the transcendent reality of existence that both observes and reacts. Each of these designations function as tools to make sense of one's participation in reality, while also transcending the limits of human conception.
Contributor
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Description by Dustin Mailman
death
deception
dualism
ecology
embodiment
epistemology
fact
freedom
harmony
India
integration
intellect
interconnectivity
Kabir
mind body
mystery
mystical union
mysticism
Nature of Mind
oneness
ontology
order
panentheism
personality
pragmatism
relationality
river
space binder
synthesis
Tagores University
temporality
time binder
transcendent reality
universal truth