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If it was just simple gratitude that you felt then--
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But it is not just simple gratitude. My life was at stake. And it isn't a matter of thank you, it's a
matter of being actually salvaged. And what can I do, what can I be, what can I become that will
rid me of the burden of this necessity? To find a way to thank them maybe, to use your word. To
rid myself of the burden of obligation that is placed upon me for the rest of my life?
There is a debt that I can't pay. And I'm never free to be myself until I get rid of it. And how do I
get rid of it? By trying ways by which I can nullify the fact that I was saved by them. Get them
off my scent.
This is a part of eternal conflict between parents and children. Right here. Right here. And I think
a parent finally gets to a point, maybe, that the child is freed of the obligation that is generated by
the fact that the parents stood in local-- whatever that word for children is-- for the child. And the
child is always trying to find a way by which the child may be free enough in his or her space to
act on an initiative that is not involved at how that child relates to the parent.
And maybe you can't do it. Maybe you can't do it. What it takes to do it makes you defiant, in
rebellion and ungrateful, insensitive. .
And I think man's religious experience is a carbon copy of the way by which the individual must
find a way to stand in his own anonymity. And to look into the face of the one who loves you,
and who would give his or her life for you, but to look into that face as if that person were a
stranger.
Once that happens, then you are free to discover the grounds of how you relate to each other in
terms of your vote, and not in terms of your necessity. This is so crucial it seems to me
I don't know about the rest of you, but I am always sure that I know better what is best for the
people I love than people know. And I find myself waiting in all kinds of out of the way places
to come to the rescue when they are caught in life's trap. And every time I reach my hand down
to rescue them, the hand is knocked away. And when it finally gets there, the hand is bitten.
Because I am unwilling to give to my children the right to make and pay for their mistakes.
Dr. Thurman, Have you been saved by a savior? Through your life's journey, have there been
people that have come and have been saviors to you? And then you in turn have felt then that
must be destroyed?
Yes, I've felt that I had to get rid of them. So that I could be me. And sometimes I have
rediscovered. But I rediscovered, they didn't rediscover me.
Your grandmother, for instance, how long did it take you?
Well it was the end of my first year in seminary. Oh, and I came back home for-- before doing
my work for the summer I came back home to touch base. To sleep all night the sleep of my
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childhood. And be awakened in the morning by smelling breakfast. And coming downstairs
forgetful of everything else, without a stitch on. And my grandmother standing in the middle of
the kitchen saying, Lord have mercy, boy. Go back upstairs and cover up your shame.
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So I was anxious to talk to her about Jesus. This was my first year with all this marvelous stuff
that I had gotten in seminary. When the Bible reading time came-- which my role as a kid was to
read the Bible to her-- and when the Bible reading time came, I moved right in. And I began to
tell what I'd learned about Jesus, and all this. And she listened.
She didn't ignore what I said. She didn't put any damper on it. But she talked to me about what
Jesus meant to her. And when she finished, well I was devastated. When she finished, I said,
Grandma you are talking about God. And she said, who told you the difference?
And then I was off again, because I had learned-- well, I learned a lot of things about the
different gospels, got the oldest, I was full of it. And when it was all over, and I shot my wad,
and she hadn't-- she listened.
And then we had prayer. And in the prayer I had a sense of presence which came through to me
in a very strange way. Who Jesus was, what Jesus taught, what the Bible said about Jesus, all of
this seemed strangely irrelevant. He was in our midst.
And from that week on, until she died, we did not ever talk about Jesus again. Now, I spent many
years until her death trying to find some way by which my experience and her experience could
flow together. Bypassing everything I had learned, and everything that I knew in terms of formal
and discursive knowledge.
And she became the strongest early influence in my life. She became-- I don't how to say this.
She quite-- in my experience with her until her death at 94 or five, it was no longer necessary for
me ever to discuss religion with her again.
And strange that I was thrown back into my childhood when she would take me to church on
Sunday night before my mother came from work. And I would settle down-- if she wore about
15 underskirts. And she had this big lap, and I would work my way down into my spot where I
could be comfortable and looking up in her face. And without any understanding whatsoever,
feel what she was experiencing pass through me. And I waited for that to happen before I went to
sleep.
And then when I went to sleep, I would be awakened by the singing led by-- you shouldn't have
asked me this kind of question-- by the singing of one of the women. We called her-- when we
were talking about her, the kids-- we call her Old Lady Wright. But she had a voice between a
spring whisper and fall hurricane. Oh my!
And I grew up experiencing her create stanzas to spirituals with such complete abandonment and
intimacy of insight and truth, that time after time the minister of the church would call a deacon
and then say go over and shake her so she could turn us loose, and we can go on with the service.
Now, I'm not talking about the mind. I'm talking about the ground of being. Where there is no
category, but where you feel all of life breathing through you. There's no God, no savior, no
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Jesus, no-- It is becoming one with the rhythm of life, with the ebb and flow of life. And in it you
finally find yourself fighting for your private identity. And I think in everybody's life,
somewhere along the way, this kind of thing happens somewhere.
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But something else happens. We have no faith in it because we can't put a handle on it. It is the
gift and the deception of the mind to identify truth with understanding. There is a sense of the
timeless, the eternal. See I'm using all of these funny words. That once you experience this-- and
everybody experiences it so there's nothing unique about it. I think everybody experiences it,
even those who are deranged as to their minds. Whose mind's in a tilted place, who suffer
beyond all formulae of machination, of definition. It is what I meant and mean. I don't think that
there's anything unique about this.
And with my kind of imagination, I guess that's what it is. I think the trees, the grass, my dog
Kropotkin. Every form by which life breaks itself down in particularity. Once that happens, that
form is trying to go home again. Home again, home again, home again. And maybe this is what
Augustine meant when he said, l hast made us for thyself. And all fools restless till they find
their rest in thee.
But there again, we put it into a category. But you see, what I'm feeling for, and what I've been
struggling with all my life, is that whatever it may be the particularity by which I define how it's- That particularity is the door through which I come home. To the very ground of my life.
Now in religious categories it means this, that if this is the room, let us say, where God is
viewed. That kind of theological terminology. There's all these different doors through which I
enter. One door may be shaped like a test tube. Another door may be shaped like a cross.
Another door may be shaped like a dome.
Once I cross the threshold by which I enter into the room, what I experience in the room is the
same thing. But my personality, my whatever it is-- I hate to use the word ego, cause I don't
know what that means-- but my little tent that clues me into which is the door through which I
could enter into this room is so crucial. Because when I'm in the room, everybody who's-everything-- everybody who's in the room experiences the same thing, is a part of the same thing.
And I have my land [INAUDIBLE]. This is where God is better seen.
And once I get past my entrance, everything in the room and I are part of each other. But, there is
something in me that makes me identify what's in the room with the door through which I enter.
And if I do that, I don't get past the door. And I say to you, you can't enter this room except you
come this way.
And to me the religious experience and the experience of what I call the idiom of life are one in
the same. And I get into trouble when I'm doing what I'm trying to do this afternoon, talk about
it. From the moment I started using words that are descriptive, good enough for you to
understand what I'm saying. You have to compare them with your words. Or take my words that
are not your words. I spent a lifetime trying to make sense out of them. And working your way
back to the room, you have to leave all that on the outside.
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And that's why I feel that all life is one, all religion is one. And whoever gives me a feeling, or a
persuasion, that my religion, my way, has to be binding on anybody else except me, ties me to a
formula that ultimately destroys me if I don't destroy it first. And this is what my savior does.
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There used to be a statement, when I first heard it I had to do a lot of thinking to able to even not
call it heresy much less accept it. And that is, There are no false religions unless you call a baby
a false man.
Yeah. Yeah. Yes. How can you live into a world of definitions, and categories, and
classifications on that basis? I guess it's Emerson who insists that to live in the traffic of the
world with the independence of solitude is the essence, I think, of the spiritual journey.
But it is so frightening, because it is so lonely. And I feel the need of a shoulder to touch, a hand
to grasp to give me the assurance that even if I lose my way, the hand doesn't lose its way. But
then suddenly I find I am dependent on the hand, and the hand becomes my trap. So I take it turn
it loose, I take it-- Yes?
You used the example of the room and the many doors 10 years ago. And I still remember it,
because it impressed me. And at that time you said, after giving this description, however, the
Christian religion differs from all others in that we believe God sent His son, or a representative
of himself, to be among a man, to help lead them home. Have you changed your thinking in 10
years? You don't want that hand to help you go through the door with a cross on it?
The difference for me is that the hand that is a part of my experience of handness is a part of my
culture, my training, the world that gave me my sense of self. And something in me quivers
when I want or I feel the necessity to act independent of this. So that I find, in these years, that I
whisper under my breath to the hand, forgive me.
There's a little boy in the German reader. And he says The Lord's Prayer he says, give us this day
our daily bread, and he muttered something under his breath. Finally the mother said, now what
is that little thing you said? He said I Just asked Him, please put a lot of butter on it.
I can't ever escape my introduction into life's meaning. Which for me, is the whole context of the
Christian thought feeling pattern. Now the heresy is-- and therefore from my point of view-- the
sin is to make that absolute for you. For you, for you, for you.
And I've always felt that if I were missionary-- and I say this because it's the year I spent in
India, and Burma and created so much trouble. That if I were sent as missionary to some land
where there's a religion other than my own, my mission would be to help them understand and
experience the meaning of their religion.
Because I don't believe many things. As I grow older, the things I believe become fewer, but
more absolute. And therefore, the intimation is increasing intolerance. But I believe that God has
not left Himself without a witness in the totality of His creation. And that how I define it, how I
describe it, depends upon the road that I take.
I don't think that there is more than one truth. And there never is a time. But, I mean, I'd be
mistaken. But I have to live my life as if my truth were absolute. And this is the dilemma of the
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human pilgrimage. I can be sure, but I can never be sure absolutely. And I mistrust anyone who
is sure absolutely except God. I have to live as if my truth is the only truth, because that is the
measure of my responsibility for my own journey. At the same time, I must recognize the fact
that I may be mistaken.
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So as I live, I knock at every door. And then maybe when you come to the door and greet me, in
that exchange I see like a flash of blinding light. One I didn't see until you opened the door. And
after that I see it everywhere.
And this is the terrible thing about-- I hate to use the word terrible-- but for me it's a very rough
thing. The times that I don't want to meet any new people. That I don't want to get close to
anybody, because in that moment, from them there may be a light that shows into a dark corner
of me that I didn't know was there. And now I've got to start all over again.
And there are times when I wish I could just close out everything and just have a little time.
When I don't get from you something that sends me back somewhere on something I overlooked
20 years ago, but didn't know it till I heard you do this to me. Everybody's a little too young to
know what I'm talking about. But there are moments when you just wish that you can pull down
all the windows, all the shades, and just enjoy you, knowing that whatever is going on outside is
out there. But after a while you have to get up and peek out there. And then you had it. And you
start over again .
So that those who make of life a pilgrimage and a journey, I think, live into life open ended. And
even though they do not know the road and the turns, they live with confidence because they
believe that the road and its turnings is known. And whoever knows that is God. And therefore
the road itself can be trusted, because the road is going somewhere.
And there are times in my life and I don't want to know where the road goes. Something in me
gets tired of proing and coning. Of thising and thating. I just want something settled, so I could
have a little peace. And nothing is ever settled. The sand is hot under your feet all the time. And
the only thing you can do to take refuge and wear these shoes that have thicker soles. Take a
longer time for the heat to get to your feet, but it's on its way.
If we realize that the results are not ours, not our responsibility. Doesn't that take a lot of heat off
of that sand or off your feet [INAUDIBLE].
But you see, I always feel that perhaps I'm selling myself a bit of goose when I say it's not my
responsibility. See a part of the way by which my life is confirmed is the freedom with which I
can affirm the integrity of my own journey. Because I come back again and again to perhaps the
most terrifying thing about life, and that is that nobody like me has ever lived before. And
nobody like me will ever live again. That my responsibility for my journey is absolute. Even
though and the deepest thoughts that I have, the option was not mine.
If you have your focus on Him, and if you're going forward he can't we assume that that's all we
can do, and the results are going to have to be His?
But you see, I, there's something in me that demands my share of the responsibility. Because if
I'm denied that, then I'm reduced to zero. And I will not be zeroed. It's like--
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[INAUDIBLE]
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All right I'm going to stop it, just one more thing. I did a [INAUDIBLE] prose poem on this
incident in there. But I learned a gruesome, terrifying lesson when, after the moving van had
taken all the stuff out of our house at Atlanta, and loaded it to take to Washington where I was
moving and going to begin living. I remembered as I pulled the door closed, that the next day the
people who'd bought the house the moving in. And then as I thought of that, I remember--
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Time Period
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1980s
Original Title
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Conversations with Howard Thurman (parts 9 and 10), 1980 Sep 19-21, Side B
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394-362_B
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Thurman, Howard
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<a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a>
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<a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a>
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Title
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Conversations with Howard Thurman, September 1980, Parts 9 and 10, Side B
Date
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1980-09-20
Description
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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, Thurman explores what it means to participate on a spiritual journey in a pluralistic world, noting that "religious experience is a carbon copy of the way by which the individual must find a way to stand out in their own anonymity." Here, Thurman is framing spirituality and mission as a means of locating the depth and breadth of spirituality both within the individual, and in the context of the wider world.
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Description by Dustin Mailman
Atlanta
burden of obligation
church
debt
developmental psychology
dichotomy
doors
ego
experience
German reader
gratitude
ground of being
idiom of life
imagination
Incarnation
India
Jesus
Kropotkin
Lord's Prayer
Nancy Ambrose
Old Lady Wright
personality
pilgrimage
plurality of truth
prayer
Ralph Waldo Emerson
relationship
responsibility
seminary
singing
spiritual journey
tent of clues