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Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
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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
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completed. It might so easily go on into confusion or shatter the type as a child breaks his bubble
by blowing too much breath into it.
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It might, that is, if at the back of creation was nothing but a blind force. How can anyone believe
that? One might possibly if one thought only of the initial urge of life, but surely not when one
sees it always stopping in definite forms and definite types.
Look at that fat dictionary over there on the shelf, so solemn and well-informed. Do I think that it
was created out of chaos? No, I don't think so. Did anyone ever see a trumpet vine forget its type
and try to overflow into something else-- into a maple tree, for instance? Or a maple tree forget
that its urge to life should stop with sharply pointed leaves rather than with round edges of an
oak?
Nobody ever did unless the types had been crossed by outside interference. What keeps them all
so loyally true to their own plan? Surely, if there were nothing but a blind urge at the back of
them, they would long ago have lost their way in the maze of life and gone off into a confusion
of all kind of chaos.
This is a rather extraordinary and exciting notion to my mind, and it is well worth our reflecting
upon. It is true that the beginning of life is quite miraculous. As a matter of fact, the big the idea
of beginning is itself as a concept almost beyond the grasp of the mind.
But as fundamentally exciting as may be the notion of beginning, it is even more astonishing-this built in quality that seems to be inherent in any particular form of life that tells that form of
life how it is to shape itself and when it is to stop developing. Suppose your foot did not ever
stop growing, that there wasn't anything that you could do to stop it. It would be quite a fantastic
arrangement.
But there is built in the very life structure of the body something which, in recent times,
biologists, or cytologists more specifically, have discovered. And they call it a certain quality in
the cell. A coding, C-O-D-I-N-G-- a coding in the cell that determines what the development of
the organism will be-- which cells will become eyes and legs and feet and hair and what the
dimensions are.
This is a part of the Constitution that is inherent in the cell itself. And in reading some time ago
about the growth and development of eels, I was amazed at the discovery that some of the
investigators were trying to determine, why was it that certain eels that came up from the
Sargasso sea, born there, five miles below the surface of the sea, found their way all the way up
to the Atlantic?
And some of the eels moved to the right and went to Europe. Some of the other eels came to the
United States-- to Virginia and North Carolina, to the fresh waters there. What determined which
way the eel should go? What determined the European eel and the American eel, as it were?
Well, these scientists discovered that the eels that had 11 or fewer vertebrae always came to
Virginia and North Carolina. If they had 12 or more vertebrae, they always went to Europe. The
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ticket-- the ticket-- was in the vertebrae. Now, this means that all of life is fundamentally
structured and grounded in order, that there is inherent in the creative process that which when
life realizes itself, its potential has been actualized.
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Now, this gives to us-- it should give to us a very simple but profound confidence in the life
process itself. And in my language, it should give us the confidence in the Creator, confidence in
God, for it would seem to me that if all other manifestations of life, including my own body,
have this order built into it, why should not the experiences of my life, the growth of my life, all
of the things would have to do with my mind and spirit, why should not they then be in
accordance with what to me is the will and the purpose-- and for my mind-- the creative dream of
God?
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord,
my rock and my Redeemer.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This is tape number ET28, from the library of the Howard Thurman Educational Trust. This is
side 2, entitled, The Great Exposure.
[BELLS RINGING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord,
my strength and my Redeemer.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I'm reading from Meditations of the Heart. Sometimes, there's only a 60 second divide between
youth and maturity, childhood and adulthood, strength and weakness, life and death. That life is
vulnerable is the key to its longevity.
We are surrounded every day by the exposure to sudden and devastating calamity. Despite all
efforts to the contrary, there is no device by which we may get immunity from the slings and
arrows of outrageous fortune. Here is a man in the full prime of active life, with all the strength
and vigor of a rounded maturity. Disease strikes. He withers and dies quickly, without warning
and often without premonition.
Here is a carefree, happy child, surrounded by all the love that wise devotion and careless rapture
can give. A plane crash. Both parents perish. And what at 10 o'clock was a child becomes at
10:01 a desolate creature shunted across the great divide that separates hope from hopelessness,
dependence from independence. Thus it goes in one vein.
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Or here is a person from whom all the lights had long since gone out. The way ahead is no way.
A sharp, sudden turn in the road or a chance encounter in the darkness and everything's changed.
Life is vulnerable. Always, there is the exposed flank.
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Sometimes much energy is spent in a vain attempt to protect oneself. We try to harden our fiber,
to render ourselves safe from exposure. We refuse to love anyone, for instance, because we
cannot risk being hurt. We withdraw from participation and the struggles of our fellows because
we must not get caught in the communal agony of those around us.
We take no stand where fateful issues are at stake because we dare not run the risk of exposure to
attack. But all this, at long last, is of no avail. The attack from without is missed. And we escape
only to find that the life we have protected has slowly and quietly sickened deep within because
it was cut off from the nourishment of the great exposure.
It is the way of life that it be nourished and sustained by the constant threat, the sudden rending,
than welcome each rebuff that makes life's smoothness rough. It is a very commonplace
observation to say that as we live, our lives are caught up in a pattern of logic and order, reward
and punishment, reaping and sowing.
So fundamental is this kind of rhythmic balance in the very grain of our feeling tones and our
thought patterns that automatically we elect, as it were, to project this generalization in to an allinclusive way of life, so that when we do something, we expect it to balance itself in something
else.
I remember when I was a little boy, I broke my arm. It was in the summer. The doctor put my
arm in splints, as it were. And for three or four weeks, I was unable to participate in the things
that ordinarily engaged my time and attention.
And I wondered why, if I had to break my arm, it would not happen during the school year when
I could get mileage out of it. But it happened at the time when school was out and all the
wonderful things were going on in the summer. And then I began to go over in my mind-tutored, you see, by this balance about which I'm talking, reward and punishment, action and
reaction, antecedent and consequence-- and I wondered, what deed had I committed that was of
such enormous consequence that it had to be balanced by a broken arm at the peak of the
summer time?
This notion, you see, that we are in a rhythm of reward and punishment, and it operates
sometimes in our working philosophy. We say that if we are very good, then good things will
come to us as a result of it; that a good man, a worthy man, a man who has integrity and who
lives up to the most far reaching demands of his integrity, that man would not be subject to the
great exposure as a man who pays no attention to these things.
Now, this is one of the aspects of our experience, but it does not exhaust the possibilities. It is
true that there is reward and punishment, that the law of antecedent and consequence does
operate. But as it would seem to me, that over and above this kind of balance or this kind of
order, this kind of moral structure, there is what may be called a random movement in existence-
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- a movement which does not seem to take into account the private predicament, the situation of
the individual as an individual, but it involves him because he happens to be present and
available at the critical moment.
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The Master talks about this when someone ask him concerning a child that was born blind. His
disciples said, was this child born blind because of the sins of his parents? And the Master
countered with a very interesting comment. He said, the people on whom the tower at Siloam fell
and were killed, were they any more guilty than the people on whom the tower didn't fall?
And the inference is, no, they were not more guilty, but they were under the tower and the others
were not. This is an extraordinary something with which you are dealing. There is no protection
against the great exposure. We as living beings in this world, again and again, are exposed to the
operation of impersonal forces over which we are unable to exercise any control-- forces that are
not responsive to our wills, however good and insistent those wills are.
Given this situation, which is a part of the human predicament, it is within the resources of the
individual and it is one of the tremendous insight of religion that there is always available in God
strength, sufficient for our needs, whatever they may be. And this is not some Pollyanna remark,
but it is the studied wisdom and the garnered experience of generations of men that the test of
life is often found in the degree to which we are able to absorb the hammerings of the great
exposure without at the same time destroying our joy.
There is in God strength, sufficient for our needs, whatever they may be.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord,
my rock and my Redeemer.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
The preceding program was prerecorded.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
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Dublin Core
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Title
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We Believe (Television Series, 1958-1965)
Description
An account of the resource
<em>We Believe</em> was a color television program that aired on WHDH-TV, Channel 5, in Boston on weekday mornings at 11:15. From 1958 to 1965, while Howard Thurman was Dean of the Chapel at Boston University, he was the host of the Friday morning show. Each message has a brief introductory section with bells and music before Thurman delivers his short meditation. Some recordings have been edited to remove the intro. In some cases, the Howard Thurman Educational Trust produced tapes with two messages on one recording.<br /><br />"These meditations are no longer than 15 minutes, but highly representative of his style, influence, and search for common ground." - <a href="http://archives.bu.edu/web/howard-thurman">the Howard Thurman and Sue Bailey Thurman Collections at Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.</a><br /><br />
<p style="text-align: right;"><em>We Believe</em> program listing in the TV Guide, March 29, 1958</p>
<img src="http://pittsviva.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/webelieve-whdh-boston.png" style="float: right;" alt="webelieve-whdh-boston.png" />
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Descriptions by Dustin Mailman
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Audio with Transcription
<iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-781.html" ></iframe>
Original Title
Title as transcribed from tape cassette
Creative Order in Life; The Great Exposure (ET-28; GC 11-23-71), 1971 Nov 23
Time Period
The decade in which the recording was produced.
1960s
Location
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WHDH-TV, Boston, Massachusetts
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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394-781
Creator
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Thurman, Howard
Title
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Creative Order in Life (1963-09-27); The Great Exposure (1963-02-15)
Source
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<a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a>
Format
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audio
Publisher
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<a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a>
Date
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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
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394-766.mp3
This is tape number ET4 from the library of the Howard Thurman Educational Trust, Two
Meditations by Howard Thurman. This is side 1, entitled Salute to the New Year.
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
[BELLS TOLLING]
[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 beginning this first meditation for the new year by reading from Meditations of the Heart.
"There is always something impressive about a new start. Think how fortunate it would be if
time was not somehow divided into parts. Suppose there were no day, only night. Even in parts
of the world and near the North Pole, there is a six month day and a six month night.
Or suppose there were only winter or only summer or only spring. Suppose there were no
artificial things, like months, so that we could not be mindful of the passing of time. Suppose
there were no years, just the passing of hours with no signposts to mark them into units of
months and years. Then there would be no new year.
The beginning of another year means the end of a year that has fulfilled itself and passed on. It
means that some things are finished, rounded out, completed forever. It means that, for some of
us, sudden changes have taken place that are so profound in their nature that we can never be
what we were before.
There is something so final, so absolute, about a year that is gone. Something of it remains in us
that we take into the year that is next in line. But the new year means a fresh start, a second wind,
another chance, a kind of reprieve, a divine act of grace bestowed upon the children of men.
It is important to remember that whatever the fact may have been, it cannot be undone. It
remains a fact. If we have made serious blunders, they're made. All our tears cannot unmake
them. We may learn from them and carry our hard won lessons into the new year.
We can remember them not with pain, but with gratitude that, in our new wisdom, we can live
into the present year with deeper understanding and greater humanity. May whatever suffering
we brought on ourselves or other people teach us to understand life more completely and, in our
understanding of life, to love life more wisely, thus fulfilling God's faith in us by permitting us to
begin this new year."
It is always a fateful thing to stand at the beginning or even to have a sense of beginnings. It
means that there stretches out before us areas of living and thinking and experiencing that have
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not been explored by us and with reference to which always there are the possibilities undreamed
of.
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The sense of the future is very important in the living of life in the present, for it means that we
have been chosen, as it were, to have another chance, to improve our lives, to make fresh
mistakes, to make new friends, to gain wider and deeper experiences.
This sense of the future is very important in terms of man's total adventure-- one of the reasons
why, for instance, we shrink from death, one of the reasons why all of the religions of the world
know that they cannot address themselves, finally, to the deepest needs of the human spirit until,
somewhere in their theology or their dogma or their aspiration or their teaching, a recognition is
made of what physically death in and of itself implies.
For the thing that is dreadful, to use that word, about man's encounter with death is that it seems
to man that the future is cut off. And if there is no future, then the present and the past begin to
lose their meaning so that all of the religions of the world have something important and crucial
to say about the future. For, if it, they can address themselves to the place of the future in man's
total experience. Then they can deal totally with man.
Now there's something else that's very important. The sense of tomorrow is a part of the sense of
the future. Suppose you did not have tomorrow. Then, had you thought about what this would
mean to how you would interpret your past and how you would interpret your present?
For always and when, for instance, when you were young, very young-- say nine, 10 years old-you knew that whatever may be happening to you at that moment or whatever your past has
meant to you, the real possibility of your life remained to be explored.
So when you were nine years old, you said, the thing that I'm looking for really I can't get until
I'm in my teens. And then when you got into your teens, you said, no, I haven't had enough time
yet so that I can't experience it until I'm in my 20's. And then, when you were in your 20's, you
said, well, now, there's some things that can only come with a certain kind of maturity. So it'll
have to come in my 30's-- and on and on and on.
I said, when I get there, the struggle will be over. But when I got there, I found that the struggle
was not over, that the struggle will not be over, no, not even in death. This is the place of
tomorrow. It means that I can bring to bear upon the next day all that I have learned and gathered
or accumulated from all of the other days of the past.
So the poet says, I go to prove my soul. I see my way as birds, their trackless way. I shall arrive.
What time? What circuit first? I ask not. But unless God sent his hail, his sleet, or fireballs, I
shall arrive. He guides me and the bird in His good time.
Now this sense of tomorrow has something else to say about your life and about my life. It says
that it may be possible for me to select those aspects of my past which seem, to me, to be
excellent, to be worthful, but which I did not realize as being excellent or wistful when I was
going through them.
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I can't select these now, in the present, and prepare myself to build upon them in the future so
that the meaning of my life then becomes identified not merely with what I have experienced,
not merely with what I am now experiencing. But the meaning of my life can be identified with
that which is yet to come.
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It means that I have one more chance to do tomorrow in a manner that is more significant and
more expressive of my true intent, things that would improve upon all that I have known in the
past.
So as we move into the new year, let us move into it face forward, greeting the future with hope
and aspiration. Let us not back into the future, looking at the past, saying to ourselves that,
whatever the future may be, it cannot, in any sense, be as good as the past.
No. The golden age is not in the past, was not yesterday. The golden age is tomorrow. Let us
salute, then, the new year.
[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 ET4 from the library of the Howard Thurman Educational Trust, Two
Meditations by Howard Thurman. This is side 2, entitled The Strength to Be Free.
[BELLS TOLLING]
[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]
During this month, many people in different parts of our country will be thinking about freedom
and its meaning because of the national holiday that falls within the month. As a background for
our thought about a certain aspect of freedom, I'm reading two paragraphs.
"Give me the strength to be free. The thought of being free comes upon us sometimes with such
power that, under its impact, we lose the meaning that the thought implies. Often, being free
means to be where we are not at the moment, to be relieved of a particular set of chores or
responsibilities that are bearing heavily upon our minds, to be surrounded by a careless rapture
with no reminders of costs of any kind, to be on the open road with nothing overhead but the
blue sky and the whole day in which to roam.
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For many, being free means movement, change, reordering. To be free may not mean any of
these things. It may not involve a single change in a single circumstance. Or it may not extend
beyond one's own gate, beyond the four walls in the midst of which all of one's working hours
and endless nights are spent.
Pitts Theology Library
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It may mean no [INAUDIBLE] from the old familiar routine and the perennial cares which have
become one's persistent lot. Quite possibly, your days mean the deepening of your rut, the
increasing of your monotony, and the enlargement of the areas of your dullness. All of this and
more may be true for you. Give me the strength to be free.
Often, to be free means the ability to deal with the realities of one's situation so as not to be
overcome by them. It is a manifestation of a quality of being and living that results not only from
understanding of one's own situation, but also from wisdom in dealing with it. It takes no
strength to give up, to accept shackles of circumstance so that they become shackles of soul, to
shrug of the shoulders in blind acquiescence. This is easy.
But do not congratulate yourself that you've solved anything. In simple language, you have sold
out, surrendered, given up. It takes strength to find the high prerogative of your spirit. And you
will find that, if you do, a host of invisible angels will wing to your defense. And the glory of the
living God will envelop your surroundings because, in you, He has come into His own."
Give me the strength to be free and to endure the burden of freedom and the loneliness of those
without change. There is the freedom of the innocent, those who have not yet entered into any
measure of responsibility, whose lives are free from cocking care, from any of the burdens that
are generated by the necessities of growth and maturity.
It is the freedom of the little child whose childhood has been guaranteed by adults. For if a little
child is not permitted to experience childhood-- not merely to be a child chronologically, but to
experience childhood-- then he is forced to deal with his environment as if he were an adult.
And if a child is forced to deal with his environment as if he were an adult, then certain very
important biological and psychological processes that should be going on within the organism of
the child are interrupted. And the nervous system of the child becomes warped and twisted and
sometimes even gnarled so that the child grows up now with this lack of the experience of
childhood and becomes antisocial.
He has what may be called an angry nervous system, where there is not guaranteed for the child
the be carefree freedom, if I may put it that way, of innocence. The society pays a terrible toll for
as long as this child lives.
There is another kind of freedom. It is the freedom that is the result of responsibility-- the
freedom to be responsible, first, for your own action. And this means growth in maturity, growth
in wisdom.
When I was a boy, I had two sisters. One was older and one was younger. And I found it a very
convenient arrangement. Because whenever I was reprimanded for doing something, I could
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always say that I did it to help my younger sister out. Or I did it because of the influence of my
older sister, always dodging the kind of necessity that belongs to the responsible individual,
namely to take responsibility for one's own action.
Pitts Theology Library
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Now there is another kind of responsibility with reference to action. And that is a responsibility
for one's reaction. It is true that I cannot determine the influences or the forces that will be
brought to bear upon my life.
There are events which catch me in their agonizing grapple with which I am unable to exercise
any kind of control. These events are not responsive to my will, however good and kind and
generous and holy or persistent my will may be.
Now, given my set of involvements, given the impersonal forces that are brought to bear upon
my life because of the very nature of my existence at the time and place that finds me, as a result
of all of these things, I cannot have any determinative influence.
But one responsibility that I do have and that is I am responsible for my reaction to the things
that happen to me. This is in my hands. And I can react with acquiescence. I can react as if I am
a poor, undernourished victim of circumstances. Or I may deal with the raw materials of my
experience with the creative integrity of a responsible mind and personality.
Now there is another kind of freedom still. And that is the freedom of option. Freedom
fundamentally, in its most crucial definition, means the sense of alternative, the sense of option.
Now I may not be able to act on the option. But if I maintain a sense of option, I am still free.
Now this is important. For where there is no sense of option, where the individual is stripped of
all choice, when all opportunities for alternatives are eliminated, then the individual is not free.
Therefore, any society that is dedicated to freedom as our society theoretically is dedicated to
freedom must, above all else, guarantee for the individual a persistent and consistent sense of
alternative so that he is under no necessity to conform without any option being available to him.
He must have a sense of option if he would be free. Give me the strength to be free and to endure
the burden of freedom and the loneliness of those without change.
[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]
5
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Dublin Core
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Title
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We Believe (Television Series, 1958-1965)
Description
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<em>We Believe</em> was a color television program that aired on WHDH-TV, Channel 5, in Boston on weekday mornings at 11:15. From 1958 to 1965, while Howard Thurman was Dean of the Chapel at Boston University, he was the host of the Friday morning show. Each message has a brief introductory section with bells and music before Thurman delivers his short meditation. Some recordings have been edited to remove the intro. In some cases, the Howard Thurman Educational Trust produced tapes with two messages on one recording.<br /><br />"These meditations are no longer than 15 minutes, but highly representative of his style, influence, and search for common ground." - <a href="http://archives.bu.edu/web/howard-thurman">the Howard Thurman and Sue Bailey Thurman Collections at Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.</a><br /><br />
<p style="text-align: right;"><em>We Believe</em> program listing in the TV Guide, March 29, 1958</p>
<img src="http://pittsviva.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/webelieve-whdh-boston.png" style="float: right;" alt="webelieve-whdh-boston.png" />
Contributor
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Descriptions by Dustin Mailman
AudioWithTranscription
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Audio with Transcription
<iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-766.html" ></iframe>
Original Title
Title as transcribed from tape cassette
Salute to the New Year; The Strength to be Free (ET-4; GC 11-16-71), 1971 Nov 16
Time Period
The decade in which the recording was produced.
1960s
Location
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WHDH-TV, Boston, Massachusetts
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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394-766
Creator
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Thurman, Howard
Title
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Salute to the New Year (1962-01-05); The Strength to be Free (1960-07-01)
Source
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<a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a>
Format
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audio
Publisher
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<a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a>
Date
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1962-01-05
1960-07-01
Description
An account of the resource
In this recording within the We Believe Series; Thurman draws from his work "Meditations of the Heart" to reflect upon the meaning of a new year. He suggests that each passing year is a "year that has fulfilled itself and passed on," and is filled with change, fresh starts, grace, and hard lessons. In the passing of the previous year, Thurman suggests, there is an "opportunity to love life more wisely," noting that both the past and the future are "Golden Ages."
In this recording within the We Believe Series; Thurman draws from his work "Meditations of the Heart," to reflect upon the content of freedom, as the July 4th holiday approaches him and the original audience. He waxes over the variety of expressions of freedom: freedom as release from a current moment, freedom as a wide-open road, freedom as responsibility which leads to growth in wisdom. While discerning these forms of freedom, Thurman returns to a mantra, "Give me the strength to be free and to endure the burden of freedom and loneliness of those without change."
Contributor
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Dustin Mailman
angels
beginnings
birds
change
child
completion
conformity
death
Fourth of July
freedom
friendship
future
God
gratitude
holiday
innocent
life
maturity
movement
new start
New Years Day
organism
re-ordering
responsibility
seasons
soul
strength
time
tomorrow
understanding
unity
wisdom