Howard Thurman

The Fight for Selfhood

By Howard Thurman on 02-01-2012

The strength of the personal life is often found in the depth and intensity of its isolation. The fight for selfhood is unending. There is the ever-present need to stand alone, unsupported and unchallenged. To be sure of one's self, to be counted for one's self as one's self, is to experience aliveness in its most exciting dimension.

If there is work to be done that is impossible, if there is a need to be met that is limitless, if there is a word to be said that can never be said, the spirit of the whole person is mustered and in the exhaustive effort we find our self in the solitariness of strength renewed and courage regained.

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A Single Stream

By Howard Thurman on 01-25-2012

It is a world-shattering disclosure that the stream of life is a single stream, though it takes various forms as it spills over into time and space. This disclosure is made to anyone whose discipline sends him on high adventure within his own spirit, his own inner life. By prayer, by the deep inward gaze which opens the eyes of the soul to behold the presence of God, a person feels the steady rhythm of life itself. We seem to be behind the scene of all persons, things and events. The deep hunger to be understood is at last seen to be one and the same with the hunger to understand.

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The Work of Christmas

By Howard Thurman on 01-06-2012

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
          To find the lost,
          To heal the broken,
          To feed the hungry,
          To release the prisoner,
          To rebuild the nations,
          To bring peace among people,
          To make music in the heart.

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Life and Death are Identical Twins

By Howard Thurman on 11-13-2010

A good death is made up of the same elements as a good life. A good life is what a man does with the details of living if he sees his life as an instrument, a deliberate instrument in the hands of Life, that transcends all boundaries and all horizons.

It is this beyond dimension that saves the individual life from being swallowed by the tyranny of present needs, present hungers, and present threats. This is to put distance within the experience and to live the quality of the beyond even in the intensity of the present moment.

And a good death--what is it? It has the same quality and character as a good life.

True, the body may be stripped of all defenses by the ravages of disease; there may remain no surface expression of dignity and self-respect as the organism yields slowly to the pressure of change monitored by death. These are all secondary.

The real issue is at another depth entirely. It is at the place where Life has been long since accepted and yielded to, where the private will has become infused with the Great Will.

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To Dare a Deed

By Howard Thurman on 11-10-2010

The movement of the Spirit of God in the hearts of men and women often calls them to act against the spirit of their times or causes them to anticipate a spirit which is yet in the making. In a moment of dedication they are given wisdom and courage to dare a deed that challenges and to kindle a hope that inspires.

Living With Cumulative Anxiety

By Howard Thurman on 09-22-2010

There is a widespread feeling of despair and feeling of futility not only about the present times but also about the future. There are many reasons for this attitude; indeed, the reasons are not far to seek. The cumulative anxiety resulting from wars with the vast eruption of hate and misery has left its mark in the soul of the nations of the earth. It is terrible enough when wars are fought by hired mercenaries, but when they become the immediate and personal involvement of young men and women, old men and women, boys and girls, then there is left no one who does not bear the deep bruises and shock of its consequence.


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Inner Landmarks

By Howard Thurman on 10-27-2009

In the long way that we take, in our growing up, in the vicissitudes of life by which we are led into its meaning and its mystery, there are established for us, for each one of us, certain landmarks. They represent discoveries sometimes symbolizing the moment when we became aware of the purpose of our lives; they may establish for us our membership in the human frailty; they may be certain words that were spoken into a stillness within us the sound thereof singing forever through all the corridors of our being as landmarks; yes, each one of us has our own. No communication between people is possible if there is not some mutual recognition of the landmarks.

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Come Alive

By Howard Thurman on 09-29-2009

Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

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Life Goes On

By Howard Thurman on 09-05-2009

During these turbulent times we must
remind ourselves repeatedly
that life goes on.
This we are apt to forget.
The wisdom of life transcends our wisdoms;
the purpose of life outlasts our purposes;
the process of life cushions our processes.
The mass attack of disillusion and despair,
distilled out of the collapse of hope,
has so invaded our thoughts that what we know
to be true and valid
seems unreal and ephemeral.
There seems to be little energy left for aught but futility.

This is the great deception.
By it whole peoples have gone down to oblivion
without the will to affirm the great and permanent strength
of the clean and the commonplace. Let us not be deceived.
It is just as important as ever to attend to the little graces
by which the dignity of our lives is maintained and sustained.

Birds still sing;
the stars continue to cast their gentle gleam
over the desolation of the battlefields,
and the heart is still inspired by the kind word
and the gracious deed....

To drink in the beauty that is within reach,
to clothe one's life with simple deeds of kindness,
to keep alive a sensitiveness to the movement
of the spirit of God in the quietness of the human heart
and in the workings of the human mind--
this is as always the ultimate answer to the great deception.

Howard Thurman was dean of the chapel at Howard University in Washington, DC, 1932-1944, as well as founder of Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples, the first racially integrated church in the U.S. This selection is an excerpt from his book, Meditations of the Heart.

The Triumphal Entry

By Howard Thurman on 04-06-2009

For more than two years, Jesus had been engaged in a public ministry.... He had learned much. So sensitive had grown his spirit and the living quality of his being that he seemed more and more to stand inside of life, looking out upon it as a man who gazes from a window in a room out into the yard and beyond to the distant hills. He could feel the sparrowness of the sparrow, the leprosy of the leper, the blindness of the blind, the crippleness of the cripple, and the frenzy of the mad. He had become joy, sorrow, hope, anguish, to the joyful, the sorrowful, the hopeful, the anguished. Could he feel his way into the mind and the mood of those who cast the palms and the flowers in his path? I wonder what was at work in the mind of Jesus of Nazareth as he jogged along on the back of the faithful donkey.

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