Mysticism and Social Action, Part 2 (Panel discussion with Howard Thurman, continued), 1978 October 14

Description

In this final installment of Mysticism and Social Change, Thurman gives a final word to the relationship between the inner life and social action in response to a questioner who wonders if mysticism is a luxury for the comfortable and the elite. Thurman begins by saying that he has little hope for institutions to change the social order of things, rather each person must choose where they stand and live out their dream for the world they want to live in. Thurman says that he chose the church to be the place where he decided to live out his dream, which came with its own set of tensions: the structures of the church could not give Thurman the hope he needed, but the message of Jesus did, and thus Thurman needed to parse the two apart in his personal and primary experience. Furthermore, Thurman says that institutions do not deal with people personally. While large-scale operations are important, Thurman says that one must "feed a hungry person in a manner that the hungry person knows that he is being addressed, not merely his hunger." Thurman thus sees himself, and the mystic insight, as bearing witness to this need, seeing that the victimized person feels cared for at their center, not merely superficially helped.