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Pitts Theology Library
The Howard Thurman Digital Archive
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thurman.pitts.emory.edu
394-651_A.mp3
[ORGAN MUSIC]
Pitts Theology Library
Emory University
(SINGING) The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He leads me [INAUDIBLE] He leadeth
me [INAUDIBLE]
Our Father, we turn aside from the things that ordinarily occupy our waking hours, and we wait
in Thy presence, in this sanctuary. Our minds are filled with many things. Some things we have
not thought about for a long time.
But some word that is heard, some line from some hymn that is sung brings flooding into our
awareness something that has long since been forgotten. And we are reliving it this morning,
even as we wait in Thy presence.
We are reminded of the graces of life that are so commonplace, a part of our daily living that the
graceness of them is lost sight of. That each day, for many days, we have been able to arise from
our beds and be active, to do our work, to live our lives in full function with use of our bodies.
Each day, we have been greeted by a few people who understand us and who salute us. We have
been smiled upon. We have been blessed by many countenances of many of Thy children. These
little graces of life. We have been visited also, our Father, by concerns to which we have
responded, sometimes with enthusiasm and conviction.
And other times, our Father, we have been so overwhelmed with our own personal needs and
disorders and complexities that we have not had any time to give to the needs and disorders and
complexities of other people. And we feel just a little guilty about it, as we sit here in the
quietness, sorting out the details of our lives.
We do not want to have hard hearts. We do not want to close the windows of our spirits to the
cries and to the agonies of those whose needs cry out to Thee. And there seems to be no
[INAUDIBLE] here, no hand to succor. We do not wish to be this way. But our own lives are
hard, and our frustrations are very great.
And thus, our Father, we try as we sit here to loosen ourselves up so that we may become aware
of what it is that Thou art seeking to do in us and in our world so that after this hour together, we
may not only be refreshed and renewed, but we may be on the scent of that which is Thy will for
us.
And to know Thy will, O God, and to sink these little minds and little purposes of ours into Thy
will. This is the heart of our hunger, as we wait, O God of our spirits, as we wait at Thy presence.
Our Father.
[ORGAN MUSIC]
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Transcription
thurman.pitts.emory.edu
(SINGING) My soul [INAUDIBLE] my Lord [INAUDIBLE] the presence of my Lord.
[INAUDIBLE] shall soon be [INAUDIBLE] Amen.
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Little sisters, the birds, we must praise God, you and I, you with songs that fill the sky, I with
halting words. Eat not greedily sometimes for sweet mercy's sake, [INAUDIBLE] our insects
bear to take. Let it crawl or fly. See ye saying not near to our church on holy day, lest the human
folks should stray from their prayers to hear.
Now, depart in peace in God's name. I bless each one. May your days be long in the sun and your
joys increase. And remember me, your poor brother Francis, who loves you and gives thanks to
you for this courtesy.
Francis of Assisi is one of the troubadours of God, concerning whom perhaps the minds and the
imaginations of men in our world have been more excited and daring in what they have created
perhaps than any person other than Jesus of Nazareth Himself.
And every one of you, no doubt, has his own set of legendary tales and stories about this
wonderfully human human being. This morning, I want just to lift up two rather simple things
about him in the time that I have. One of the characteristics of religion is its inability to stay
fenced in.
It is always trying to break out, because it is the nature of religion to be creative and dynamic.
And it is also a part of the tendency of mind, whenever it is exposed to experiences that are
creative and open-ended, to try to reduce these experiences to manageable units of control and
order so that they may be used in accordance with a plan generated out of the mind.
So this is the story of religion in our world and in all the worlds of which we are aware. A
creative moment in time, when it seems as if the heavens open and God Himself becomes
articulate in the heartbeats of a human being, so that when men listen, they hear the movement of
the eternal.
And then they take this and they try to put it in a dry cell battery so that whenever they want to,
they can turn the switch and get a light. This is what happened to Francis. He was a man who
came at a time when the springs of creativity and the Church were drying up.
He was a part of a life of ease and comfort and delight. He was a prestige-bearing man. What
more could you ask? He had a wonderful disposition. His [? glands ?] were wonderful, because
he seemed to be happy all the time. Nothing could stop him. He went to the war, to the Peruvian
War, and he was imprisoned for a year. But he just absorbed it with this wonderful spirit of joy
that was in him.
And then after this, he began to slow up things. Things began to get dingy on his sleeve, and he
couldn't quite be as he was. And then no one seemed to understand it. He would be in the midst
of a party, and everybody would be having a wonderful time and expected him to be his old self.
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And right in the middle of it, he would stop and drop into what may be called a kind of brown
[INAUDIBLE] looking and not seeing. And they said to him, what are you thinking about? Are
you thinking-- are you in love? Perhaps this was the only thing that would make him do this.
And he said-- are you going to get married? Is that what is troubling you?
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You don't want to say goodbye to your life. No, yes, I'm going to get married, but to somebody
far more wonderful than you've ever dreamed. And then, little by little, the hound of heaven
began closing in on him. And he had a vision as he was praying in a church.
And it seemed as if Jesus Christ on the cross opened His eyes and talked to him, telling him what
it is that he must do. And then little by little, he began doing some of these things, trying to find
peace within. One of the things, of course, that he could not understand about himself, that even
though he wanted to, he wanted to give his life to Jesus Christ.
He wanted to do the thing that Jesus Christ would have him do, this utter surrender. And he was
sure that he'd done it, you know? And then one day, he was riding along on his horse. And he
turned a corner, and here was a man full of leprosy. And this was the one thing that he was sure
that God would just be too kind and understanding to demand that of him, because
temperamentally and psychologically, leprosy was always upsetting to him.
It was easy for him-- not easy, but he could do-- all the other things, but this thing, he couldn't
do. And that's always the way, isn't it? When you give your life to God, when you give your life
to a cause, always there's one thing you hope that the cause will not require of you. You'll give it
anything else, but just don't get radical with reference to this thing that I just don't mean to give
up. Or I can't handle it emotionally, because of the way I'm put together.
So leprosy was that for Francis. And when he saw this leper, instinctively he checked the horse
and swung him around and started galloping off in the other direction. And then, he heard the
voice. Ah, Francis, you can give up everything but your own sensibilities.
What do you mean by surrender? Then he pulled the horse back around and went and got down
and went home with the leper. He was trying to convince God now that he really meant business,
but what he was really doing was convincing Francis that he meant business. That's the way we
do it, isn't it?
The climax comes when he feels that now he-- in pursuit of this end, he must renounce
everything. And his father has lost his temper. He wants to disinherit him and decides to
disinherit him. And there is a big ceremony in Assisi, at which time all the public had come to
watch this ceremony, where this prince of the family, as it were, would be publicly disinherited.
And Francis came, and he appeared with all of his clothes in a bundle. And he did not have any
clothes on whatsoever at all. And he said, until today, I have been known as the son of Pietro [?
Bernardina. ?] But from this time on, my only word is, "Our Father, who art in heaven."
Now the unique and exciting thing to me about Francis is that he felt that love was the greatest
and most important thing in the world, and that it was the one thing that had no boundaries, that
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it moved out to include the animals, the birds, the little children, the lepers, the popes, the priests,
that love was the only inclusive insight that the human spirit had ever possessed.
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And that this was not love in general. He felt that the Church of his time had made of love an
abstraction, had made of love a technique, a device, something that could be manipulated on
behalf of the heathen, on behalf of the [INAUDIBLE] and cast down like sheep without a
shepherd. It was something that could be handled with detachment, because it was a principle
which dealt laterally with human beings.
And it was a part of the disposition of the Church to be a dispenser of love so that officially, it
was the great lover of mankind. And all who embraced its doctrine and its dogma would in turn
become lovers of mankind, as a technique, a device, a method by which the implementation of
which, however, would bring into being, something that the Church dreamed of as the Kingdom
of God.
Francis felt, however, that you can't love humanity. Humanity has no existence. Men do not love
in general. They love in particular. So he placed at the center of what had become an ethical
abstraction, an ethical concretion. And it carried with it contagion.
And one of the things-- one of the things that impressed me most about the way this operated
was his insistence that those of his movement should love the rich people. This is very
interesting. And you should love them not because they had money. And therefore, if you loved
them, they would give you some of it.
Not because they would be able to finance your cause. But you should love them because they
were children of God's, in the same way that you should love the birds, the lepers, the saints, the
sinners. And I know the time's up, but I can't close without pointing at least to the second thing
that's on my mind.
When they tried to bring this creative, free-flowing movement under the control of the Church-and bear in mind, Francis did not ever feel that he was outside of the Church, so do not
misunderstand my reference here. But the authority-- Francis felt that the authority was in the
living experience of the living Christ in the hearts of those people who had made the nerve center
of their consent the citadel in which he could live.
This was all the authority that he needed. But the Church had to have the authority located at the
central place of power. And little by little, then, they began to bring in this free-flowing
movement that was spreading itself all over the countryside, to bring it under the subjection and
under the control of the Church so that there would be an organizing principle operating it and
align a chain of command by which authority, earthly authority, could be established.
Or the earthly authority could designate the point at which the divine authority took place. And
Francis was very naive and simple, unsophisticated. He just loved. That was all. Loved. And
when he realized that the politicians, [? concentrated ?] politicians, had taken over his
movement, it almost broke his heart.
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And he did the only thing that he knew to do-- talk to God. So one night, with the wreck of his
dreams all about him, with his body suffering from the rather persistent ravages of a certain kind
of illness, he prayed all night.
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And as morning broke, it seemed that from the East, a seraphim came. And as the sun rose, this
seraphim now was transfixed on a cross in the middle of the radiation of the sun. And in the
contemplation of this, Francis lost all awareness of time and space and circumstance and became
one with this transcendent vision.
And when it passed, according to the records, he had the stigmata-- little blood from his hands
and his ankles and his side.
Is there anything, any kind of inner demand that can [INAUDIBLE] lay hold upon you or me,
that will make us experience through all the reaches of our being that which we profess to
believe and that about which we sing and pray? Blessed Francis, simple lover of men, who felt in
his body, in his mind, in his heart, both their need and their redemption.
And but a word for us at this fateful moment in our time. Forgive us, our Father, for the open
doors of truth into which we do not go. Leave us not to the strength of our weakness, for the
weakness of our strength, but tutor our piety in ways of love, that we may bless even as we are
blessed. O God our Father.
[ORGAN MUSIC]
(SINGING) Amen. Amen. Amen.
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Internal Notes
Notes for project team
Edited - GL 7/8
Location
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Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts
Time Period
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1960s
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394-651_A
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Thurman, Howard
Title
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St. Francis of Assisi (5); Plotinus (6), 1961 Nov 12, 26
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<a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a>
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audio
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<a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a>
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GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-7915565.7490374 5213612.6443988))
Description
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This sermon is the fifth of nine in a series of sermons given in Marsh Chapel that are titled "The Inward Journey." In this sermon, Thurman moves through the entirety of St. Francis of Assisi's biography. Starting with Francis' conversion, to his deep connection to creation, then to his love ethic, then concluding with the implications of his experience with mysticism and contemplation. Here, Thurman is holding up the life of St. Francis of Assisi as an exemplar for the ideal religious life - a life of love, a life of service, a life of responsibility.
Date
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1961-11-12
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Description by Dustin Mailman
abstraction
biography
birds
Children of God
contemplation
creativity
ecology
Francis of Assisi
insects
kenosis
legend
leprosy
Lord's Prayer
love
marriage
Peruvian War
poetry
prayer
seraphim
simplicity
Surrender