1
10
9
-
http://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/pittsthurman/original/af3b6749b20f8e7bf301fae4d8d30154.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI4CD764Y635IGLNA&Expires=1711719600&Signature=F7E9MQefFiP15plX0%2BIMCaHWvKA%3D
13ba7e50866cb1e35363a97860a223be
PDF Text
Text
Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
394-795.mp3
This is tape number ET 57, from the library of the Howard Thurman Educational Trust. Two
meditations by Howard Thurman. This is side one, entitled The Integrity of the Word.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
[MUSIC PLAYING]
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 PLAYING]
I'm reading from meditations of the heart. One of the most incisive stories told by Jesus
concerned a man who had two sons. To the first he said, son, go work today in the vineyard.
Very quickly, the son responded by saying that he would not do it. Then Jesus adds, but
afterwards, he repented and went.
To the other son, he made the same request. Immediately, he responded by saying that he would
oblige his father, but did not do so. The point of the story expressed in the gospel is that the son
who said no but changed his mind did the will of his father. It is a very interesting picture
presented here, concerning one whose immediate reaction to any request is negative. It does not
matter how simple the request is or how complicated. The spontaneous reply is in the negative.
A very commonplace adage descriptive of such a personality is, his bark is worse than his bite.
Such persons are never so negative as their words would indicate. This may be a matter of
temperament. Once this particular characteristic is understood, it is easy to depend upon their
carrying through in positive terms, the things to which they had reacted negatively.
Sometimes, such persons start a trend in the wrong direction when their first words influence
others who will abide by the negative judgment. The function of such an attitude may be to
screen all proposals first by challenging their validity and their claims, and denial may quickly
lay bare the integrity of the proposal. Such may be a time saver in the end. I don't know, but I
wonder.
The other boy may be characterized as Mr. Facing Both Ways, one of the figures in Pilgrim's
Progress, you remember. His attitude seems to be to give no offense, to agree, but to reverse for
oneself the true intent. For some such persons, it is an inability to say no. The result is that such a
boy may be pushed by anything, anytime, anywhere, with no moral integrity to bottom the
argument.
Here is a character weakness, because it places at a discount the value of the word. The word is
the symbol, the communication symbol of meaning of intended purpose. If the symbol is
fundamentally unreliable, then the basis of relations becomes at once chaotic, and often immoral.
At another place in the gospels, the words of Jesus are of a different sort. Let your words be yes,
yes, and no, no. Simple, but terribly difficult. Quite possible, but searching.
1
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
Much can be said about the integrity of the word. I'm constantly amazed and-- what is the word?
Even excited in a muted manner when I reflect upon what must have been the beginning of
language, of the spoken word. At some far off time in the past, when out of all the sounds of
various kind in the world of nature, certain sounds were, as it were, imprisoned and given a
particular meaning.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
So that whenever that combination of sounds was heard, then the meaning that had become
associated with that particular combination of sounds was communicated or conveyed. Suppose,
for instance, that some far off time in the past, the sound of the-- for the word that gives along
that danger is coming had been agreed upon. And then someone used another word, a word that
he thought of at the moment when he saw the danger.
And he uttered this word to warn the others. But there was no apperceptive mass that could
receive this word. No, the sound of the word had no meaning history. And therefore no integrity
and no ability to communicate. The integrity of the word cannot be overemphasized. When a
man is able to say what it is that he means, and to use words that are symbolic of this dimension
of intention and integrity, then the hearer knows that when he hears the word, that the word that
he hears is a symbol of the meaning.
And a symbol is a form through which meaning leaps, as it were. And if the symbol is wobbly, if
the symbol is not secure, then the meaning leaks. Now, there are many words in our vocabularies
like that. A man uses the word love, for instance. And the word, as a symbol, has had such a
wide variety of meanings. It has been so-- without seeming facetious-- so manhandled, that it
leaks. And when it is used, we aren't quite sure whether it is a tight symbol through which
meaning moves.
Sometimes with children who are growing up, very often it is difficult to understand them,
because they are trying on words for size. They are trying to find how words feel when they use
them. And what the words are capable of inspiring in others. And until we understand this and
are able to tutor the child in his wide meeting experience, he may grow up with a completely
undependable and chaotic use of meaningful symbols.
When I was a boy, I earned money occasionally by answering the door for my two aunts, who
were young women. And certain nights in of the week when their callers came, my job was to
answer the doors. So if the wrong man came, I would know what to say. Well, When I was
beginning this, someone came up the steps and knocked at the door. And my aunt stood at the
window and pulled the sheet back just a little, and she saw who it was, and she said, Howard, tell
him that I am not here.
So I went to the door and I said, my aunt says she isn't here. Well, this is what she did say. But-and it was literal, but all of the overtones that come with-- how should I say it-- that come with
what we call maturity, means that we learn how to use words to obscure meaning. To use words
to protect ourselves from exposing what is really going on. And therefore, it is very difficult to
orient oneself into any thoroughgoing use of the integrity of the word.
2
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
Among your friends, for instance, if you told your friends the truth, you are afraid that you would
not have many friends long. And why is this? Because there is a weakness here. We have lost the
magic of the integrity of the word. It is not an accident that in the great religions-- and religion
like Christianity, that that so much is made up of the statement that the word became flesh. And
this is, what we mean, we say, and what we say, we do.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
[MUSIC PLAYING]
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 PLAYING]
This program was pre-recorded.
This is tape number ET 57 from the library of the Howard Thurman Educational Trust. This is
side two, entitled Man's Equity in Life.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
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 PLAYING]
The sense of self is fully known when a man can say, I did it. Such triumph who can claim? In
every deed are many streams whose sources lie beyond all dreams, or sleep within the womb of
ancient myths. The words in his tongue wander us all, finding in man a short spanned place.
They are never his alone. Oh, what a way they've come, through countless years and every land,
through crucibles of every mood, words now familiar in their place have made their own the
marks of many minds. How dare a man say I, I speak?
Free-flowing thoughts from living minds are big with residues of other times, forced from their
place by inner law, compelled to rest in little spells. A man may never say, this thought is mine.
An equity in thoughts is his. The rest belongs to every man.
Fierce, private, intimate, unique feelings spring from deep within, a boundless inner world as old
as life. They come without command. The feeling tone, the pointed shape carries the image of
the man. To this, he gives his own life's plan. No more than this is his to claim. All knowledge in
whatever form maintains its place, secure. It knows no lord, no single mind. Its harvest ripens as
it will. Its secret is its own to give, in part to share with other minds.
To say I know is always false, however sure the words may seem. Before the echo fades, the
lights go out. The man is held by fear, by doubt. To seek, to find, to seek again. This is man's
journey. This is man's way. It is very often said that there are no exclusive rights that a man has,
3
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
even in the ideas that are a familiar part of his frame of reference, or a familiar part of the way he
communicates with other human beings.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
The sound of the words that he uses, the accent that he gives to these words, the meaning that the
particular word has in a given context, all of these are part of his heritage, are a part of his
inheritance. But when the word passes through the man and becomes one of his private tools of
communication, he gives to the word his personal flavor, his Tang, his accent, his emphasis. And
thereby, and in that way only, does the word become his word.
There are words that are very, very universal in their meaning. And when we use such words, we
must do something to them, tamper with them in some way, so that the hearer will know that we
mean something very personal, and very private, and very intimate in the use of the word. We'll
take the word love, for instance. It is a universally used word, a word that is used universally,
rather.
But when, under certain circumstances, a man uses the word, along with the word is a quality in
the voice, the timber of the voice, the look in the eye, something on the countenance that says to
the listener, now this universal word becomes flesh, becomes particularized. Now, this is true
with the use of words. It is true in terms of all of the habit patterns of our lives. It is true in the
simple matters of decorum, and it is true in simple matters of dress. We are always confirming
our solidarity with human life.
Now and then, an individual feels that he must becomes utterly separate from all of the rest of
the human family. He becomes full of idiosyncrasies. He acts in ways that are, to him, so very
unique that he will not be identified with the herd, with the mass. But even the way in which he
does the erratic thing, he confirms his belonging to all of life.
And this is true in a more profound way. It is true, for instance, with reference to our bodies. I
remember many, many years ago when I lived in San Francisco, one Sunday morning I dedicated
a little baby. And then when I held him in my arms for the ceremony, I noticed that he had a
dimple, what seemed to me to be a dimple, in his neck.
And when I went to see his parents a few days after that, I remarked rather facetiously, that it's
too bad that David had a dimple on his neck, and in time it would be covered by his collar, and
he could not use it to any psychological advantage, and the way that he could use it if it were a
dimple on his cheek.
And his mother said, oh, that will not last. The pediatrician says that really isn't a dimple, but it is
the vestigial remains of a gill. And the time will come when this will be absorbed, or a very
simple operation will remove it. And then my mind went back to that far off moment in human
history when the waters are receding and when our forebears were learning how to take their air
and eat without benefit of water.
And then I remember that there is, in the human body, the whole story of man's journey, from his
forebears and before them to the slimy oozes of some primeval ocean bed. There is a sense in
which each man belongs to life, and the sense in which life belongs to each man. But when the
4
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
life movement, the ebb and flow, the throb, the heartbeat of existence, takes form in a particular
human being, then he has an equity in the wide expanse of the rhythm of life.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
And it is operating within this equity that he feels that he has something that belongs to him.
When I say, I know, I feel, I understand, I must, in using those words, recognize the fact that I
am simply saluting life and claiming just a moment of equity that is mine and mine alone. This
makes me live with humility and with great reverence, that all of life is mine, and I belong to all
of life.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, oh, Lord,
my rock and my redeemer.
5
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
We Believe (Television Series, 1958-1965)
Description
An account of the resource
<em>We Believe</em> was a color television program that aired on WHDH-TV, Channel 5, in Boston on weekday mornings at 11:15. From 1958 to 1965, while Howard Thurman was Dean of the Chapel at Boston University, he was the host of the Friday morning show. Each message has a brief introductory section with bells and music before Thurman delivers his short meditation. Some recordings have been edited to remove the intro. In some cases, the Howard Thurman Educational Trust produced tapes with two messages on one recording.<br /><br />"These meditations are no longer than 15 minutes, but highly representative of his style, influence, and search for common ground." - <a href="http://archives.bu.edu/web/howard-thurman">the Howard Thurman and Sue Bailey Thurman Collections at Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.</a><br /><br />
<p style="text-align: right;"><em>We Believe</em> program listing in the TV Guide, March 29, 1958</p>
<img src="http://pittsviva.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/webelieve-whdh-boston.png" style="float: right;" alt="webelieve-whdh-boston.png" />
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
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/394-795.html" ></iframe>
Original Title
Title as transcribed from tape cassette
The Integrity of Life; Man's Equity in Life (ET-57; GC 12-3-71), 1971 Dec 3
Location
The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon
WHDH-TV, Boston, Massachusetts
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
394-795
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Thurman, Howard
Title
A name given to the resource
The Integrity of the Word (1964-01-31); Man's Equity in Life (1971-12-3)
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
<a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a>
Description
An account of the resource
In this recording within the We Believe series; Howard Thurman reads from his text, Meditations of the Heart, which reflects on Matthew 21:29 and asks: "What does it mean to be a person of your word?" He responds to this question by discerning the function of language, and how language creates meaning. This deep reflection on the nature of linguistics makes the listener ask, what is it about our words that dictate whether or not one is integrous?
In this recording within the We Believe series; Howard Thurman reflects upon what it means when those on the journey of life believe that they "did it." He continues, noting that any sense of achieving knowledge is false, as knowledge is dynamic in nature, rendering language as a mere symbol to make sense of knowledge. Rather than framing the pursuit of life as the pursuit of knowledge, Thurman suggests that equity is the actual pursuit that humanity should participate in.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Dustin Mailman
body
denial
identity
inner-being
integrity
Jesus
journey
linguistics
Matthew 21:29-31
meditations of the heart
money
origin
Parables
pedantic
pilgrim's progress
residue
self
symbol
womb
-
http://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/pittsthurman/original/126feedc34953a5d951582c730b8dd5d.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI4CD764Y635IGLNA&Expires=1711719600&Signature=1mPaTvf%2FKJCtqAD3VjLd9M9rRoU%3D
e4d4199999472f1adc9e4c468349d50d
PDF Text
Text
Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
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
Emory University
[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
1
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
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.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
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
2
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
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.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
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.
3
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
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.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
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-
4
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
- 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.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
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]
5
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
We Believe (Television Series, 1958-1965)
Description
An account of the resource
<em>We Believe</em> was a color television program that aired on WHDH-TV, Channel 5, in Boston on weekday mornings at 11:15. From 1958 to 1965, while Howard Thurman was Dean of the Chapel at Boston University, he was the host of the Friday morning show. Each message has a brief introductory section with bells and music before Thurman delivers his short meditation. Some recordings have been edited to remove the intro. In some cases, the Howard Thurman Educational Trust produced tapes with two messages on one recording.<br /><br />"These meditations are no longer than 15 minutes, but highly representative of his style, influence, and search for common ground." - <a href="http://archives.bu.edu/web/howard-thurman">the Howard Thurman and Sue Bailey Thurman Collections at Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.</a><br /><br />
<p style="text-align: right;"><em>We Believe</em> program listing in the TV Guide, March 29, 1958</p>
<img src="http://pittsviva.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/webelieve-whdh-boston.png" style="float: right;" alt="webelieve-whdh-boston.png" />
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
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/394-781.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
The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon
WHDH-TV, Boston, Massachusetts
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
394-781
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Thurman, Howard
Title
A name given to the resource
Creative Order in Life (1963-09-27); The Great Exposure (1963-02-15)
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
<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
1963-09-27
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.
Contributor
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
-
http://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/pittsthurman/original/2feeea58befe91d124a3c7e6ec31cbb6.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI4CD764Y635IGLNA&Expires=1711719600&Signature=ihAN9033kNZolUlV2fy5h45OSL8%3D
f2fc60f3ddf32b043751160c54757c72
PDF Text
Text
Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
394-774.mp3
This is tape number ET 17 from the library of the Howard Thurman Educational Trust. Two
meditations by Howard Thurman. This is side 1 entitled, The Intentional Life.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
[MUSIC PLAYS]
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, o Lord, my
strength, and my redeemer.
I'm reading from The Inward Journey. For whatsoever plans I shall devise for my own peace, my
life cannot be without war and affliction. It is natural to have a plan for one's life. The mind is
always trying to make sense out of experience.
This is true even when that does not seem to be a pattern or plan on the basis of which an
individual lives his life. There are some people who by temperament are so orderly that no action
is contemplated by them in the absence of a well-defined plan. If such a person is making a
simple journey, careful attention is given to every detail of schedule and of events in which he is
likely to be involved. For him, each day is ordered between the hours of waking and of sleeping.
There are others for whom planning comes hard. They put off every detail until the last minute
and move through life in a kind of breathless confusion. They depend upon chance and the
particular circumstance to determine what must or must not be done. There is a sense in which
their lives are lived in a state of extended crisis.
But whether one falls into one of the other category or somewhere in between, there is a sense in
which one's life moves within the structure of pattern and plan. Particularly this is true of one's
life as a whole. There are things that one finds meaningful and things that one likes or dislikes.
There are goals that are kept before one-- vocation, personal, fulfillment, and family life, status,
position, prestige, or the like.
In such contemplation of goals, there is a normal tendency to exclude the things that would make
for conflict and turmoil and to include the things that will make for peace and tranquility.
Thomas a Kempis reminds us that it is the nature of life and man's experience in life that there be
what he calls war and affliction. This is not a note of pessimism and futility. It is rather a
recognition that conflict is a part of the life process.
Whatever may be the plan which one has for one's life, one must win the right to achieve it.
Again and again in the struggle a man may experience failure, but he must know for himself that
even though such is his experience the final word has not been spoken. Included in his plan must
be not only the possibility of failure, but also the fact that he will not escape struggle, and
conflict, and war. Mr. Valiant For Truth in Pilgrim's Progress says, "my sword I give to him that
shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks
and my scars I carry with me to be a witness for me that I have fought his battle who will be my
rewarder."
1
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
It is a very commonplace remark to say that life has to be intentionally lived on the basis of plan
and order. Sometimes this seems to be untrue as far as our observation of a particular person is
concerned. But whether or not we are aware of the precise order on the basis of which we are
living, whether or not we are aware of the particular goal that provides a point of other than self
reference around which our life revolves, the fact remains that at the profoundest level of our
living there is always at work a very well-defined pattern trend drift which is made up of a series
of choices sometimes deliberately undertaken, sometimes quite unconsciously arrived at.
But nevertheless, a man's life is made up in its profoundest aspects of a cycling series of small
patterns which become a design, and these patterns very often are determinative of the kind of
future which one has. This means, then, that failure is a very important aspect of living. An
individual who finds that as he stands on the threshold of some moment of fulfillment or when
he feels that he is at last coming into his own and then suddenly everything goes wrong-- he
misses a turn in the road, or something of that sort.
When this happens, the individual becomes painfully aware that his failure may be due to some
moment of inattention on his part, something that breaks down within him, but with reference to
which he has a very sustained responsibility. Sometimes the failure may be due to the operation
of forces that are not under the control of the individual. There is, of course, a sense in which we
are victims of circumstances. There is a sense in which we are so involved in the operation of
impersonal forces that determine, often in detail, how we will perform, how we will behave,
what we will do. And we find that this takes place even as we watch it in a manner that is
powerless to alter.
Now in this sense, then, it seems to me that failure may result from the operation of forces over
which we are unable to exercise any control and the peculiar quality of our responsibilities shifts.
In the first instance, our failure was due to a breakdown of responsibility on our own part. We
were unable to take the full orb responsibility for the particular act because of some moment of
variation or some moment that caused us to be deflected from our goal and our purpose.
But this is another kind where I have done all that I can do and I know that I have done my very
best, and yet beyond my power to determine or control, things happen, events seem to move in
and push me around. Now when this happens, then I must be very careful to be aware of one
important insight. And that is that again and again there may be-- and mark my words, I say that
there may be-- a radical distinction between failure on the one hand and being mistaken in the
thing that I am undertaking, being mistaken in the thing that I am trying to do.
Now, this may seem like a subtle distinction, or it may seem like a splitting of hairs. But it is a
very authentic aspect of man's experience. Let me repeat it, that failure may be something which
I must hold in mind as being a part of my experience precipitated by incidents, persons, forces
that are not responsive to my mind, and responsive to my desires, and responsive to my will.
Now, when this happens I must not read into the quality of my intent I must not read into the
integrity of my own purpose this failure. I must keep a clear distinction between the integrity of
my intent, the clarity of the vision or the goal that is before me and the failure to achieve it or to
accomplish it.
2
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
The distinction, then, between failure on the one hand and being mistaken on the other is a very
important and crucial distinction. And then it is important to remember that ultimately, the
responsibility for living my life on the basis of some kind of intent, some kind of plan is my
responsibility. And it doesn't matter how much of life I have before me or how little. There is a
quantity of responsible integrity that always is mine.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
If I have only one day, it is my responsibility to put into that day as much of my intention, as
much of my purpose, as much of my planning as I am able to muster. If I don't, then it means
that I drift through the day and I must live the day anyway. And therefore, I should so live that at
the end of a day-- and any day may be my last day-- at the end of a day, I can say as I assess it,
this day I put into my actions, I put into the hours clear intent, clear purpose. Whether I was able
to fulfill the purpose or fulfill the intent or not.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord,
my rock and my redeemer.
This is tape no ET 17 from the library of the Howard Thurman Educational Trust. Two
meditations by Howard Thurman. This is side two entitled, Life is a River.
[MUSIC PLAYS]
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord,
my strength and my redeemer.
The contemporary poet Langston Hughes has written a poem which he calls Rivers. "I've known
rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has
grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut
near the Congo, and it lulled me to sleep. I saw the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to
New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset. I've known rivers-ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers."
It is a very convenient and, I think, rather universal way of contemplating the meaning of life, by
thinking of it in terms of a river, in terms of the meaning of a river. Of course, it is not an
absolute thing that analogies will be altogether accurate, but there is to be found an insight here.
If we think of life itself as being like a river, a river has a very simple beginning.
The Mississippi River, for instance, begins in some quiet, snowy cove in the northwestern part of
the United States. It moves down across the broad expanse of the continent, growing in depth,
and breadth, and in turbulence, gathering along its way many tributaries, a wide variety of
substances until at last it empties itself into the Gulf of Mexico and then to the sea-- the far off
call all waters hear. This is the way of the river.
Human life is the same way. Your life, my life began very simply, and then after a period there
was a great eruption and we were born. And then the process of simplicity started over again, but
not quite as elemental as before. And as we grew in years, our lives became more involved in the
experiences of living, the raw materials by which we were surrounded beat in upon us, and we
3
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
brooded over the stuff of these raw materials shaping always that which will become ourselves.
Until at last we, too, come to the end.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
The depth, the breadth, the turbulence-- these are a part of the experience of man even as they are
part of the experience, and the development, and the unfolding of the river. The analogy is
complete in the second instance because a river has storms, has times of turbulence, times of
drought. There are times when it seems that the tranquil behavior of the river has been forgotten,
winds blow, squalls come. The river becomes one turbulent monster, reckless of all
consequences, blind to good and evil.
It moves on its relentless way. It is the storm of the river. And one watching this behavior of the
river would find it hard to remember that the river ordinarily moves along with calmness and
with a dispatch bearing on its bosom traffic of ship and boat, always working, as it would seem,
for the fulfillment, and the nourishment, and the sustenance of man.
But when the storm comes, all of that is temporarily forgotten. My life and your life are this way.
We are moving along day by day, quietly attending to our business, going through the
established routine or pattern of our days, loving our friends, reacting in various ways to those
who are not our friends, pursuing our limited goals or walking in the light of our far off visions.
This is the way of life.
And then sometimes without notice, without any warning, a vast shadow crosses the path. Health
becomes sickness suddenly. Death moves in and takes from the circle someone to whom one
long and happy adjustment has been made over many years. It is the time of storm and stress of
the river.
At such times, men wrestle with the depths of their agony and their suffering, and it is then that
they are liable to think and to feel that this, after all, is what life means. That there is no God,
there is no such thing as good, but life is a skinning-- a grinning skull and crossbones, having no
meaning, fulfilling no purpose, involving the individual in its impersonal maneuvering as if the
individual were just a puppet in the hands of some kind of monster.
This is the flood time of the river. And when that comes, one forgets about the more tranquil
times. One tends to forget about the meanings which one sensed about life and the waters were
quiet. When one had a long stretch of time in which to move gently into the process of living and
experiencing.
But it is of the essence of the flood time in the life of man to remember what he experienced
when there was no flood time. It is the sense of peace and tranquility which is a man's when he is
not in the flood time that may hold him to his course when the waters rise and overflow the
banks.
The analogy is complete in the third instance because a river has a goal, and the goal of the river
is the sea. It is a matter of extraordinary significance, and yet very commonplace that all the
waters in all the rivers in all the lands come out of the sea, and all the waters in all the rivers in
4
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
all the lands go to the sea. That out of which the river comes is that to which the river goes. The
source of the river and the goal of the river are the same.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
This is the way of man. It is the insight of religion that man's life comes out of God and that
man's life goes to God. God is the source and the goal of life. Thus Augustine says, "thou hast
made us for thyself and our souls are restless till they find their rest in thee."
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the river. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young, I built
my heart near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've
seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset. I've known rivers. Ancient, dusky rivers. My
soul has grown deep like the rivers.
[MUSIC PLAYS]
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord,
my rock and my redeemer.
5
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
We Believe (Television Series, 1958-1965)
Description
An account of the resource
<em>We Believe</em> was a color television program that aired on WHDH-TV, Channel 5, in Boston on weekday mornings at 11:15. From 1958 to 1965, while Howard Thurman was Dean of the Chapel at Boston University, he was the host of the Friday morning show. Each message has a brief introductory section with bells and music before Thurman delivers his short meditation. Some recordings have been edited to remove the intro. In some cases, the Howard Thurman Educational Trust produced tapes with two messages on one recording.<br /><br />"These meditations are no longer than 15 minutes, but highly representative of his style, influence, and search for common ground." - <a href="http://archives.bu.edu/web/howard-thurman">the Howard Thurman and Sue Bailey Thurman Collections at Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.</a><br /><br />
<p style="text-align: right;"><em>We Believe</em> program listing in the TV Guide, March 29, 1958</p>
<img src="http://pittsviva.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/webelieve-whdh-boston.png" style="float: right;" alt="webelieve-whdh-boston.png" />
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
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/394-774.html" ></iframe>
Original Title
Title as transcribed from tape cassette
The Intentional Life; Life is a River (ET-17; GC 11-20-71), 1971 Nov 20
Time Period
The decade in which the recording was produced.
1960s
Location
The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon
WHDH-TV, Boston, Massachusetts
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
394-774
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Thurman, Howard
Title
A name given to the resource
The Intentional Life (1962-05-18); Life is a River (1961-03-24)
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
<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
1962-05-18
1961-03-24
Description
An account of the resource
In this recording within the We Believe Series; Howard Thurman uses his text, "The Inward Journey," to discern what it means to live a life of intentionality. He holds up the orderly life and the life of crisis as the two ways one may live their life. He continues that regardless of one's life orientation, that one must wrestle with the reality of failure being embedded into the human experience. Thurman notes that life is a pattern that is continually unfolding, revealing a wider pattern, and that one's recognition of this pattern comes from an intentionally lived life.
In this recording within the We Believe Series; Howard Thurman uses Langston Hughes' poem, "Rivers," to speak to human experience. Thurman discusses the analogy of human life as a river flowing, flooding, and resting.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Dustin Mailman
Abraham Lincoln
agony
Augustine
Congo
contemplation
death
design
essence
experience
flood
goal
goals
integrity
inward journey
journey
Langston Hughes
life
meaning of life
Mississippi River
New Orleans
order
pattern
pilgrim's progress
responsibility
Rivers
soul
storm
tension
Thomas a Kempis
turbulence
-
http://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/pittsthurman/original/07afc8d8c5cbd06e3fababde9176d46e.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI4CD764Y635IGLNA&Expires=1711719600&Signature=%2B%2BrOUPIPiKPb%2FdGAVJU%2F6INA%2FBg%3D
f0189dcf51165dbe7c76603a97552304
PDF Text
Text
Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
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
Emory University
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.
1
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
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.
2
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
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.
3
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
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
Emory University
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
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
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
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
We Believe (Television Series, 1958-1965)
Description
An account of the resource
<em>We Believe</em> was a color television program that aired on WHDH-TV, Channel 5, in Boston on weekday mornings at 11:15. From 1958 to 1965, while Howard Thurman was Dean of the Chapel at Boston University, he was the host of the Friday morning show. Each message has a brief introductory section with bells and music before Thurman delivers his short meditation. Some recordings have been edited to remove the intro. In some cases, the Howard Thurman Educational Trust produced tapes with two messages on one recording.<br /><br />"These meditations are no longer than 15 minutes, but highly representative of his style, influence, and search for common ground." - <a href="http://archives.bu.edu/web/howard-thurman">the Howard Thurman and Sue Bailey Thurman Collections at Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.</a><br /><br />
<p style="text-align: right;"><em>We Believe</em> program listing in the TV Guide, March 29, 1958</p>
<img src="http://pittsviva.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/webelieve-whdh-boston.png" style="float: right;" alt="webelieve-whdh-boston.png" />
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
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/394-770.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
The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon
WHDH-TV, Boston, Massachusetts
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
394-770
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Thurman, Howard
Title
A name given to the resource
The Country of the Heart (1963-09-20); Death - A Part of Life (1961-05-12)
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
<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
1963-09-20
1961-05-12
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.
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.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
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
-
http://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/pittsthurman/original/b616628e04b0baaa708d9d4d50d0e876.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI4CD764Y635IGLNA&Expires=1711719600&Signature=lsepSQ4z5CPDVDeK4vR4QQZ2jL4%3D
4e8f84e1cdd2de806bc981f83f6122e4
PDF Text
Text
Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
394-358_B.mp3
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
And so that one part of my life in this dimension began when somebody down the peninsula
came up with this Ampex-- I think it's Ampex-- was the first one of these things, from the wired
tape recorder, which I couldn't stand because I always got the wires tied up. And Joyce, then,
came into life out here just at the critical time, and all the boxes of tape-- I had an instinct to save
every little bit of anything. And there must've been, oh, I don't know how many big boxes of
tape.
And she was persuaded to let me take 15, 20, 25 boxes of tape over to the apartment where she
and her family lived. And since she was not working, she would spend the day listening to all
these tapes. And her mother would share in it, and that gave a certain kind of weightiness-[LAUGHTER]
--to it. And out of it came all of this material. Fortunately, during the days in Boston, because the
services were broadcast, the entire service was taped and then-- given live in the morning-- taped
so that at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, those people who wanted to hear the morning service could
hear it over the radio, so you had this.
And then for seven years, I had a meditation over the channel five-- whatever that thing is-- and
the university agreed to give to the city my services, with my permission, of course, hopefully.
And the only compensation for this thing every Friday morning-- I insisted that I would be given
the tape, so that when I would go to the studio on Friday, I'd pick up last week's tape.
And I did that because I could not have any conferences or anything growing out of the
meditation-- this because I had no time to give to anyone outside of the university. But anybody
who wanted transcriptions, the broadcasting company would have transcripts of the tapes made
and mailed out. So we had a mailing list of 6 or 700 people. And that's how we got those up
there. Those are the original ones.
I say all of this because I think it's important. Something happens, you know? And whatever
your skill is, if you can find a way by which this skill is your offering to God as your
Thanksgiving. Because of all the people who are dead, you're still living. And this is in a way by
which you can read God's mind so that you're ever sure that you're not living on borrowed time.
And it's this marvelous sense. Once you get there, you don't have to worry about it. So that's how
we got this set, and I'm very glad. Now before we start, Ms. Simmon, you-You need some light.
I will. Yes.
I'll get this one on here, right?
Now, I don't want-- now, but is that bad on anybody?
1
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
Lucille has the difficulties over-[INTERPOSING VOICES]
I'm legally blind and the light is a little hard for me, but-[INTERPOSING VOICES]
Well, no, look, look-But it's fine. You know we-Shh!
--do it every year.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
Now wait, wait.
I need a glass of water. Does anybody else need a break before we proceed?
Now is this any better now?
Fine, thanks for asking. It really is just-Well, I don't-That other one really glowed but-Oh, well, don't you just-We were just about-Probably.
Over here?
Thank you.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
Oh!
I want to give a feeling about our journey, even revving up our motors and that sort of thing. At
the end of the-- thank you, my dear-- of introduction to why I'm involved in this, I want to say a
word about the technique-- how we are going to do what we are going to do. When I finish the
preliminaries, opening up, we will listen again as a group to the tape. I hope everybody received
the tape.
2
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
The procedures is very simple. You listen. At any point that you want the tape to stop because
you want to say something, react, contribute, raise a question, affirm, deny, but let the quality-the meaning of the tape-- flow through you, your mind and your spirit. One of the things that I
enjoyed very much as a boy growing up in Florida, I had my own little private oyster bed. That's
where I learned to fight and to experience defending your territory.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
And the thing that I loved most about my oyster bed was when the tide rose. That's the time the
oysters did their feeding, because they in a bed. They can't swim around. They can't chase any
food. So I would sit quietly and I'd watch the valve. You've seen oysters. I mean, everybody
knows, oh, well, it's something you eat, and it's a seafood. And they can't move because they are
all attached to each other. But when the tide rises and overcomes the bed, the oyster valve opens
like this.
And then, now and then, it does this. It can't pursue any food, but whatever the tide brings and it
recognizes-- this is my meal-- [CLAPS] it closes. And then after a while, it'll-- that's how it
feeds. So this is what I want your minds and your spirit to do. And it doesn't matter whether it
closes on what was perceived to be something you need to digest.
That's your only clue. We hope that when you stop the tape, you do not feel that you are
imposing on anybody else, but it is your moment to get a morsel. And it may not be a morsel that
anybody else sees, but that's not your business. Because nobody like you has ever been born and
will ever be born. You are the only you in all of the existences of existence.
And whatever life ultimately means, no one can find what it means for you except you. And
whatever the Creator of existence has to say to you-- other people may guess about it, but no one
can hear it except you. So as we move along, if you want the tape to stop, Joyce will stop it. And
you do whatever it's doing in you as if you are in this room by yourself. Because in a sense then,
this is the point.
Now-- one other thing-- it's very important that I must give you a feel of, if I can find how to do
it. One of the things that I have been searching for all of my life was to find a way by which I
could have a naked exposure to raw religious experience. And by that I mean the elemental
experience of religion before the mind tackled it and classified it.
The year-- the marvelous year I spent with Rufus Jones way back then, and I thought I was-- I
knew I was on the center of it. And I thought that-- and we would go along, particularly out in
the Tuesday night wrestling with Eckhart. And that's what they were. If you wanted to get a good
first-class headache, just sit down with Meister Eckhart's tract tapes and think you're
understanding them. It's a marvelous experience in humility and rage-- [LAUGHS] together.
Well, anyway, Rufus would-- I would be on the center of it, and then right at the critical moment,
he'd become a Quaker! And I was right back where I was. Now, and this is not a judgment or
anything of that sort, but in your spiritual journey, it is so crucial to have a sense of the
experience of religion which becomes the raw material that you use to get your creeds and your
doctrine and your dogma, but it's prior to this.
So this is what I'm on the search of, and been on the search of all my life. And this is a part of
why we're here. And I'll stop talking in a minute, Joyce. I feel you. It is like-- there's something
3
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
so vital and alive about elemental experience before you try to interpret what it means. Don't
worry about coming just what I'm talking about. It'll get clearer. You see, before the mind can
tackle it-- no, now that's wrong, that's wrong.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
As soon as the mind begins to deal with the raw materials of experience, the mind has to make
sense out of it. Particular meaning-- say you get doctrine. You get dogma, because the mind has
to think about it. So that if someone asks you, you couldn't tell them in language that fits into
categories of thought and meaning, all of that sort of thing.
But the moment that happens, the dynamism of the experience evaporates. It's-- well, I can talk
for the rest of my life and not say what I'm trying to say. So we proceed. We listen with whatever
listening apparatuses we have, and then give yourself over to the movement in you that reacts or
responds to what you are hearing with your outer and your inner ear. And that's what I'm
concerned about. And feel free to stop it at any point. Now I think that's everything, Joyce,
really.
[AUDIO PLAYBACK]
- I really, really do feel confident I will lay the foundation for our thinking this morning. The fact
that this is a-Is that too loud?
- --living world. Oh, it has wonderment. That is the Bible. Every level of our experience in life, it
is to grow outwards. Go up! That the import of it is missed. The life that is in you and in me, life
which we share, is alive. It is pulsing, throbbing, beating. It has no beginning that the mind can
grasp, apprehend, or comprehend-OK, I got it.
- --and no ending.
[END PLAYBACK]
Joyce.
Excuse me. Do you think that life is actually coordinated in ways that we have no knowledge of,
no hint of?
No, I don't-- I think this is the way it seems at any point that we relate to it. That's all I mean, that
it-- because you see, the way the mind works, it works in terms of some kind of logic-- a
beginning, an ending, some-- it cannot measure. No, no, that's wrong. That's not right.
In order for a thing to make sense to the mind, there has to be something that has to do with
beginning and ending, some context, so that you just don't slide off the universe. This way it'll
slide off the universe. That way it--
4
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
And so that's why it seems to me that whenever we think about life, the only way that makes any
sense, you think of it in terms of beginning and ending. But we know that what we are calling
beginning simply means the point at which we became aware of it. And ending-- we can't think
open ending, so we have to box it in.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
And that's why I think that as a concept, we cannot-- the mind can't wrap itself around a notion
that life itself is alive. And I'll get to that as we go along because-- I can feel it. I can experience
it. But I really can't comprehend this, because there's no logic in it. I can't think of something that
has no beginning. It has to start somewhere. There's a jumping-off place, some--
But you start by saying no, and now you're agreeing. Listen, I wanted to know if you thought that
life was coordinated in some way that cannot be-- that we don't have comprehension. We don't
have mental understanding.
Right, I agree with that.
Oh, I thought you started off by saying it wasn't.
No, no, no.
You do think that?
Yes, you see, because that's the only way we can deal with it. I'm not sure that this is
characteristic of what life is, but it's the part that comes down my street that I can handle. But
where it's been before it got to me and where it's going, it's a part of my guessing. And somebody
comes along who comes from regions that I cannot even imagine.
And we have to give a name to it so that whatever the infinite means to us, that's the name we
give this. And that's all right. It's the handle. May we go on now, Joyce?
[AUDIO PLAYBACK]
- How does it live?
Oh, scared me.
- It lives by feeding on itself! Life feeds on life. And it continues to be. Now the creative
encounter in the lodge is that moment when the barrier between the individual and the universe is
engulfed. That's a freeing moment.
When the customary experience of being shut up in your little world in Brooklyn is interrupted,
is ruptured, and you are no longer the prisoner of your own life. You are no longer the prisoner
of the events of your own life. Now that's the basic proposition on which, when you are feeling
bound, a few days.
[END PLAYBACK]
5
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
Could you stop now?
Joyce?
Yeah.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
When he said life feeds on life, and the physical dimensions of life supporting life, I think we
think of. But it crossed my mind just now- it didn't when I listened to it before-- of the level in
which we share in another dimension, a spiritual dimension, and feeding on life maybe in
another dimension.
If I understand you, I think this is how life nourishes itself in us. I think, for instance, that
whatever walls are built between human beings, or between forms of life, so that this expression
of life cannot be available as nourishment for some other form of life.
When that happens, in terms of conscious-relatedness, then the sense of isolation and being cut
off from nourishment that we need-- let's see if I can illustrate exactly what. One of the things
that I enjoyed doing when I was a boy growing up in Florida, in the spring of the year, early
spring, I enjoyed going down in the swamp with-- do you know what a swamp is?
Spell it out.
S-W-A-M-P. I mean, everybody looks so-- yeah. And I enjoyed going early in the spring and
before there were any signs of spring, even in Daytona, Florida. And you go into the swamp, and
you were pretty sure that the moccasins and so forth were on holiday somewhere.
[LAUGHTER]
And I'd get in the center of the swamp, and it's smelly, but it doesn't stink. It's dank, but it isn't
damp. And everywhere you look, all the mosses and the little pale green shoots. And you look up
at the trees, even the old oak trees that are old as God have little pieces of green things shooting.
And that's where I learned to be still-- not quiet. There's a great difference. And I would get still
enough, and I could hear the swamp breathe. And for hot minutes, as I would say, the life barrier
of little Howard Thurman and all these other things sort of slipped. There was just this sort of-and I didn't know which was the swamp and which was I.
And I'd come out of that place, and this is very cruel, but when I went fishing after that, any kind
of bait I put on my hook, I could get a fish. [LAUGHS] Bad on the fish, but ha!
[LAUGHTER]
Because I had temporarily moved into the flow of existence and had a religious experience. Now
I'd get into trouble, but yes, and when I start trying to name it and label it, then I've read it. If you
disagreed with it, I'm ready to kill you, because you would dare-- and all that sort of thing, so I'd
become very defensive. And that's why I feel that the spiritual dimension-- you catch it-- you
don't learn it. You catch it.
6
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
[INAUDIBLE] doing John R. Mott-- does that name mean anything to anybody in this room?
John R. Mott? Yeah. He was at one time-- well, his father did not want him to be contaminated
by religion. So he sent him to-- but he wanted him to have this profoundly wonderful education,
so he selected Cornell University. But it's Cornell University at that far-off time had-- was a
great stronghold of philosophy and metaphysics, science, but nobody bothered much about
religion. That was sort of out, about.
So this is where John R. Mott's father sent him and would protect him from all the
contamination. And his roommate in this house where they lived was a man whose name was
Wilder, who was the father of the World Student Christian Federation. Well, everybody here is
so young, but-[LAUGHTER]
At one time, the whole Protestant, particularly, missionary movement was nourished and
supported by young college people and young medical people who were sent all over the world
to teach and so forth as missionaries taking the gospel, and healing, and so forth.
Well, Wilder-- I don't remember his first name-- was the first secretary of this World Student
Christian Movement-- I think that's what it was-- anyways, and John R. Mott says that the first
night he spent with Wilder as they're roommates at Cornell, he caught religion as he catches the
measles.
[LAUGHTER]
And what his father was sending away from, he unwittingly sent him to. Now there's a-- and you
remember when Schweitzer went out the first time as a missionary? It was the London-- sent out
by the London Missionary Society, and he just finished his doctor's thesis of psychological
analysis of the personality of Jesus, one of these way-out things.
And he just finished the book on the historical Jesus. At the end, he gives us that great paragraph,
after debunking the whole thing, he says that very last paragraph, He comes to us as One
unknown, without a name. He speaks to us the strange words, "Follow Me," and to those who
would obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, and in the
sufferings, and the sorrows through which they shall pass in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable
mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.
Well, the London Missionary Society said, we'll send you out, support you. Heal people, but you
can't talk to them about religion. So his first service-- term of service, in the heart of Africa, as
the representative of the London Missionary Society, he was under a ban not to talk religion. So
the people to whom he ministered had to catch it. He was not permitted to preach-- to do
anything but heal.
And there's some people who've written about him who say that his most effective work was
done when he had to rely on tenderness, gentleness, on the imagination that comes from a trained
mind geared to healing human diseases, and when he had to speak the whole truth that he had in
that kind of sacramental expression of the healing art. And many people feel it was his most
7
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
effective years, not after Lambaréné was built and all this, but then, when he wasn't permitted to
beat his gums-[LAUGHTER]
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
--but he had this manifested through-- all right, Joyce, I'll be here all night, so just leave, and I'm
sorry.
[AUDIO PLAYBACK]
- There are at least four levels of this kind of experience. I'd like you to think a bit about it. That
is the kind of food of inner stimulus, the inner zeal where we have what is called a momentary
flash-Aah, yes.
- --of profound inspiration maybe, however human. When suddenly there is an opening, an
opening, and you see beyond the moment. You get a quick, fleeting glimpse of a possibility in an
idea with which you have been working. And you go round and round and round and round, and
suddenly, what was a wall opens up, and then closes. Paracelsus talks about this.
Yeah!
- I was a wanderer so long, the way I sought lay hid. And then, he says, the clouds broke. And as
the clouds broke, they revealed the spires of the city, and the clouds came back together again.
But Paracelsus says, I have seen the city that I glimpsed. And that view, no darkness can
obscure. This is one kind of encounter. It is fleeting. It is temporary as far as the time interval is
concerned.
It is exciting. Sometimes it is devastating. Sometimes it causes the whole mind and spirit to
tremble like a leaf in the wind. It passes. The barrier between the individual life and something
wider is removed, and then comes back. We've all had it. Then there is the kind of an experience
for when the life-- this distractions are the memoria.
When the life-- your life or my life-- seems to be anchored in a certain direction, what the poet
sometimes call a set of the soul, what we may call on in other language the way in which the life
seems to be focused towards an end. And then you look back upon your life, you see that ever
since you were aware of yourself, it seems as if all of the details of your life, all of the
meaningful experiences of your life, all of them have been moving in a certain direction.
And that at times, when you were not even aware of it, it seems that this direction happens. And
they-- you know they moved the cable car from California Street-- because I lived in San
Francisco. Always you could hear the cable moving. The cable was under the ground, but it's this
very wonderful sight.
So that if you went to sleep before 1 o'clock in the morning, and when the cable stopped, you
woke up, because the movement of the cable has lulled you to sleep. And then you thought all
8
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
was not well because the cable wasn't moving. Now how did the car move on this cable? The car
was anchored with a trap of some sort onto the cables, and it--
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
[END PLAYBACK]
9
�
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/394-358_B.html" ></iframe>
Time Period
The decade in which the recording was produced.
1980s
Original Title
Title as transcribed from tape cassette
Conversations with Howard Thurman (parts 1 and 2) (80-9/19-20-21), 1980 Sep 19-21, Side B
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
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
394-358_B
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Thurman, Howard
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
<a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a>
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<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
Conversations with Howard Thurman, September 1980, Parts 1 and 2, Side B
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1980-09-19
Description
An account of the resource
This recording is a part of a wider series of conversations from September to October of 1980 where Howard Thurman met with a variety of young men and women who were discerning their calling to ministry. Thurman poses the intent of this group as an opportunity to "open up for one's self the moving, vital, creative push of God, while God is still disguised in the movement of God's self." In this recording, Howard Thurman reflects with the participants what it means to live into one's calling as an offering of Thanksgiving to God. At the center of navigating his sense of calling, Thurman indicates that life feeds off of itself, and that it is in one's recognition of life's innate interwovenness, that the only response one's mind can have is making sense of one's lived reality.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Description by Dustin Mailman
Albert Schweitzer
Brooklyn
calling
conversation
Cornell University
creative encounter
doctrine
dynamism
historical Jesus
John R. Mott
journey
life feeding upon life
light
meaning making
meaning of life
meditation
Meister Eckhart
mind
mysticism
Oak Tree
oyster bed
Quakers
religious experience
Rufus Jones
San Francisco
swamp
tape recorder
-
http://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/pittsthurman/original/4ab9ad6f7127ca2b0b2d4799acef34ef.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI4CD764Y635IGLNA&Expires=1711719600&Signature=wmc4Y6YM5O88XM6l7rpJHdHWs9Y%3D
8aa46d518dd1388eace146cc23644596
PDF Text
Text
Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
394-232_B.mp3
Today, McCall takes his discussion a step further. He is raising the question as to how deeply
satisfying is the notion of the hand of God. It is personal, on the one hand, or it may be
impersonal. Beautiful or ugly. Kind and compassionate. Brutal or sadistic.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
We begin then by saying with him that-- remember that while you are seeking, you are also
being sought. You will not be lost, you will not miss the gate. You will be found. You will be
led, you will enter in. Look for that. Expect it.
Expect shells to break in their season. Expect boats to ride as the tide comes in. This is hope-- to
desire and to expect. To desire but not to expect it is not hope. For though you may desire the
moon, you hardly hope for it.
To expect but not to desire is not hope. For who that expects his loved one to die could be said to
hope for it. But to desire and to expect the desire's fulfillment, that is hope, and we are saved by
hope.
I remember some time ago looking up an old meaning of the word "hope" in connection with
something that I was writing at the time. And to my amazement, I discovered that there is a
definition of hope which says that hope is the inlet that connects the sea with the lagoon. It is the
opening through which the lagoon has free and easy access to the sea. It is the opening through
which the sea has free and easy access to the lagoon.
This opening through which the ebb and flow of the rhythmic pattern of life is not only external
to the individual but it is a part of the internal character, structure, and meaning of experience.
And this, in my judgment, is what McCall is talking about.
And then he goes on in another quotation. "If I cannot place a God behind the universe, I shall
nevertheless wish not to leave an emptiness." You may recall in The Brothers Karamazov that
one of the figures, one of the characters in this novel speaks of the fact that since by man's
definitions or theories or experiences, there is no God anywhere, which leaves the central seat
governing the totality of the universe empty. This character says, "Since there is no God, I will
have to be God myself."
Now McCall is thinking about that basic idea that's inherent in this suggestion when he says, "If I
cannot place a God behind this universe, I shall nevertheless wish not to leave an emptiness. That
would not be honest, nor according to the intellect's necessities, nor in the temper of an age of
science."
And continuing, he says, "All put fear is there, behind this universe our home, or at least our
house." One says, nothing stands there. Another contradicts, says something is standing there but
the something is unconscious. A third will run to cover in what he calls the unknowable. Many
refuse to look, having assumed that it doesn't matter.
But it might. And if it matters, then what? And McCall goes on to discuss this. And at a time
when in the period when this book was being written that there were many rampant notions
1
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
about how we may ascribe some conscious meaning do what seems to be the impersonal
character of the universe.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
And I think each of us has had the experience of seeming to be alone and solitary and in a sense,
deserted but not quite deserted. For if one feels deserted, then the idea is that at one time, one
was not deserted, and now by contrast, one feels left out or alone.
But this is not the mood that McCall is addressed-- to which he is addressing himself. He is
talking about a primary feeling. "Not only that there is nothing there now but that there never has
been anything.
Now what does the human mind-- what does the human spirit do with that mood in the midst of
its tribulations and its suffering? Now this is where he comes out. Even if I poured my protests to
the silence that surrounds me, I heard that wandering voice again, and I said, it moves in circles.
For all its moving, it arrives nowhere except to the place of its beginning, which is to cancel it
out.
Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his seat. I would know the
words which he would answer me--" this is Job speaking and McCall is quoting him. "Behold, I
go forward, but he is not there and backward but I cannot perceive him.
On the left hand where he does work, but I cannot behold him. He hideth himself on the right
hand, but I cannot see him. But he knoweth the way that I take."
And then McCall says, "No, wait. Hold there. Hold everything. Prove that," he says. "Prove that
he knoweth. With that, if that were true, if I were really profoundly convinced that it is true that
he knoweth, then I might endure the rest. I could endure anything that life can do to me if I know
that he knoweth."
And on this note, he ends this part of his wrestling with the hand.
2
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
We Believe (Television Series, 1958-1965)
Description
An account of the resource
<em>We Believe</em> was a color television program that aired on WHDH-TV, Channel 5, in Boston on weekday mornings at 11:15. From 1958 to 1965, while Howard Thurman was Dean of the Chapel at Boston University, he was the host of the Friday morning show. Each message has a brief introductory section with bells and music before Thurman delivers his short meditation. Some recordings have been edited to remove the intro. In some cases, the Howard Thurman Educational Trust produced tapes with two messages on one recording.<br /><br />"These meditations are no longer than 15 minutes, but highly representative of his style, influence, and search for common ground." - <a href="http://archives.bu.edu/web/howard-thurman">the Howard Thurman and Sue Bailey Thurman Collections at Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.</a><br /><br />
<p style="text-align: right;"><em>We Believe</em> program listing in the TV Guide, March 29, 1958</p>
<img src="http://pittsviva.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/webelieve-whdh-boston.png" style="float: right;" alt="webelieve-whdh-boston.png" />
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
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/394-232_B.html" ></iframe>
Original Title
Title as transcribed from tape cassette
McCall's Hand of God (IV), 1964
Time Period
The decade in which the recording was produced.
1960s
Location
The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon
WHDH-TV, Boston, Massachusetts
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
394-232_B
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Thurman, Howard
Title
A name given to the resource
McCall's Hand of God, Part 5 (1964-10-02)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1964-10-02
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
<a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a>
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<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.
Description
An account of the resource
In this recording within the We Believe series; Howard Thurman reflects upon Oswald W.S. McCall's "Hand of God." Here, Thurman ponders the centrality of hope in the life of faith, and the ways in which hope is grounded in a myriad of contradictions. He continues by defining hope, noting that hope is deeply experiential and the central marker of making sense of the Hand of God.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Dustin Mailman
experience
fear
Hand of God
hope
interconnectivity
journey
liminality
mind
Nature of God
Oswald McCall
rhythm
salvation
seeking
solitary
spirit
The Brothers of Karamazov
trust
voice
-
http://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/pittsthurman/original/e64170fde16c20fe264836470b92d825.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI4CD764Y635IGLNA&Expires=1711719600&Signature=o4Cr8qnJZ5T3T%2BM8exjDMSOXRwk%3D
fc05ac152e92d3dccdb1f9f3c0131496
PDF Text
Text
Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
394-100_B.mp3
I think that it is my experience of my own aliveness that is what I mean when I say that I am
living. And I think that, at the same time, I'm very aware of the fact that the essential part of my
life is not contained in whether [INAUDIBLE] of my body. I can't explain it.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
But this is why, for instance, under certain circumstances, a man very gladly gives up his life for
something which seems, to him, to be very important than whether he lives or whether he dies in
such categories. Now what this is, how we designate varies with a whole strain of other
conditions. But that, there is an element here that cannot be defined in terms of what is
happening to my body. [INAUDIBLE] which you [? are sure. ?] Now where it comes from,
where it goes, how it got where it it, it's a nice exercise to practice here.
There are very good [INAUDIBLE] theological explanations for it that would satisfy the
believer. But when everything is over, what remains is that a man experiences a quality of his
life that cannot be defined in terms of his body and in terms of the [INAUDIBLE]. Now this
opens up a whole lot of other things. I can understand why there are people who follow in this
line of thought. There's an echo from the platonic idea of the soul who feel that they bring
memories into this experience of things that were never taught to them, they never heard of.
When I first began teaching years and years ago at a men's college, I was [INAUDIBLE]. One
afternoon, a fellow came into my quarters with a piece of sculpture he had just wrapped up in a
newspaper. And he said, [INAUDIBLE] Who did it? Where'd you get it from? He said, I did it
this afternoon. [INAUDIBLE] tell me more. And he said, I let out the stones [INAUDIBLE]
stones [? from ?] granite. And I took a chisel and a hammer. And this is what [INAUDIBLE]
And I like you, and I want for you to have it.
And I said, well, who are you? I'm a freshman. I'm from Savannah, Georgia, a place called
[INAUDIBLE]. Is your father an artist? He said, I've never seen an artist in my life. He said, one
day last year in my senior year of high school, the city of Savannah admitted our high school
class to spend an afternoon in the art gallery. And as soon as I walked in, something came over
me. And I knew that anything I saw there, I could do. [INAUDIBLE]
So I said, I'm going to Indianapolis next week and may I take it because I know the head of
sculptures at the Indianapolis Art Institute. I'll have her look at it and see what she thinks
[INAUDIBLE]. So I made the appointment with a friend of mine. And on Saturday morning, I
went out to her house.
It's quite an experience, because when I walked to her front door, I rang the bell. She came to the
door and took a hard look at me. And she said, I saw you on the plane last night. I said, were you
on the plane from [INAUDIBLE] Oh, no. I wasn't on the plane. I was here. But I saw you. You
had on the same suit. You had on a blue shirt and a maroon neck tie. I said, that's right. And then
she said, well, [INAUDIBLE]
[LAUGHTER]
1
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
I felt a little creepy now. So when I went into the living room of her [INAUDIBLE] room,
everything in the room was painted in light pea green. The windows, the ceiling, everything, the
baby grand piano, all the chairs. And then there was an old-fashioned gas light that had the cloth
thing, the mantles or whatever the thing is called. And that was burning. The only thing that was
not pea green, aside from [INAUDIBLE] was a bust of [INAUDIBLE] that she was working on.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
[INAUDIBLE]
And then she said, I believe you have something you want to show me. And I said, that's right.
[INAUDIBLE] Took me by the hand, and closed our eyes and began running our hands through
[INAUDIBLE]. And suddenly I felt that I was in the room alone [INAUDIBLE]. Have you had
the experience of being with someone and suddenly just being by yourself? But I knew that if I
waited, she'd come back. She did. And I said, well, [INAUDIBLE]. Oh, she said, I would feel
greatly blessed if I could [INAUDIBLE]. Tell me one. So I told her about two of them.
[INAUDIBLE]
BC, AD, some time far off somewhere. And I looked [INAUDIBLE]. And she said, well, how [?
do you come ?] [? for it? ?] Here is a young student, [INAUDIBLE] who's never been around the
gallery. [INAUDIBLE] and the first thing [INAUDIBLE] without any training whatsoever,
showed [INAUDIBLE]
See, the body that he has now is a young body. But she said, if I may apply age to souls-- and the
contradiction [? of that-- ?] that body houses an old soul.
Now all of this is-- you're going to get into a lot of [? fog ?] here. The only thing that I want to
have you see is that I think Plotinus is right when he says that when I become aware of who I am,
I discover that I am without beginning and without ending. [INAUDIBLE]
And I have only one assignment as far as any other living thing is in the world. And that is to
find in that person, or that animal or what have you, the thing of which I'm aware in myself. And
whatever it takes to call this thing that is imprisoned in another human being to get out of its
prison [INAUDIBLE], I will do.
Could mean healing the body, could mean feeding the hungry. Whatever [? it ?] [? is. ?] Because
I cannot lay claim to me until in my person, you can lay claim to you. [INAUDIBLE]
Now, I want to [? tie ?] [? this ?] man up because we want to get through with him. We aren't
through but we'll have to stop. Now let's quickly with [? screaming ?] redundancies
[INAUDIBLE], the good, God, the absolute, without category, without definition, [? spills ?] [?
over ?] in what Plotinus calls mind. Mind manifests itself in soul, world soul, Emerson's OverSoul. And this soul is the soul of existence. And everything that exists participates in that soul.
Now a part of the soul is back up there, so that the soul-- in a delightfully beautiful way, the soul
is always gazing back on its homeland. And it's trying, therefore, to journey back. Now how does
the soul make the journey from the time-space existence back first to the mind, to the nous?
And then what the soul does is seek always for disentangling itself from the involvement of its
senses. All, here again, all the [INAUDIBLE] together disentangling oneself from sensory
2
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
experience, freeing oneself from all of the attachment of identity, by which as an illusion, the
soul seeks to establish its significance. Getting rid, stripping is one way that a contemporary
mystic put it. [? Teething. ?] Getting down to the little substance of the self.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
Now how is this done? Plotinus suggests that it is done by concentration. And concentration is an
act of mind, M-I-N-D. So that I can by concentration penetrate all forms that are emanations
from the mind. And in penetrating these forms, these [INAUDIBLE], it quietly begins to break in
my spirit that I am finding in them what I have discovered in myself. So they don't stand
[INAUDIBLE].
Now when I get that far, says Plotinus, I am up on the verge. I'm up past the timber line now.
And here, as he describes as the soul [? and the ?] home, the home of the soul in the absolute, I
lose all of my own self-awareness.
And impressions of God, of the absolute, of the good, maybe my essence flows back into the
essence out of which [? we've come. ?] And the line of demarcation disappears. But this cannot
last long. Yes.
Is that what you mean [INAUDIBLE]?
I'm sorry.
[INAUDIBLE] I'm always finding it but I'm never finding it?
Yes. And this experience is the moment that Plotinus calls [INAUDIBLE] as the moment of
ecstasy. When [INAUDIBLE] transcended and you are nowhere and you are everywhere.
[INAUDIBLE] boundary [INAUDIBLE] Yes.
During that moment, you can't really-- can you think? You can't know what's happening. You
have to explain it after.
No.
Afterwards it's all explained.
Yes. Afterwards you talk about what happened. But you can't talk about what [INAUDIBLE].
Because there is no margin of the self that can give you subject predicate. You can't establish any
psychological distance between you and the experience. You can only do that after the fact.
Hegel has some such notions when he talks about happiness. You remember when he says that
when a man says that I am happy, he doesn't mean that. He means that I was happy. That when
he's happy, he's happy. He has to get right on the edge away from it before he knows that he was
happy.
It's another way of putting the same [? basic ?] [? influences. ?] His contribution [INAUDIBLE]
that he brings into the stream of Western Christian thought, the essence of the platonic doctrine
of the soul. And the journey that-- not journey. That's the wrong word, I'm sorry. The discovery
3
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
that every person can make that what he is most seeking as the key, the true, the meaning of life
is in himself. But he doesn't quite know it until he discovers it in [? him. ?]
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
And that cycle-- all creation in a tight band of [? steel. ?] And I can never ignore any
manifestation of life. Because if I do, it may be just the revelation of myself that I've been
looking for all my life. [INAUDIBLE]
And we will see when we come to Eckhart, what a fantastic thing [INAUDIBLE]. Eckhart, who
became I think really the son of Plotinus [? in a certain way. ?]
[? Not so ?] with Augustine. When you read Augustine's Confessions, when you read any
[INAUDIBLE]
Well. That's it.
I'm now reading something. I have to apologize. I have such a bad cold. [COUGHS]
"And sometimes even when I'm walking in my garden, and I see the peach tree covered with
blossoms in the corner, and the roses and lilies growing all around, and the grapes hanging from
the table, and all the small flowers sending out their scent, the feeling comes to me. And I want
to say, to all the gardeners that have been before me, to the little old first mother who scratched
earth and put in roots and grasses, to Chinese and Persian and Egyptian and Babylonian and
Indian, and men and women of races whose names I shall never know, without whom I should
never have this beauty, I want to say to you, thanks.
And sometimes as I work there I feel as if they were working beside me. And the garden belongs
to them and to me. And sometimes I think perhaps in years to come, when I have long ages been
dust, some woman working in a garden more beautiful than any I can dream of now will stretch
out her hand and say, to all the gardeners that have been before me. And I, so long dead in the
dust, will live in her heart again.
You know, up country on the Great Plains where the camel thorn tree grows, there are ant heaps
as high almost as a man. Millions of ants have worked at them for years. And slowly and slowly
they have grown a little and a little higher.
Sometimes I have fancied that if a little ant should come on the top of one of these heaps, and
should rear himself on his hind legs and wave his little antennae in the air, and should look
around and say, my ant heap that I have made, my ant heap from which I can see so far, my
plains, my sky, my thorn tree, my earth, and should wave his little antennae and cry, I am at the
beginning of everything, and that then suddenly a gust of wind should come, the ant heap would
still be there. The ant heap on top of which he chanced to be born. And there would still be the
trees and the plains and the sky. But he would be gone forever.
I have sometimes wondered, isn't it a little bit so with us when we walk about so proud on the top
of our little heap of civilization? Because the most that any man can hope for, and the most that
any nation can hope for is this. The man, that in the one little hour of life that is given him he
may be able to add one tiny grain, so small perhaps that no eye will ever see it, to the heap of
things good and beautiful that men have slowly been gathering together through the ages. The
4
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
nation, that when its time to pass comes, as it comes to all, it may have added to the things good
and beautiful which humanity lays up through the ages for the use of all-- one layer, perhaps, one
thin layer, but that so well and truly laid that all coming after shall say it was nobly and
beautifully done."
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
I want to begin with Meister Eckhart today. It was through Eckhart that the channel opened up
that made available, first to the scholastics and then to the modern world, modern philosophy and
religion, the timeless insights first of Plato and then of Plotinus. He was-- he meaning Eckhart-was trained in the school at which Albertus Magnus was the great teacher who was the central
inspiration of the scholastics of the period.
When we try to trace the roots of a man's concepts, it is always a very fascinating adventure of
the mind. Because we come upon what to us is the beginning of the idea in our minds. But if we
examine that beginning in our minds, we see that that beginning was related to something else
that was in someone else's mind with whom we came in contact. And that contact precipitated a
reaction which is the new idea in our mind.
So that we do not ever quite get to the source. We're always on our way to the source. But it
helps a little to be able to read signposts along the way. And one of these I will read to you now.
This is a quotation from Albert Magnus, Albert the Great. And if you listen to it, you will see
here and there ideas which we talked about that were to be found in the mind of Plotinus. It's
very interesting.
And we see these same ideas flowering in a far more formidable and frightening manner in
Thomas Aquinas, for those people who are courageous enough to deal with him. Now this is the
quotation from Albert the Great.
"When St. John says that God is a spirit, and that He must be worshiped in spirit, he means that
the mind must be cleared of all images." Sounds like Plotinus. "When thou prayest, shut thy
door-- that is, the door of the senses. Keep them barred and bolted against all phantasms and all
images.
Nothing pleases God more than a mind free from all occupations and distractions. Such a mind is
in a manner transformed into God, for it can think of nothing and love nothing except God. Other
creatures and itself it only sees in God." You know the basic idea we ran into in Plotinus.
"He who penetrates into himself and so transcends himself ascends truly to God. He whom I love
and desire"-- God, says Albert the Great-- "is above all that is sensible"-- not intellectual, but
sensible in terms of sense, [INAUDIBLE] feeling, touch-- "and all that is intelligible." The mind
can't help me.
"Sense and imagination cannot bring us to Him, but only the desire of a pure heart. This brings
us unto the darkness of the mind whereby"-- in the darkness of the mind-- "we can ascend to the
contemplation even of the mystery of the Trinity. Do not think about the world, nor about thy
friends, nor about the past, the present, or the future. But consider thyself to be outside of the
world and alone with God, as if thy soul were already separated from the body and had no longer
any interest in peace or war or the state or the condition of the world.
5
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
Leave thy body and fix thy gaze on the uncreated light. Let nothing come between thee and God.
The soul in contemplation views the world from afar off, just as when we proceed to God by the
way of abstraction we deny to Him first of all bodily and sensible attributes, then intelligible
qualities, and lastly that being which would keep Him always away from any created thing.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
Now remember, this is the man who was one of the great influences on Eckhart. And what he-one of the great teachers, as a matter of fact. And what he's saying essentially is what Plotinus is
talking about-- that in order to contemplate God, in order to get through to God, as it were, then
all sense data, all this-ness and that-ness, all particularities, all manifestations, all things of that
sort must be removed from the awareness. The only way to get to God, to realize God, is by a
negation of all sense data, all sense, just to get rid of it.
Now this has become one of the monumental steps in the whole mystic journey. And we call it
the Negative Way. You can't get to God unless you disembody yourself.
And of course the question that always comes to my mind is that when I disembody myself, what
do I have? If I am-- I can't think, you see, outside of a context of sense data, touch, feel, smell,
taste, awareness, response to objects external to ourselves. If I'm stripped of all of that, how can I
recognize what I have?
It is only what I'm not that leads towards what I am. But if what I'm not is no longer not-ing, then
I'm lost.
But what this particular stream of mysticism [? that ?] [? is ?] the logic of what you were talking
about in Plotinus. What it says is that the enemy to the spirit is matter. And the thing that I've
always quarreled about in my own thinking about this is that it seems to give matter too much
power.
I think it's one thing to say that I must transcend an object. But it's an entirely different thing to
say that I must deny the validity of the existence of the object. It seems to me that then when the
mystics of this school, following Plato-- [INAUDIBLE] [? yeah. ?]
The particular-- as we pointed out last week, the particular was not the real. Only the universal
was the real. In Jungian psychology, the archetype is the real. In Plato, the universal form is the
real.
You are not real. But man, the man form-- that's the reality. So you'll die. Man will die. But that
won't. That keeps pushing that out. And they eliminated and more keep coming. You can't-because the reality is not in the body, in the creation. The reality is that of which the creation is a
manifestation. I was starting to say symbolic. But not quite. That isn't fair to it.
Albert the Great then said that the only way that you can finally get to God is by ridding oneself
of all sense experience. Now, this is a tremendous assumption [INAUDIBLE]. And I don't want
to tarry with it too long. Because I want to get on with Eckhart.
But the assumption [INAUDIBLE] in my mind is that I can be aware of myself if I didn't have a
body. And [? certainly ?] [? you look. ?] Because how would I know myself? Or do I know
6
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
myself from the inside? And that my knowledge of myself really is not contingent on my righthand or left-hand, my eye or my foot or my body.
These are not the real me. Or are they? If I were to ask you, who are you? What would you say?
What would you say?
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
Who are you? Well, am i my mother's daughter? Am I my father's son? My sister's brother? My
boyfriend's girlfriend?
And if I kept asking, kept pushing, what would you finally say? How can you reveal your youness to me, [INAUDIBLE]? How would you go about that?
What has happened when you feel you've really discovered somebody? What happens? What has
happened? Take a nibble, somebody.
You're giving them that self [INAUDIBLE] you've shared something. Or you fulfill a need in
that [INAUDIBLE].
Yeah. Yes.
[INAUDIBLE] tendency to define yourself in relation to somebody else. Take all those example
you said. [INAUDIBLE]
Yeah. So that you bounce back to you off them. And in that bouncing back, ah, this is all right.
Yes.
[INAUDIBLE]
7
�
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/394-100_B.html" ></iframe>
Location
The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon
University of Redlands, Redlands, California
Internal Notes
Notes for project team
Edited transcript. Uncertain: *screaming* redundancies; teething; basic influences; discovers it in *him*; by the way - GL 5/21/19
Time Period
The decade in which the recording was produced.
1970s
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
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
394-100_B
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Thurman, Howard
Title
A name given to the resource
On Mysticism, Part 16 (University of Redlands Course), 1973
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
<a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a>
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<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.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-13042600.321303 4037296.9410534))
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1973-02
Description
An account of the resource
This recording is the tenth 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, Howard Thurman is asking the question, "What do I have?" He poses this question in relation to the mystical traditions that strive to empty themselves of the material world for the sake of transcendental relationship with God. Engaging this question, Thurman struggles with the tension between humanity's innate entanglement with "the real" of the world, and the ways in which one truly experiences the love of God by emptying oneself from all "occupations and distractions of the mind."
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Description by Dustin Mailman
actualization
adventure of the mind
Albert Magnus
aliveness
ant
Augustine
biology
Carl Jung
contemplation
creation
ecology
embodiment
experience
George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Great Plains
identity
journey
kenosis
love
manifestation
Meister Eckhart
Morehouse College
negative way
philosophy
Plotinus
reality
revelation
sanctification
self-awareness
solitude
soul
source
the real
transformation
universal form
-
http://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/pittsthurman/original/1b95bd58abcac673d3183e848bfb9855.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI4CD764Y635IGLNA&Expires=1711719600&Signature=WFzpOz3%2Fbfd14XAqlI2qzrSpO8g%3D
ff85f4b7828cc00f21a758979c4515c0
PDF Text
Text
Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
394-098_A.mp3
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
Rest of your life. And if it doesn't make sense to the rest of your life, it has no meaning. Now, if
you go back to the experience of Jesus at baptism, which was a tremendously significant-- not
only emotional, but I think profoundly mystical experience. Because in that experience, the
narrow awareness of own particular kind of consciousness was expanded.
And the language that He uses in talking about it was language that many of his heroes could
comprehend, could understand. He said, as you may remember, that to Him the heavens opened,
and the spirit of God took form, concretized itself as a dove. All the symbolism that's wrapped up
in that.
And the dove landed on His shoulder, which was a confirmation to Him of the validity of the
experience which He had. But this was not all. A voice spoke to Him, using language to which
He could correspond with understanding. And the voice said, thou art my son, my beloved. This
day have I begot thee. Or in thee, I am well pleased, depending upon which one of the texts one
uses.
And immediately after that, He went away to a solitary place to do what? To work out the
implications of the vision, in terms of the life that He had to live. What does this say to me, about
me, about my life? So that from this moment on, everything that I do must take into account this
radical envision into the normal patterns of my life.
And in order to do it, He had to dramatize His detachment by withdrawing-- according to the
account-- withdrawing from the normal way that He had been living, becoming solitary.
Retreating, as we would say now. For what purpose? To see how this vision which He had would
settle in and become part of the landscape, the total landscape of His life.
In other words, He had to ask Himself, what does this experience mean? Not in general, not to
the Jewish people, not to the hierarchy of Jewish religion, but what does it mean to me in terms
of how I will live the rest of my life? And you may recall from the account that He was alone. 40
days, 40 nights.
And what does He do? Here again, He describes the experience in language that belonged to his
world of particulars. So He said-- when talking about it after that to the disciples or to somebody- that Satan, that the devil came to me to find out whether or not the experience which I've had
was a valid one for me.
And whether or not-- and what would be involved in the subsequent behavior of my life in the
light of the vision which I've had? How can I be true to it and stay in the world functioning?
What kind of life is laid upon me now, as a result of this initial illuminating experience? And we
have a phrase for it in Christian religion. He was tempted of the devil.
And the devil presented three temptations to Him. And I'm always fascinated by what subsequent
generations do with this experience as they try to appropriate it to the stream of life in which they
themselves are living approximately.
1
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
There is a rather famous painting in Chicago of Jesus being tempted of the devil. And the artist
has an interesting point of view. Now, that's Jesus. And the artist has, surrounding His head,
many fingers.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
And you don't see them at first. But when you sit and contemplate the painting, you see that there
are all of these fingers pulling at His mind. Trying to do what? Trying to see whether or not the
experience which He had-- the experience of illumination-- is, for Him, valid.
Does it make sense? What kind of new demand must be made upon His life, in order that he will
do no violence to this vision which He had. And the first thing that happened, you may
remember, is that He realized that He was hungry, which is a perfectly natural thing, if we take it
literally that for 40 days he hadn't eaten. Of course, I can't imagine it, but that is what the record
says, that for 40 days, he hadn't eaten.
And He was perhaps looking on the ground at the stones around. And to his amazement, some of
these stones looked just like the kinds of loads of bread that his mother used to bake and that just
set off a whole syndrome of thee things. He realized He was hungry.
And what is the bearing of my vision on the fact that the world is a practical place where a man
must eat if they are going to live? That in order to eat, they must work out some accommodation
to the crud stuff of daily living. And this opened up, you see, at once a very fundamental
question that is related to the quality of the kind of vision which He had.
How important is bread to a man who is committed to following a vision? How important is it?
And at once, you see, He opens up a very, very far-reaching, universal aspect of human
experience. Man will often give up any liberty that they have-- not only being true to something
like a vision, but men will give up any liberty they have-- if they are guaranteed bread.
Do you remember in Tolstoy's stories, there was a man who owned the richest land in all the
Russias. And he decided that he would give some of this land away. And he'd give it to any man
who began-- who came and gave to him all the money that he had. Then, in exchange for that, he
would give it to the man all the land around which he could run, from sunrise to sunset.
And the hero in Tolstoy's story comes. And he'd always wanted this land. He'd dreamed about it.
And he gave the money that he had. And early in the morning, he began running. And he hadn't
been running very long, and he remembered that he was excited about the possibility of getting
the land that he didn't want any breakfast. And now he needed the energy, but he didn't have it.
But this is rich land, and he'd always wanted rich land. So he kept running and running. And he
became more and more tired, and more and more exhausted. And his feet became like lead as he
beat out a rhythm on this soil. Rich land, rich land, rich land.
He looked up as the sun was about to set. And he said, now, I've got to put forth one more great
effort. And he uncorked all of his spare adrenaline and began drawing on it with abiding
enthusiasm.
2
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
And finally, he made it, just as the sun was going down. And then he dropped dead. And they
took him aside, [INAUDIBLE], and buried him in six feet. And that's all the rich land he could
use.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
Now, the point is that the implication of the vision-- and this is the thing to keep in mind-- that
the implication of the vision is always in terms of the private life of the person who sees the
vision. This is the critical thing. And the private life has to be the for instance of the vision. Or
the vision disappears.
Now, if a man feels that he has a mission in the world, as it is altogether possible and
conceivable that so felt Jesus, that he has a mission in the world, then the bearing of the vision on
his mission and how that mission can and will fulfill itself in the details of his life becomes the
nature of the secondary crisis that follows from the primary vision.
How can I deal with my own problem about food and shelter if I am to be true to the vision? Are
there somethings that I can't do to get bread without doing violence In the vision? How binding
is it? Does there come a time-- may there come a time-- in my life when I must make the choice
between being true to the vision and getting bread.
And, here again, the way in which this whole struggle emerges in the consciousness of Jesus he
expressed it by saying that man must not live by bread alone. And this is very interesting to my
kind of mind because it does not say that man doesn't live by bread. It recognizes the importance
of bread as bread. But it also recognizes that as important as bread is, it is not the most important
thing in the world.
Because I must, therefore, always be alerted to the fact that in my effort to live my life in the
normal ways of survival, I am under a peculiar necessity because of the vision that I've seen to
find a way by which I can honor the part of me to which the vision addresses itself, even at the
expense of honoring the part of me that calls for bread. It may sound-- no, I don't know how it
sounds, but it is a profoundly significant insight that is at work here.
And to push it in another way of all of you are young people. And you have not decided
completely altogether what you're going to do with your lives. Each of you may have a great
sense of mission that you are hiding and protecting that no one knows anything about. But the
time will come, even in the simplest ways, when you may have to make a choice between being
true to your private insight as to value, as to your insight into what is right or wrong as far as the
way you live your life.
And you will have to deal with the whole issue of compromises. And this is how do I vote? If I
do certain things, I can get this kind of job. But if I do, then as far as something else I need that's
very important, I become a cripple.
Now, am I willing to become a cripple in order that I might get this kind of job that does this and
this and this and this? Because you may not have had the kind of-- at this point, you may not
have had the kind of dramatic vision about which we are talking in terms of the life Jesus. But
everyone has had his moment.
3
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
Can certainly things seem to you to be true for you? And then this is followed by a whole pattern
of experiences in which you must make a choice between saying yes to this insight which you
have or saying yes to this demand. There's a report of the desert [INAUDIBLE]. [INAUDIBLE]
Clark, who lived in Arizona, he put this whole struggle in contemporary terms. And a rather
interesting thing about the Civil War, and this is what he says about it. If I can piece it together in
my mind.
This is the Civil War. My father prayed when he drew a bead on the gray coats back in those
blazing years when the house was divided, the Civil War. Bless his old heart. There never was
truer a kinder, yet my father prayed while hoping that the ball from his clumsy old musket might
thud into the body of some hot-eyed young southerner and tumble him limp in the mud of
Vicksburg trenches. That was my father praying and shooting, full hearted with never a doubt.
But what about me and my dear [INAUDIBLE]? Could I put my prayers behind a slim spring
field bullet? Hardly, except to mutter Jesus, you and I part company here. My country calls for
my body and takes my soul also. Do you see those humans herded and driven against me? Turn
away, Jesus, for I must kill them? Why such evils bring some vast vague good to my country I
do not know. But today, my business is killing. And my gods must be luck and the devil till this
thing is over. Turn away, Jesus, your eyes make me slack in my duty.
My father could mix his prayers with his shooting. And he with a great good man in his
generation. But if I should pray like him, I'd spoil it by laughing. What is the matter?
Now, that brings a whole thing in sharp focus, not with all of the glow that comes from your
having seen the heavens open and the spirit descend upon your shoulders like a dove and hearing
a voice say that I'm very pleased with you.
But every human being has in his story a moment or moments when he gets a glimpse of his way
to go. And then all of the demands of his life, projections that are placed upon his life by those
you love him, ideals that belong to others that are transplanted into his mind. All of the time what
he's trying to do is to find out what is the word that has been spoken to him?
This is the whole point, that the mystic is always bothered about is the visions are just visions
and period. But the vision is in a man. And the man has a life. And that life has many
involvements and ratifications. And the question he has to raise is, what bearing is the light that
breaks in my mind, what bearing does that have on my particular journey? This is the problem.
And how Jesus dealt with it, that man must not life by bread alone, that man must have bread,
but the bias, the accent, the emphasis, the prejudice of his life must be on the side of the thing in
him that gives him the feeling of being true to himself. Then there was the next form that this
same problem took.
If my vision is correct, if it is not direct, if is my vision is authentic, if I have not been deluded,
then it means that I'm very privileged, that everybody is in heaven. And as I am privileged, then
it means that there's certain prerogatives that are mine in a peculiar way because I've had the
vision. And because of I've had the vision, this gives me immunity from a lot of things in which
people are involved who haven't had the vision.
4
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
And the form of this, and the imagination of [INAUDIBLE]. Bearing in mind now, working out
the implications of the mystic vision on the practical details of his life. That's the issue that we're
dealing with.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
In his imagination, he was taken to the pinnacle of the [INAUDIBLE] with his imagination. And
he was told by the temple, now, if your vision is really true, authentic, then you can jump down
from the pinnacle of the temple, defy all natural law, and you won't get hurt. God will take care
of you. God, who gave the vision will, how does he say it, he will give you the [INAUDIBLE]
concerning you. They will just swoop down and bear you up on their wings, lest you dance you
foot, not to speak of your head, against the stone.
The real dilemma that is created by the experience of vision is the delusion that the things that
apply to people who haven't had the vision do not apply to you. That because I've had the vision,
you see, life will make an exception in my case because I'm different.
Now, I didn't ask to be different. It is a gratuity on the plot of existence. I was going along and
tending to my business. And then I was struck. [SNAPPING] Bingo. And I'm not responsible.
Do you remember in the-- who wrote the Hunchback of Notre Dame?
Victor Hugo.
Ah, thank you. In Hugo's Notre Dame, you remember the priest is standing up at a window
overlooking the square in front of Notre Dame. There's the window. There's the priest. Now,
down here's the square.
Now, in the square, there's a gypsy girl dancing. And the priest is looking down at the square,
and very slowly he becomes aware of the existence of this exotic creation dancing down there.
And when he becomes aware of her-- that word-- when he becomes aware of her, at once, he is
thrown back to the genius of his vision and commitment.
And what does he say? Do you remember his words? He says, if I may paraphrase him, he says,
I've never seen anyone as beautiful as this gypsy girl, gypsy dancer. She is so beautiful that if she
had been around when Jesus Christ was being born, he would have selected her for his mother.
But that wasn't enough. He said she was so beautiful that the sight of her was more to be desired
than the sight of God.
And then he remembered his commitment. And then what happened? [INAUDIBLE].
Frightened, panicked, his whole spirit was thrown into confusion and utter chaos. And then he
began to work his way out of his moral dilemma. [INAUDIBLE]. He says, it isn't my fault.
There's no hope at all.
Because as long as God sent to me intimations, hints, manifestations of the devil in the form of
various exhortations, it's all right. I could stand it.
But when God confronted me with the devil himself in the form of the gypsy dancer, I failed. I
capitulated. And it isn't my fault. It's God's fault because he did not make me and the devil equal
in strength. That is the way he came out of it. [INAUDIBLE].
5
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
Now, what I'm saying is that the most subtle of visions that comes to the person who is aware of
being visited by the visions is that he regards himself as in some way so separated from other
men that he is not bound by the things that bind ordinary people who haven't had the vision.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
And you can apply it in a thousand different ways that there is always the element of mystery in
the visitation, that there's something enigmatic about it, something that is beyond the rational,
that transcends logic.
And if this is true when it comes to revenge, there is always an element in it that is without merit.
There is a grace in it. It did not come to me because I'm a good man. It did not come to me
because I'm brilliant. It didn't come to me because of my heritage or all the rest of things that I
could mention.
Because the same things, in terms of ability, equipment, genius, whatever resources that I may
think of, there are a lot of people who have these. But they were not visited. I was.
So that the mystery, then, deepens. Why was I visited? I'm just an ordinary man, but I was
visited.
Well, I was visited because-- I tried to decode the mystery-- I was visited because God saw in me
something he didn't see in the other people. And who am I to even question about the judgment
or the wisdom of God. If god saw something in me that was so significant that he visited me with
me, then I must be extraordinary, not only extraordinary, but I must be unique, not different, but
unique.
There's a mystique in it that called for the great creed of mystique in the universe. And it has in
me in response to this nucleus, this mystique nucleus which is germane to the way I'm put
together. And this leaves me different and unique.
And therefore, because it does, I'm not bound by the ordinary things that bind ordinary people
who have not been so blessed. [INAUDIBLE].
Now, this is the form that it took in the mind of Jesus after the vision. And [INAUDIBLE], if we
may rationalize it and kind of paraphrase [INAUDIBLE] that [INAUDIBLE] said to him in his
mind that there's nothing wrong, really, that there really is no logic in life, no antecedent in
[INAUDIBLE], no reaping and sowing. But there's a way by which this syndrome can be
defeated if you have the gift. You need not be bound by antecedent and consequence. You need
not be bound by reaping and sowing.
The whole structure of dependability and the nature of the world and the nature of existence
breaks down in the presence of your confrontation that you've been doing. Now, this
[INAUDIBLE]. And the reply of Jesus is very interesting. If we paraphrase it again, what he said
was if I go up to the pinnacle of the temple and jump down, the possibilities are I'll break my
neck. The son of God [INAUDIBLE] vision to the contrary of that [INAUDIBLE], because there
is a logic-- there is a profound logic-- in existence. And this logic is binding upon all forms of
life, including human form.
6
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
And at no point in time is any expression of life privileged to skip out of the pattern of the living
and act as if the logic of life did not exist.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
So the question then becomes how must I relate to the natural order in which I must work out my
life? In the light of the fact that there was a moment when it seems as if I was lifted out of that
order in a unique moment of awareness and vision. And then I dropped back into it. But I must
work up the palette of my life just as if this had not happened.
And yet, because it happened, it informs everything that I do in my effort to work it out. This is
the problem, and this is the issue. Now, to leave that, because I don't want to spend too much
time there, how did he manage in living the rest of his days in the light of the settling of a way of
living which was clear to him after this struggle that came shortly on the heels.
7
�
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/394-098_A.html" ></iframe>
Location
The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon
University of Redlands, Redlands, California
Time Period
The decade in which the recording was produced.
1970s
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
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
394-098_A
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Thurman, Howard
Title
A name given to the resource
On Mysticism, Part 11 (University of Redlands Course), 1973
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
<a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a>
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<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.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-13042600.321303 4037296.9410534))
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1973-02
Description
An account of the resource
This recording is the seventh 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 explores the question "How must I relate to the natural order in which I must work out my life?" This question is met with the significance of the Temptation of Jesus in relation to Jesus' baptism. Thurman suggests that Jesus' transcendental experience in Baptism informs his steadfast commitment to not be led into temptation. The example of Jesus, for Thurman, illustrates the significance of the religious life, and the ways in which the religious life points one towards fullness, freedom, and responsibility.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Description by Dustin Mailman
actualization
baptism
biblical interpretation
center
Charles Badger Clark
civil war
dove
Hunchback of Notre Dame
importance
Jesus
journey
Leo Tolstoy
mission
mystery
mysticism
natural order
nucleus
personal truth
pragmatism
religious experience
responsibility
Satan
solitude
structure of dependability
struggle
subjectivity
temptation of Jesus
truth
value
Vicksburg
Victor Hugo
vision
withdraw
-
http://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/pittsthurman/original/dde90f495ad776018b44db8d1422db8f.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI4CD764Y635IGLNA&Expires=1711719600&Signature=r99%2B%2BCxTA9%2FQ3d40GXQzYzjYytw%3D
d3ea9466bbb8524110189b86ee73c742
PDF Text
Text
Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
394-095_A.mp3
[LAUGHTER]
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
Dr. Thurman?
Oh, yes.
[INAUDIBLE]
People who talk to animals. You remember the book Papa Hemingway? Maybe some of you
read it. It's Hemingway's friend or biographer wrote it. And he has a marvelous discussion in one
of the places about Hemingway, who had a gold pass given him by one of the Ringling Brothers
so that he could always go below in Madison Square Garden when the circus was in New York
to talk or to do anything he wanted to do with the animals.
And there's a description of how he went down, and that was a particularly obnoxious gorilla
who had a rather unhappy spirit. And when Hemingway said, well, it's been a long time since
I've talked gorilla talk, but I'd like to go. And the keeper thought that he was out of his mind.
And he went over and began doing something, making these guttural sounds-- I imagine they
were guttural sounds.
After a few minutes, the gorilla stopped whatever he was doing and stood on his haunches and
took his bowl of bananas and put over his head to express extreme ecstasy. And I won't say what
the keeper of the gorilla said when he saw it.
Then he passed by the polar bear cage, and he said, well, I-- this is a brand new experience, but I
think I can do it. And he had conversation with the polar bear. And the polar bear was so excited
that he got up and walked over to the wall and began rubbing his back against it, which is
another way of getting an expression of the kind of bliss that he experienced from hearing
Hemingway do this.
There are various accounts of this sort that sound perhaps specious to us. But there is a rather
detailed account of an Italian doctor who spent a great deal of time going through the various
parts of West Africa, where he was serving the Italian government as a physician. He'd heard that
there was a Catholic priest who operated at orphanages who, by reputation, once a year had a
meeting with the warthogs.
And he didn't believe this, but he arrived at the proper time, and the Catholic priest took him out
into the woods on a moonlit night. And there was a clearing, and the priest sat there in prayer.
And the warthogs began to come out of the shadows, and they gathered in this opening.
And the priest continued praying, and then when he had finished, he addressed them. And he
said, you know that the children in the orphanage are dependent upon the crop. There is no other
food, and if you eat the crop they will starve to death. And I'm sure you do not want to do that.
And there were some more words-- I've forgotten what they were now. And then he had another
prayer, and the warthogs disappeared. And the crop was saved.
1
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
Now all of this sounds very ridiculous perhaps. But the point that I'm making is that all
manifestations of life are rooted in a common ground-- this is the point-- and that all forms of life
are manifestations of this. And to be repetitive, the marked difference between the manifestations
is the form of the manifestation, is the context, not the ground.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
And self-consciousness, inherent in its very nature, is paradoxical, because in self-consciousness,
I see myself as standing over against the ground of my being. I see myself as being a separate
entity-- separately contained, independent. And much of the journey, the pilgrimage of selfconsciousness in human beings is to try to find their way back to the ground, to re-relate
themselves to the ground out of which they come.
Now, interestingly enough, very often people who are less sophisticated, who are simple, seem to
be closer to the awareness of this ground than others. And an illustration of this just from my
own childhood that I've written somewhere, but I went across the meadow to visit with my
buddy. I was about nine, 10-- somewhere in that awkward period. And when I came into the
yard, his father rapped on the windowpane, telling me to come around and come through the
front door.
And when I came into the room where he was, he pointed into the backyard, and there, Pierce-that was my buddy's name-- his little sister, about four months old, was sitting in the sand-- this
was in Florida-- playing with his rattlesnake. And she pulled him by the tail as he would try to
crawl away. She'd turn him over on his back, and she would giggle. And they were having a very
interesting, intimate experience of fellowship and community.
Pierce was stationed on one side of the house-- of the-- yes, of the house, and I was stationed on
the other side. But why? so that no one would come around and introduce a divisive principle in
the harmony. But as soon as that happened, there would be violence. There would be death.
Now, this quality of man, the time binder, is one of the most important aspects of personality for
the claims and the insights of religion. For it indicates that man has-- to use a good term from the
social psychology, at any rate-- man is born with an ancient memory of a time when there was
harmony among all living things. I'm taking much time to lay the foundation for this because it
will help us in our understanding of what the claim is that the mystic makes. This is why I'm
doing it-- so you'll see the relevance of it.
There seems to be an ancient memory of the race that goes back to forms that I expressed in
myths, for instance, like the creation myths. Some years ago, I had occasion to study creation
myths at great depths. And one of the things that I discovered-- that it didn't matter what part of
the world you examined the myth. The essential elements are always there, whether you begin
with the creation account in our book as found in Genesis, or you wander all over the story of
man on the planet.
Wherever he raises the question, where did we come from? How did the world get going? The
fundamental insight in the answer is always the same. And what is that? That when forms of life
were created, it didn't matter how varied the forms or the manifestations were. When forms of
life were created, they had one thing in common-- they felt that they were all a part of each other.
So the animals and men talk with each other.
2
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
And then the harmony was broken. Now this is the story. Now, the curious and interesting thing,
to me, is that when man began to dream about life at its best, that we call utopias, and you can
pick any one of a hundred, 150 different utopias-- Plato's Republic, More's Utopia. You can run
the gamut. The thing that all of them have in common is that within the context of the Utopian
city, there is this harmony, this community.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
Now, when we read it then, among the poets-- and I wanted to take two or three excerpts here-and we are tempted to say that this is just poetry, with a little [INAUDIBLE] to the excerpt. I'm
reminding you that what they're saying is a poetic way of expressing this basic proposition on
which we have been working these two days.
Now, a few lines from Alexander Pope, for instance-- "All are but parts of one stupendous
whole, whose body nature is and God the soul, that changed through all and yet in all the same,
great in the Earth, as in the ethereal frame, warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, glows in the
stars and blossoms in the trees, lives through all life, extends through all extent, spreads
undivided, operates unspent," and so forth.
Another-- you're familiar with this. "And I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of
elevated thoughts-- a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused whose dwelling is
the light of setting suns, and the round ocean, and the living air, and the blue sky, and in the mind
of man."
And then you recognize this from Shelley-- "He is made one with nature. There is heard his
voice in all her music, from the moan of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird. He is a
presence to be felt and known in darkness and in light, from herb and stone, spreading itself
where'er that power may move which has withdrawn his being to its own, which wields the
world with never-wearied love, sustains it from beneath the ground, and kindles it above. He is a
portion of the loveliness which once he made more lovely," and So forth.
And then this from Tennyson-- "Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies,
hold you here, root and all, in my hands. Little flower, but if I could understand what you are,
root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is."
And then from Paracelsus-- "Truth is within ourselves." this is another way of saying this. "It
takes no rise from outward things, whatever you may believe. There is an inmost center in us all,
where truth abides in fullness, and around, wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, this perfect
clear perception which is truth A baffling and perverting carnal mesh binds it and makes all
error, and to know rather consists in opening out a way whence the imprisoned splendor may
escape, than in affecting entry for a light supposed to be without," and so forth and so on it goes.
Now, this is the summary, that there is, inherent in the notion that this is a living universe, that
life is alive, and that every manifestation of life is grounded in the aliveness of life. And
therefore, no manifestation of life, at last, as an independent separate existence from the ground
of life.
And because life is alive, therefore life cannot die. And perhaps life cannot die because life feeds
on itself. Maybe that's why it can't die. And then, the metaphysical, the theological doctrine that
takes the form of the notion of life eternal I think it's rooted grossly-- in the sense of unrefined,
3
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
rather than a sense of vulgar-- it is rooted grossly in the fact that life lives on itself, that life
consumes life. And it's an endless cycle. Men die, you die, I die, men die.
But life keeps coming on. And the thing that has harassed and bedeviled the mind of men as far
as any memory goes is how may I consciously and deliberately participate in this ground?
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
How can I experience at all the levels of my being this timeless ground in which my life is
rooted? If I can do that, then there opens up to my mind the secret of life.
Now, the mystic makes no-- I'll say this. The mystic makes no outlandish claim. The only thing
that he insists upon is that he experiences this awareness. And in this sense, there is a mystic
element in all religious experience. I move-- I'm changing my-- moving to the next segment I'm
scheduled [INAUDIBLE].
There is a mystic element in all religious experience because central to religious is the sense of
the awareness on the part of the experiencer that he is in touch with that which to him is ultimate.
Now, there is a meditative confusion about what the claim of the mystic is. It would be a very
interesting thing, if we had the time and the courage, to go around the room and ask each one of
you, what is your idea of a mystic? It'd be very illuminating to us and to you also.
I remember going to an assembly of students once, and I got in in the afternoon. I was doing my
talk in the evening on some aspect of this whole problem that we are considering here. I
happened to go into the men's room, and there were two young fellas in there. And they didn't
know who I was. I didn't care for that matter [INAUDIBLE].
But they said, who is this guy that's coming in from so and so and so who's supposed to speak
tonight? I don't know, never heard of him. What's he going to talk about? And one fella said,
well, I think that it's something about taking rabbits out of a hat.
[LAUGHTER]
Now, this is literally true. And the other fella said, well, I wouldn't miss it.
[LAUGHTER]
In the first place, mysticism is thought of as being pathological. Some queer and curious
aberration of mind generated by emotional instability. Leuba's book on the psychology of
mysticism, which you ought to read sometimes when you-- if we were going for a year rather
than three weeks, it'd be interesting to take some time and work at it.
But his whole point is the pathology of this curious kind of religious experience. It is obvious
that I do not subscribe to this. The claim of the mystic is that he is in primary touch or contact
with ultimate reality, which for the most part, he labels God, God.
This claim has two rather curious elements inherent in it. One, that it is given, the experience is
given. By given I mean that it is a part of the given-ness of his life. It isn't something that he
achieves, it isn't something that he wrests from the stubborn, and unyielding, and recalcitrant
4
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
hands of a determined universe. No, nothing like that. But the first claim is that this is a part of
the given, a part of that which is essentially him.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
And in that sense, it is without merit or demerit. In that sense it is a grace. Now, there are many
mystics who do not go along with this, but in essence, this is one of the first claims-- that this
quality of experiencing the ultimate is inherent in the very ground of his being.
Another way of saying it, that for him it is a part of the given-ness of God in him. And in this
sense, he makes no exclusive claim to it, for it is-- it meaning the sense of the ultimate-- a part of
the given-ness of the creator to his creation.
Now, the religious theory for the Christian mystic-- and I'll say something about the others at a
later point. But the religious basic to the mystic's claim is as follows-- God is the creator of life.
And more importantly, God is the creator of the living substance, that out of which particular
expressions of life emerge, [? for ?] [? instance ?] themselves.
It is an essential I've been calling the ground all along, that God is not merely the creator of life,
but the creator of the living substance, the life stuff that [? for ?] [? instances ?] itself in form,
shape, characterization, classification. But these are phenomenological. They are not inherent.
Now, another way of saying that is that God has not left himself without specific witness in the
totality of his creation. Now, any, any, any religion, any-- well, I'd say any good religion-- but
any religion can accept the general proposition that God has not left himself without witness in
his creation, his signature, the thing we've been talking about-- reading here and talking about.
Now, generally the Christian draws a line there. The Christian can accept this fact that God has
not left himself without a witness in his creation. But what the Christian is unwilling to accept is
that God has not left himself without specific witness in all of his creations.
And this opens up a whole area. I simply call your attention to it. Then, the religious theory in
the first place is that God is the creator of life and the living substance, that out of which all
concretions emerge, that out of which all particulars come, all the [? for ?] [? instances, ?] all the
this-and-that-ness emerge.
But he goes further. It says that God is the creator of existence. Now, this boggles the mind. I am
not sure, I am not sure, or I'm not sure, or I am not sure that the mind can grasp this. Now what it
says, you see, is that God bottoms existence, that there is no thing, no particular, no
manifestation, no anything that is outside of the sweep of the divine context.
Now, you can see the kind of moral problems that creates [? at ?] [? once. ?] I don't know why
this popped into my mind, but it's too good for me to keep. It's just good to break the tension.
A friend of mine sent me a clipping a couple years ago, and it was about a mother and her little
girl. And the little girl kept harassing her mother as only little girls know how to do. And finally,
the mother said, now, if you don't stop doing this, when you die, you will not go to heaven. And
she said, oh, yes I will.
[LAUGHTER]
5
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
I will go right up there where God is, and I'll go in and out of the room, in and out of the room.
And finally, in disgust he will say, either come in or go out, and I'll come in.
[LAUGHTER]
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
Now, the notion, the notion, that God bottoms existence implies, you see, that there is not, nor
can there be, anything underscore that outside of the divine context. That has startling, baffling
moral problems. Name one of them, quickly. Can you?
[INAUDIBLE]
Yes, yes, I suppose so. Yes, I guess that's right, because the mind cannot conceive of a
beginning. The mind can only conceive of beginnings. What other kind of problem it creates?
What does it say [INAUDIBLE]?
I'm sorry?
What does it say for [INAUDIBLE]?
Yeah, evil. Yeah. You see the logic of this is that the contradictions of life can never be final or
ultimate, that all contradictions, then, are limited. All dualisms are temporary.
Think what that means in terms of the simple problems of human beings. Everybody in this room
has been in situations in which the contradictions with which he was wrestling or she was
wrestling seemed ultimate, seemed to be final, without solution.
Even in the book, where there is an emphasis upon what seems to be an ultimate dualism,
between heaven and hell, for instance, what does the book finally say about this? There shall
come a time when God will be all and [? in ?] all. It's a daring thing that the contradictions of
life, that the dualisms of life exhaust themselves-- they run out.
Now, this is the basic religious theory upon which particularly the Christian mystic rests his-well, I started to say rest his case, but he's not under judgment. But he does whatever he does
with it.
That God is the creator of life and the living substance-- that's the [INAUDIBLE], the creation of
the forms of life and that out of which the forms emerge. God is the creator of existence so that
there is no thing that is outside of the divine context.
So when the mystic then goes down this way and comes up inside of the form out there, what
he's saying is that there is no expression of life or manifestation of life that is not [? frontally ?]
and fundamentally centered in the creativity of God. And you can see why they cause so much
trouble in the church.
Well, three minutes [INAUDIBLE]. Let's quit. Now, I didn't ask you whether you had anything
to ask me. I'll stop-- I promise you, tomorrow morning-- yes?
6
�Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
I went to the bookstore, and they didn't have the books in.
Oh, yes, I--
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
7
�
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/394-095_A.html" ></iframe>
Location
The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon
University of Redlands, Redlands, California
Internal Notes
Notes for project team
Edits: for- instance; creates at once; God will be all and in all - GL 5/20/19
Time Period
The decade in which the recording was produced.
1970s
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
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
394-095_A
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Thurman, Howard
Title
A name given to the resource
On Mysticism, Part 3 (University of Redlands Course), 1973
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
<a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a>
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<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.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-13042600.321303 4037296.9410534))
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1973-02
Description
An account of the resource
This recording is the third 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. Building upon Thurman conception of being a "time binder," he notes that utopian conceptions of harmony are not unobtainable. Drawing from his wider work of "racial memory," Thurman indicates in this recording that humanity's restorative relationship with the animal kingdom provides an inkling for God's participation with humankind in the pursuit of harmony. This harmony has existed before, and in a movement towards this redemptive harmony, Thurman suggests, there is an innate movement towards humanity's created intent.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Description by Dustin Mailman
A.E. Hotchner
Alexander Pope
aliveness
awareness
common ground
communication
creation
dualism
ecology
George Cross
gorilla
harmony
journey
myths
Papa Hemingway
pathology
Plato
polar bear
potentiality
prayer
priest
racial memory
rattlesnake
Ringling Brothers
sanctification
self-consciousness
sovereignty
substance
theodicy
Thomas More
time binder
utopia
vulgarity
warthogs