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394-047_B.mp3
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I'd finish my education and I would get-- I'd become self-supporting. I'd get a job. And then I
would be able to write a famous letter to my mother. And tell her now as of this day, it is
unnecessary for you to work anymore. You can come home and take your ease and have your
own garden and do all the things for the sick, and all the things you want to do.
So when I was-- I got my first position, I wrote her the letter. She went home. At the end of the
year, I came down to Florida just to visit and to participate in normal felicitations for being such
a wonderful son. I said this first afternoon, Mama, how does it feel just to get up in the morning
when you're ready to get up and not have to work over a hot stove eight, nine hours a day and
then not quite be able to do the simplest things for your children that you want to do?
And then I told her something that I'd never told her before. That I remember a little boy seeing I
come in to our little room with her lantern. In those days, everybody rode bicycles, and she had a
lantern because she came home from her work at night. And she'd come in our room and take the
lamp and hold it over us and look at us.
And I remember one night I pretended to be asleep. I wasn't asleep for some reason. And I
watched her. And I watched the tears come and drop as she looked at us, because the only time
that she could see us was when we were asleep. Because she went to work before we were up
and came home after we were in bed.
Her answer was, well, it's pretty good. It's pretty good. But the most important thing that has
happened is this. So many things in my life are now for the first time falling into place. All of my
life until last year I had to work so that when I slept I slept in a hurry to get enough energy to
take me through the next long day.
But now things are sorting themselves out, because all of me is not caught in this surviving
process. And one of the things that I discovered is that all these years I've told you the wrong
birthday. That you were not born so and so and so and so. But you were born so and so and so
and so. Because this was happening and this was happening. But all these years there's been none
of me available to sort these things out.
Now, I think in some such situation as that, the mind was able to lift itself up from being body
bound. But it had inherent in its-- if I may think of the mind as having structure for a moment-there's inherent in the mind order, harmony so that the mind always raises a question. This has to
make sense. It's always trying to harmonize, to integrate, to structure, to give ordered meaning so
that man's experience as a human animal is an experience of harmony and order even in terms of
the way he fits into the ecology of the world.
Sometimes I think-- and this is an aside-- sometimes I think that one of the reasons why we have
such radical and increasingly disastrous mental aberrations in our society is not merely because
of increase in pressure and all the things that go with modern life, these elements. But I think it is
because man has ruptured the harmony which he as a human creature has with his total
environment. I just don't think that you can pollute the streams and poison the atmosphere and
denude the hills without the psyche feeling itself ravaged, ravaged.
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And it has no way to express its agony except in aberrations in the mind. Because all life is one,
one. Now, just a little more, and I'll put it and I'll stop.
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First you see the racial memory-- now bear in mind, I don't want to seem to be pedantic all
together, but just to keep you up to date with the process-- community means for any expression
of life the actualizing of its potential. It is the way life realizes itself in an expression of life, This
harmony, this internal order is implicit in the racial memory as manifests in the creation myths
around the world.
Second, in man's experience as a creature among other creatures on the planet-- first, within his
own organism and in turn for the way in which that organism corresponds externally with his
environment and his flow, his flow, his flow. Now, the third.
Community is implicit in all the dreams of the prophets and the seers as manifested in utopias.
It's interesting, isn't it, that every utopia projects into a future that is not yet the same kind of
harmony that is present in the racial memory.
And the unique thing about any utopia-- Moore's, Plato's, the biblical ones, any of that you name
and there are hundreds of them-- the unique thing about them is within the utopian community
they are every word is important it's critical with the utopian community, within that, there is
harmony.
Now, outside of it, of course, is outside of it. But within the utopia itself there is harmony, there
is a structure of moral and often physical dependability. And that's interesting. In the book the
prophet talks of a time when the lion and the lamb will lie down together. And a little child may
put his hand over the hole of an asp and the asp will relax his self-regarding impulse and not
sting the child. And when this happens what will happen to man?
Man will beat his swords into plowshares, his spears into pruning hooks. Why? Because the
knowledge, says the prophet, the knowledge of the Lord will cover the Earth as the waters cover
the sea. That the correspondence in the deliberate self-consious activity of the human spirit will
be one with the wholeness and the order and the balance that is inherent in the natural world.
Now, there are a lot of problems in this. The main thesis that I'm developing as far as I've gone in
my thinking about it is as I've outlined. Now, one of the functions then a person who worked for
a community in society is to make this kind of discovery. Namely, that experiences of unity
between peoples are more compelling than all the concepts, ideologies, creeds, fears, anxieties,
hatred that divide. Let me say it again.
Experiences of unity among peoples are more compelling than all these things that divide. Now,
if I can multiply these experiences of unity between peoples over a time interval of sufficient
duration, I can undermine any barrier that separates one man from another. This is the heart of it.
And I don't need the voice of Yahweh thundering from a desert [INAUDIBLE], as wonderful as
it. Is if I can hear Him say the right things, I don't need any-- to read any law in any book.
Community is built into the bias of mind. Now, finally-- and I hope I mean it-- finally,
pragmatically this means that the problem in human relations as far as community's concerned is
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constantly to widen the magnetic field of my relations, so that they would include more and more
and more people. And let me illustrate [INAUDIBLE]
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During war-- during any time a nation is at war-- one of the first things that the nation has to do
if it is going to wage war effectively-- and this is one of the reasons why we have so much
trouble waging the war in Vietnam-- because the first thing that has to be done, the enemy has to
be so defined that he is no longer a member of the human race.
He becomes the Hun. He becomes the Jap. Now one I redefine him so that he is no longer a
member of community, then it's open season. I can do anything I want to do without
undermining my own sense of community.
It's the sort of thing that happens when you have a friend who can't tell you what he thinks of you
until he gets mad. Now, once he gets mad then you are bound. And then he can say all the things
he wants to say to you and keep your self-respect. But once you get within is magnetic field
you've become a part of his experience of community, so that people that I want to hate I can't do
it until I read them out.
It confined it to human life. She said, if my concept of reverence for life is not widened and
widened and widened, if I want to destroy you, all I need to do-- if I want to destroy you with a
clear conscious is all I need to do is to have you outside of the circle.
If I kill a rattlesnake because the rattlesnake threatens my life or the rattlesnake is a menace, all I
need to do is to redefine a human being as a menace and kill him. It's as simple as that-- without
any guilt, without any moral responsibility, once he is out of bounds.
So that the genius of community then is to widen the magnetic field so that what I experience as
harmony and order in terms of the structure of my relationships with those people who are within
the circle cannot apply to people as they go of until I widen the circle. And if I don't widen the
circle I will bare nonexistence. I will bare nonexistence.
I saw a man pursuing the horizon round and round they sped. I accosted the man. It is futile, said
I. You can't. You lie, he cried and ran on for better or for worse. All life is one and I can never be
what is my potential to be as long as you are not what your potential is to be so that I'm tied to
you.
And even when I kill you it's my way of affirming that you and I cannot be separated. Cannot be
separated, cannot be separated. Well, thank you. You're very kind.
[APPLAUSE]
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Man and Social Change Series (1969, California State College, Long Beach, CA)
Description
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In the three lectures comprising this series, Thurman discusses the effects of personal experience on social change. He illuminates points regarding individual freedom, the expression of togetherness in community, and nonviolence as the individual’s attempt to broaden one’s circle of concern.
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1969
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Descriptions by Dr. Tim Rainey
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<iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-047_B.html" ></iframe>
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California State College, Long Beach, California
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1960s
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Man and Social Change (II): Man and the Experience of Community [Side B], 1969 Mar 20
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394-047_B
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Thurman, Howard
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1969-03-20
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<a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a>
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Community is evinced when any form of life identifies with another. For Thurman, humans experience wholeness when individual existence recognizes itself within the fullness of all existence. Community is an expression of life because its manifestation follows the “harmony,” “order,” and “inner togetherness” consistent with a person’s inner order. In this way, Thurman notes, community makes sense to the mind. Recognizing this profound continuity, persons in community must widen the “magnetic field” of their relationships and pursue experiences of harmony that compel the spirit more than ideologies, creeds, or, fears that divide.
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Man and Social Change, Part 2: Man and the Experience of Community (continued), 1969 March 20
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Description by Dr. Tim Rainey
community
disharmony
harmony
innocence
life
organism
racial memory of the human
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394-047_A.mp3
My reading-- two things as a background for our thinking.
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"I like to feel strange life beating up against my own life. I like to realize forms of life utterly
unlike my own. When my own life feels small, and I am oppressed with it, I like to crush
together and see it in a picture, in an instant, a multitude of disconnected, unlike phases of human
life-- a medieval monk with his string of beads pacing the quiet orchard and looking up from the
grass at his feet to the heavy fruit trees, little Malay boys playing naked on a shining sea beach, a
Hindu philosopher alone under his banyan tree, thinking, thinking, thinking, so that in the
thought of God, he may lose himself-- a troop of Bacchanalians dressed in white, with crowns of
vine leaves, dancing along the Roman streets, a martyr on the night of his death looking through
the narrow window to the sky and feeling that already he has the wings that shall bear him up, an
epicurean discoursing at a Roman bath to a knot of his disciples on the nature of happiness, a
Kaffir witch doctor seeking for herbs by moonlight, while from the huts on the hillside comes the
sound of children playing and dogs barking and the voices of women and children, a mother
giving bread and milk to her children in little wooden basins and singing the evening's song.
I like to see it all. I feel it run through me, that life belongs to me. It makes my little life larger. It
breaks down the narrow walls that shut me in."
And now one other, and then we will be ready to work. "Now we are ready to look at something
pretty special. It's a duck riding the ocean 100 feet beyond the turf. No, it isn't a gull. A gull
always has a raucous touch about him.
This is some sort of duck. And he cuddles in the swells. He isn't cold, and he is thinking things
over. There's a big heaving in the Atlantic, and he is a part of it. He looks a bit like a mandarin or
the Lord Buddha meditating under the Bo tree.
But he has hardly enough above the eyes to be a philosopher. He has poise, however, which is
what philosophers must have. He can rest while the Atlantic heaves, because he rests in the
Atlantic. Probably he doesn't know how large the ocean is. Neither do you.
But he realizes the ocean. And what does he do, I ask you? He sits down in it. He reposes in the
immediate as if it were infinity, which it is."
That's religion. And the duck has it. "He has made himself part of the boundless by easing
himself into the boundless just where all the boundless touches him."
The people of the Middle Ages were more like this duck than we are. They took life as it
presented itself and ran it up in spires of Gothic. They crossed few oceans, but they floated on
the sea of time.
And the cat is more like this duck than we are. We can radio to the moon and get back a pic for
an answer. But a cat can make a hearth rug a haven in the infinite or launch four kittens into life
in a cracker-box by the furnace, purring with pride, because he has tuned in on cosmic waves.
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Man and the meaning of community-- for some time, I have been seeking to find a way of
thinking about the experience of harmony and order and community in human life. And the thing
that has puzzled me has been the fact that persons who concern themselves about community,
who work for community, again and again and again seem to be driven establish some
transcendent point of reference to which they relate in order to give to them courage and a sense
not only of continuity but heart. And where there is lacking this transcendent point of reference,
then it is very difficult for the individual human spirit who is concerned about community to
keep from growing weary, getting tired, and often, finally giving it up as something that is not
essential to man's life on the planet. Now, I don't believe this, you see, so that I have driven my
mind to see if they cannot be within the context of man's living experience, the ground and the
rational, for his concern about and his experience of community.
This is the essence of my search, and I want to talk about how my mind works with reference to
trying to find a clue to this issue, which for me, is a very, very important and very crucial issue.
Because as long as I live my life, I discover over and over again that I'm surrounded by so much
that casts down so much that makes for despair of heart and often so little that uplifts and
inspires. And yet, it would seem to me that the thing that uplifts and inspires should be inherent
in man's experience of life itself. So it does not have to be appeal to a dogma beyond us, as
wonderful as any dogma that can lift the spirit may be. But there ought be, in man's experience
of living his life and reflecting upon the journey of man on the planet, that will give him heart.
And it is not, therefore, contingent upon the vicissitude of his fortune or by the experiences that
may contradict his search.
Now, I begin with one or two propositions, naturally. And the first is that, in our thought about
life, one of the simplest, and for me, the most profound observation, is that life itself is alive.
That's the first, that this is a living, pulsing, breathing dimension of experience. Well, you know
that you are alive, and you know that your cat and your dog or your pet snake that these are alive.
And the person next to you may be alive.
And the mind, you see, is so overwhelmed by all of these-- how do I say this-- the mass attack of
all of these particular expressions of vitality by which we are surrounded that the simplest thing
about life is overlooked-- that it is life itself that is alive, that this is, in essence, a dynamic
universe. And wherever there is life, there is some kind of structure of dependability, some inner
logic that gives meaning and structure and viability and purpose. Not in a metaphysical sense,
but purpose in the sense that is expressed when you notice that a house plant that you have finds
a way to turn towards the sun without any guidance from you.
I remember going out in front of our home once and seeing some men digging away at the place
where the sewer, the sewer pipes. And of course, they're always doing this in cities. And then the
two-- I think there's something demonic about it. But there is. And there's never any end to it.
So I went out to see what was going on. And they had-- there was a ditch, and I noticed that two
sections of sewer pipe had been exposed. And around these sections of pipe, there was a network
of roots just encased so that you could not see the pipe. And then where the joints were I noticed
that it seemed that the roots turned inward in a unique way. Being curious, I waited until they
began to move these around, and I discovered that, sure enough, some little eager rootlets had
found a way to penetrate the joints and get inside the sewage pipe.
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And when the man took his sledge business and cracked the thing open, the inside of that section
of the sewer was one massive root. And they came from a tree 300 yards away on the back of the
lot. The roots had smelled this water and had gone under the basement of the house and found it.
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Now, purpose in that sense is what I'm talking about. This seems to be characteristic of the way
life behaves. So life is alive. That's the first proposition. And wherever you see it, it's on the hunt
for that which will nourish it, sustain it, and hold it.
Now, with that general statement about life, I would like to begin the heart of my idea. And it is
here a working definition, because I think this is important. Community is an expression of life
when the potential of that life fulfills itself.
Now, let me say it again. It's almost 8 o'clock at night, and you've had dinner. And we've been
moving quietly into zero hour, and you have had a long day. And you would be forgiven if you
find that you're just having a difficult time to sort of wander along with me. But you have my
permission to take a nap.
[LAUGHTER]
But do it quietly.
[LAUGHTER]
This is all that I ask. And when you wake up, we will be sort of wandering along, working at this
idea. So don't be embarrassed, because I'm not going anywhere till I'm through. I'll be right here
working.
Now, community, then, in it's simplest and most elemental form, is what happens when any form
of life actualizes its potential, when within that tight cycle that that expression of life represents
it fulfills itself. Or that's the building block. Now, the more complex the form of life may be, the
more involved is the process by which that form of life actualizes its potential.
And with the complex forms of life, such as man, even the notion of potential is itself dynamic
so that I'm never sure at any given moment in time when I have actualized my potential, because
I am always moving, growing, getting insight so that it's almost like a mirage. But when I get
there, I say yes. If I do that, then I have, as a living thing, experienced inner harmony. But when I
get there, I find that this experience simply opens up areas that still must be actualized before I
can say that I have it.
Now, with this notion, then, of community, this working definition, it would seem to follow that
harmony, that inner togetherness, inner order, that seems to be built into the process of individual
expressions of life, is the way life itself functions, the way it is structured. Now, to jump to my
conclusion, when I am working for harmony, when I'm working for community, I am not going
against the grain of existence. But I am supported by this. Whether I bow my knee before an altar
or recognize any object of transcendent devotion, I am supported in the quest for community by
my experience as a living creature in a living universe.
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Now, if this is the case, and in addition, I happen to be religious, then all the gross is net. But the
religious dimension in this sense is not necessitous to the experience. This is what I am saying.
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Now, we discover, then, that this notion of community is very present in the memory of the race,
as manifested, for instance, in the creation stories and the creation myths. It doesn't matter what
culture, what tradition, where in time you come upon them. Essentially, when man raised the
question, how did we get here, how did this human show get on the road, the answer, in the race,
has always the same basic elements in it. Let us begin then to illustrate it, the first proposition,
with our own creation accounts as found in the Bible.
At that far off time, says the racial memory, that was a period when harmony existed between all
living things, between man and the animals. All manifestations of life were harmonious. This is
what Genesis is, and this is what the Babylonian myths, the American Indian myths, any of them,
they all say the same thing.
Now, what happened? It was community, community in the sense of inner harmony, but
community in which the predominant element was innocence, innocence. And as soon as
knowledge was introduced, and man lost his innocence, he was involved in guilt.
So that one of the critical problems of education is, how can young people move from innocence
to knowledge without guilt? And can guilt be stripped, drained, of all of its dismal moral
dimensions so that it becomes, in the quest for knowledge, an incentive? This is one of the
critical problems of education.
Now, when knowledge came, innocence was lost. And the order, the harmony between Adam in
our account and all the other animals and creatures, this harmony was broken. But in the racial
memory, wherever we touch it, it is an echo of a time when community was pervasive.
When I was a boy, I ran across the meadow to visit one of my chums-- well, as a matter of fact,
my only chum, but for very good reasons. And when I started around the house-- because,
always, I met him in the back yard, where we could shoot marbles. And as I came around the
house, I heard [KNOCKING] a rap on the window pane. And I looked up, and his father was
standing at the window. And he urged me to come around and come in the house through the
front door. I did. And when I walked into the room where he was, he pointed out into the back
yard.
And here in the sand was my chum's baby sister, all three months, four months, five months,
crawling stage, sitting in the sand playing with this rattlesnake. Now, they were having a very
happy time. The snake would try to crawl away. She'd pull him back by his tail. She turned him
over on his back, and he would get back, and then he'd tried to get away.
And they were just delighting themselves in each other. And my friend was out on the side where
the path was standing guard, and his father sent me out to stand on the other side. For what
purpose? So that no one would come around and do what? Introduce into this harmony fear,
divisiveness, so that the harmony would be broken. And as soon as the harmony was broken,
then these two living things that were harmonious became enemies, enemies, enemies.
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But implicit in the racial memory is the notion of order, of structured community, but community
of innocence. And the ethical problem that community creates in the light of that kind of racial
memory is, can you move from a community of innocence to a community of responsibility and
survive? And survive, so bearing in mind the working definition-- community is the experience
of any form of life when it realizes itself. And it may be stated in another way that when life
realizes itself in any expression of life, that expression of life experiences wholeness. And
wholeness is community.
All right. So what I despair in the midst of the disharmonies of contemporary life, I feel that life
is on the side of harmony, and life is against disharmony. Not as a religious judgment, but as a
judgment the content of which is the derivative from the structure of your life itself. This is what
I'm saying.
Now, you take it another step. I think the experience of community is not only present in the
racial memory, but the experience of community is inherent in man's experience as a creature on
this planet, as a creature. For many years, the thing that has comforted me most in trying to work
for and to live experientially into the meaning of community has been the contemplation of my
own organism, my own organism. This is curious, isn't it?
It seems as if my body committed harmony to memory. My organism committed, so that I
become aware of some part of my organism when it is out of harmony. And the whole
philosophy of therapy is the restoration to the organism of an original harmony, an original
harmony.
Now, only when my little finger can't little finger do I become aware that my little finger is out
of harmony, out of community? And I do everything I can to restore it so that it becomes a part
of this.
Now, man's body then is a manifestation of a built in, organistic harmony with a kind of implicit- as we've discovered in later times-- a kind of implicit command in the coding in the cell. Out of
some 10 million cells in the body of a becoming baby, some cells become fingernails. Some
become eyebrows. Each cell working on the basis of that which is inherent in the coding that's in
the cell itself, and one of the problems of modern medicine is right here.
We have built up defenses and therapies and cures, et cetera. Now, knowledge concerning these
things sufficient so as to manage most of the disorders, you see, or disorders that we call
sicknesses, from things that invade the body from the outside. If doctors really wanted to, I'm
sure they could cure the common cold but it isn't worth curing. But they could. They know now
enough so they can deal with those things that invade so that for the next 50 years, the whole
problem of medicine and its relation to human sickness will be how to deal with those disorders,
those unregulations within the community of the human organism.
For instance, a friend of mine who's a surgeon tells me that if you have just a fraction of a liver
left that the body can build another liver. And when it gets to the right size, there's a cut off, and
it stops making liver cells. And because we don't know what the mechanism of the cut off is, we
can't stop the body from making cancer cells. But if we knew what the human mechanism was of
the cut off-- this is what I'm talking about.
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So that there is, as a creature, as a human creature, I experience community in my body. There is
a built in harmony physiologically in my organism. Now, when I get ready to think in terms of
the bearing that this has on my self conscious activity, then I notice something very interesting.
And that is that it seems to be the nature of the mind to think always in terms of an inner order.
We say it in this way, that things must make sense to the mind.
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Emory University
And it may be, if I may just let my mind play around with the notion just a little, that it just
maybe, you see, that for a long time, as we were developing through these millions of years on
this planet, that the mind could not be separated from the body, that we had body-mind but not
mind as a separate entity. And perhaps the mind became separated from the body in a very
interesting way. And let's let our imagination play with it.
Suppose-- you see, there was a time when our forebears had to spend all of their energy just
trying to stay alive. They didn't have any built in external things to keep them from being
attacked by these various creatures. So they had to live in trees, so the rumor goes, because this
was safe, and it gave them a view all the way around, a view from Hadrian's bridge.
And suppose, one day, one of our ancestors decided he wanted to give his little boy a birthday
present. And he knew that the most delectable present he could get was a certain kind of dinosaur
egg that could only be found about 20 miles over on the other side of the prairie or the valley. So
early in the morning, he goes out to find this thing. And he finds it, and he starts back home. And
he's tired now, so he sits down to rest under the shade of a rock.
And after he settled in, the rock began to move, because it was one of these monsters having a
siesta. So he was chased all the way across the prairie, and the trees seemed to be farther and
farther away rather than closer and closer. And he noticed something that he'd never seen before.
There was an opening in the side of the hill. He'd been over that way 1,000 times, but he'd never
seen it. And he dotted into that opening, and the opening was small enough for him to get in and
too small for his pursuer. And when he got in there, he said, my, this is pretty good.
Now, if I can manage some way to seal it up so the things that are small enough to get in here
can't get in here without my seeing them first, then this is the new home. So he left to his tree and
brought his family down and put them in there. And the word went from treetop to treetop, you
don't have to live in trees anymore if you can find your opening in the hills.
Now, think of it. Think of what happened. Think of it. All the energy of the organism was spent
in just staying alive. Now with a cave, it was no longer to spend all this energy in the business of
staying alive.
This energy became surplus energy. And thus, imagination was born, and the mind now could
begin to float up and detachment from the organism. I had a dream when I was a boy, and that
was that I would--
6
�
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Title
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Man and Social Change Series (1969, California State College, Long Beach, CA)
Description
An account of the resource
In the three lectures comprising this series, Thurman discusses the effects of personal experience on social change. He illuminates points regarding individual freedom, the expression of togetherness in community, and nonviolence as the individual’s attempt to broaden one’s circle of concern.
Date
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1969
Contributor
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Descriptions by Dr. Tim Rainey
AudioWithTranscription
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Audio with Transcription
<iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-047_A.html" ></iframe>
Location
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California State College, Long Beach, California
Time Period
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1960s
Original Title
Title as transcribed from tape cassette
Man and Social Change (II): Man and the Experience of Community [Side A], 1969 Mar 20
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Identifier
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394-047_A
Creator
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Thurman, Howard
Date
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1969-03-20
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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GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-13148225.246838 3999563.3243138))
Description
An account of the resource
Community is evinced when any form of life identifies with another. For Thurman, humans experience wholeness when individual existence recognizes itself within the fullness of all existence. Community is an expression of life because its manifestation follows the “harmony,” “order,” and “inner togetherness” consistent with a person’s inner order. In this way, Thurman notes, community makes sense to the mind. Recognizing this profound continuity, persons in community must widen the “magnetic field” of their relationships and pursue experiences of harmony that compel the spirit more than ideologies, creeds, or, fears that divide.
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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.
Title
A name given to the resource
Man and Social Change, Part 2: Man and the Experience of Community, 1969 March 20
Contributor
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Description by Dr. Tim Rainey
community
disharmony
harmony
innocence
life
organism
racial memory of the human
-
http://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/pittsthurman/original/eb7e5c99fd57afe966e057dbfb419c63.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI4CD764Y635IGLNA&Expires=1711725000&Signature=ZcNq7u2uT1X7AO3GWZ6dCbfonCI%3D
7f8a951481e9f20a377c8d3bdfd90e5a
PDF Text
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Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
394-800.mp3
This is tape number ET60 from the library of the Howard Thurman Educational Trust. Two
meditations by Howard Thurman. This is side 1 entitled "The Moment of Truth."
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
[MUSIC]
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, oh, Lord,
my strength and my redeemer.
[MUSIC]
I'm beginning today by reading two paragraphs, which a Canadian friend of mine sent to me
several years ago. "Eight-year-old Johnny was very serious when I called him into the hospital
and explained how he could save the life of his little sister. Mary, age six, was near death, a
victim of a disease from which Johnny had made a miraculous recovery only two years earlier."
"Now, Mary's only chance was a blood transfusion from someone who had previously conquered
the illness. Since the two children had the same rare blood type, Johnny would be the ideal
donor. 'Johnny," I ask, 'would you like to give your blood for Mary?' He hesitated for a moment,
his lower lip trembling, but I have seen many people older than Johnny who were frightened by
the idea of giving blood. So I thought no more about it."
"Then he smiled and said, 'Sure, Dr. Morris. I'll give my blood for my sister.' The operating room
was prepared and the children wheeled in, Mary, pale and thin; Johnny, robust and almost
cherubic. Neither spoke, but when their eyes met, Johnny grinned broadly. As Johnny's blood
pulsed into Mary's veins, her pale skin began to turn pink. There was complete silence as the
operation proceeded, but then Johnny spoke in a brave little voice I will never forget. 'Say, Dr.
Morris, when do I die?'"
"It was only then that I realized what that moment's hesitation that almost imperceptible
trembling of the lip had meant when I talked to Johnny in my office. He thought that giving up
his blood for his sister meant giving up his life. In that brief moment of truth, he made his great
decision."
When a man becomes aware of the essential or the intrinsic or authentic meaning of an act or a
person or a situation or an event and the bearing of that act or situation, person, or event upon his
private life, he experiences a moment of truth. When he becomes aware of the authentic or
intrinsic meaning of something and the bearing that that meaning has upon his private life, he
experiences a moment of truth.
There are several elements that are to be remembered here. The first is that it is always a
personal and private and solitary experience. We spend so much of our time associating with
other people, we are so involved in the human situation and the human predicament that we
forget that fundamentally, so much of a man's life is lived in solitariness in all of the great
moments of life, whether it is at the moment of his birth or the moment of his dying, whether it
1
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
has to do with some great significant step that he is about to take when deep within himself he
makes the decision of commitment.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
All of these are intimate and personal and primary and solitary. And the moment of truth takes
on this character. It is as if you and the experience alone existed in the world. It's like trying to
explain something to a little child. You will explain it, and then the child will say, but why,
continue asking the same question. And then you explain it again, and the child will say, but
why?
And then you try to find a way by which you can find the proper words that will fit into the
context of meaning of the child and then utter these words so that the child understands. And
when the child looks into your face and says, oh, I understand, it is as if the child and the
moment alone existed in all the universe. It is a private opening of the life to a meaning which is
personal, yes, but at the same time, which expands out into a context of all the meaning that there
is.
Now, the moment of truth then has in it the element that is solitary, that is personal and private.
And it also has in it a certain element of commitment, a certain element of involvement. I guess
that's the best way to put it.
I am reminded of one of the experiences in the life of Saint Francis of Assisi, when in the early
part of his career, it seemed as if he had air conditioning against leprosy. He could abide almost
anything else except leprosy. This was so loathsome to him that he felt always as if he should
move in the other direction or put as much space between him and the leper as possible.
Shortly after his great commitment of his life, the story goes that he was riding along on a horse
or walking. I don't remember that detail. But around the bend in the road, he encountered a leper,
and for him it was a moment of truth because all the meaning of the disease as it expressed itself
through the loathsome body of this man and the bearing that this disease had upon the sensitivity
of Saint Francis, all of this converged in one swirling moment of encounter. And Francis drew
back, turned, and started to flee in the opposite direction.
And then he heard the voice, always the voice, reminding him of his commitment, that his
commitment was something that was absolute, that he had given up in his commitment the
initiative over his own life. Therefore, any sensitivity and all of these things were luxuries, which
his life could no longer afford.
And he turned around, embraced the leper, and the story goes that he went with the leper back to
the place where the leper lived, and he stayed there for several days administering to his need.
The moment of truth is the moment when the intrinsic, authentic, significant meaning of an event
or a person or a situation is sensed clearly and directly by an individual and the bearing that this
meaning has on the man's life.
Now, the moment of truth then carries with it always the element of commitment. For when I
experience the moment of truth, it is a total involvement, a total encounter so that my life, not
some phase of my life, some dimension of my life, some aspect of my life, but my life in some
2
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
total sense is affected, is altered, shifts, changes, moves, makes some kind of adjustment to the
fact that I have had such an encounter.
It is solitary. It is personal. It involves the total commitment of the life in a direction contrary,
perhaps, to the way one had been going before.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
[MUSIC]
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, oh, Lord,
my rock and my redeemer.
[MUSIC]
This is tape number ET60 from the library of the Howard Thurman Educational Trust. This is
side 2 entitled "Pearl Without Price."
[MUSIC]
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, oh, Lord,
my strength and my redeemer.
[MUSIC]
I'm reading from Meditations of the Heart, "The Pressure of Crisis." "When Lloyd George, the
British statesman, was a boy, one of his family responsibilities was to collect firewood for
warmth and for cooking. He discovered early that always after a very terrific storm, with high
winds and driving rain, he had very little difficulty in finding as much and more wood than he
needed at the time."
"When the days were beautiful, sunny, and the skies untroubled, the firewood was at a premium.
Despite the fact that the sunny days were happy ones for him, providing him with long hours to
fill his heart with delight, nevertheless, in terms of other needs, which were his specific
responsibilities, they were his most difficult times."
"Many years after, he realized what had been happening. During the times of heavy rains and
driving winds, many of the dead limbs were broken off, and many rotten trees were toppled over.
The living things were separated from the dead things. But when the sun was shining and the
weather was clear and beautiful, the dead and the not dead were undistinguishable."
"The experience of Lloyd George is common to us all. When all is well with our world, there is
often no necessity to separate the dead from the not dead in our lives. Under the pressure of
crisis, when we need all available vitality, we are apt to discover that much in us is of no account
and valueless."
When our tree is rocked by mighty winds, all the limbs that do not have free and easy access to
what sustains the trunk are torn away. There is nothing to hold them fast. It is good to know what
3
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
there is in us that is strong and solidly rooted. It is good to have the assurance that can only come
from having ridden the storm and remained intact."
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
"Far beside the point is the why of the storm. Beside the point too, maybe the interpretation of
the storm that makes it an active agent of redemption. Given the storm, the fact of it, it is wisdom
to know that when it come, the things that are firmly held by the vitality of life are apt to remain
chastened but confirmed, while other things that are dead, sterile, or lifeless are apt to be torn
away."
"The wheat and tares grow up together, but when the time of harvest comes, only wheat is
revealed as wheat and tares remain what they have been all along-- tares." It is a very simple
remark that again and again, when life seems to be running smoothly, when all things seem to
fall into line and we are sure that, for us, this is the good time, the time of a sudden kind of
psychic or spiritual or actual physical prosperity.
And during such times, there is no necessity, no felt necessity for assessing our equipment for
life, our strengths, our needs. In our own country, for instance, one of the most critical problems
that faces religion, that faces organized religion, that faces the church or the synagogue is, what
does religion say to a people who are fat? Who have everything? Who are so surfeited with good
food and rich food that they must spend millions of dollars in trying to get rid of the logic of the
good food that they're eating?
Is there any word that can be addressed to a man who has everything and to whom the world, in
a sense, is his oyster? This is the point here. At such times, we are apt to live life rather casually,
to raise no fundamental question about its meaning, about our own sense of direction, about what
our point is. Because our situation does not force us to raise the critical and the crucial question.
But if the time comes, as it does come to everyone, when the normal pattern of general at easeness begins to disintegrate and break down and it is necessary for us to assess life, to think about
what life means, to raise the far-reaching personal question, what is it that I am meaning by all
the things that I am doing. What is my point? Where in the totality of my experience? Is there
provided for me as a person some radical test in the light of which and on the basis of which I
will be able to define what it is that I am trying to do, where it is that I am headed?
For it is only the radical test, the moments which seem to be unmanageable. It is only at a time
when everything seems to be falling apart that a man discovers of what is his substance? What is
his strength? What is there in him that is ultimately dependable? Where in him may be found the
resources that he needs in order to do his thing now in a hard circumstance, in a difficult
moment?
For if life is easy and if life is indulgent, then despite all of the comfort that it may bring, the
most important question that we most want to know about ourselves, we cannot know. And that
question is, what, after all, ultimately, do I'd amount to? How much can I take? How much can I
stand and not give, not yield, not buckle under?
4
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
Am I a real man so that when I take my stand, I can absorb whatever it is that life has to offer?
And then I get something that is the pearl beyond price. I live with the confidence-- and this is of
overwhelming importance. I live with the confidence and the strength that I can stand anything
that life can do to me.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
[MUSIC]
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, oh, Lord,
my rock and my redeemer.
[MUSIC]
5
�
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Title
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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" />
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/394-800.html" ></iframe>
Original Title
Title as transcribed from tape cassette
The Moment of Truth; Pearl without Price (ET-60; GC 12-4-71), 1971 Dec 4
Time Period
The decade in which the recording was produced.
1960s
Location
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WHDH-TV, Boston, Massachusetts
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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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394-800
Creator
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Thurman, Howard
Title
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The Moment of Truth (1963-04-19); Pearl without Price (1971-12-4)
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
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1963-04-19
1962-03-23
Description
An account of the resource
In this recording within the We Believe Series, Thurman reads from a letter that his friend from Canada sends him. Within the letter, the listener hears of a young boy who makes the decision to participate in a blood transfusion for his sister. In agreeing to participate in the transfusion, the boy misunderstood, and assumed that he would have to die in order to save his younger sister's life. Thurman sees this boy's misunderstanding as a "moment of truth." The moment of truth speaks to one's sense of courage, responsibility, creativity, and sacrifice. Embedded into this moment of truth is a reaction that comes from the tension between one's personal and public life. Thurman invites the listener to discern what their "moment of truth" is and challenges the listen to what their "moment of truth" is calling them to do.
In this recording within the We Believe Series, Thurman reads from his book, "Meditations of the Heart." In this reflection, Thurman reflects upon what it means to look at life critically. When things are going well, the difficult and the not-difficult aspects of life blend together; however, when one is in desperation, one is able to critique and names the parts of life that are difficult. This conversation speaks to Thurman's wider work concerning the tension goodness and innocence.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Description by Dustin Mailman
commitment
decision
dichotomy
encounter
experience
goodness
innocence
Lloyd George
meditations of the heart
moment of truth
pearl
responsibility
sacrifice
solitary
spiral
St. Francis
test
truth