Just a note to explain a change in this blog: This blog is no longer just about the dogs in my life.
I have more
that I am grateful for, especially for people of the past and people of
the present who have positively affected my life. One of the people I want to talk about will be Howard Thurman, a mentor for many people of the 20th century and beyond. As the Dean of the Chapel at Boston University when I was a student, he unknowingly taught me much about life and mysticism and much more. As he said, "There is in every person an inward sea . . ." But before I get to him, I have some other writers that I want to talk about. . .
Monday, May 26, 2014
Who Was Howard Thurman?
May 26, 2014
I have been remiss for awhile, quite awhile, I think my last post was in September 2010, but here I am, back again. I just finished teaching a class about a favorite person in my life. The person was Howard Thurman, and he was the Dean of Marsh Chapel when I was a student at Boston University in the 1950s and 60s. He preached incredible sermons that packed the chapel with both BU students and people who lived in that part of Boston.
But he was more than the Dean of Marsh Chapel: Much more. He was a teacher. But not just any teacher. He opened us up to our own worlds and our own lives.
And he wrote. Howard Thurman wrote 22 books, and after he died, several of his books were reprinted.
I like to let him do the talking: Here is one of his passages, quoted in his book, Meditations of the Heart: "There is in every person an inward sea, and in that sea there is an island and on that island there is an altar and standing guard before that altar is the angel with the flaming sword. Nothing can get by that angel to be placed upon that altar unless it has the mark of your inner authority. Nothing passes the angel with the flaming sword to be placed upon your altar unless it be a part of the fluid area of your consent. This is your crucial link with the Eternal." (from Meditations of the Heart by Howard Thurman )
Yes, Thurman was the chaplain of the university I went to and yes, I heard many many of his sermons. But what stands out to me today is that phrase from Meditations of the Heart. He is not about a class to be taught: he is about who we are individually.
I have been remiss for awhile, quite awhile, I think my last post was in September 2010, but here I am, back again. I just finished teaching a class about a favorite person in my life. The person was Howard Thurman, and he was the Dean of Marsh Chapel when I was a student at Boston University in the 1950s and 60s. He preached incredible sermons that packed the chapel with both BU students and people who lived in that part of Boston.
But he was more than the Dean of Marsh Chapel: Much more. He was a teacher. But not just any teacher. He opened us up to our own worlds and our own lives.
And he wrote. Howard Thurman wrote 22 books, and after he died, several of his books were reprinted.
- The Greatest of These (1944)
- Deep River: Reflections on the Religious Insight of Certain of the Negro Spirituals (1945) [also published as The Negro Spiritual Speaks of Life and Death (same year)]
- Meditation for Apostles of Sensitiveness (1948)
- Jesus and the Disinherited (1949)
- Deep is the Hunger: Meditations for Apostles of Sensitiveness (1951)
- Christmas Is the Season of Affirmation (1951)
- Meditations of the Heart (1953)
- The Creative Encounter: An Interpretation of Religion and the Social Witness (1954)
- The Growing Edge (1956)
- Footprints of a Dream: The Story of the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples (1959)
- Mysticism and the Experience of Love (1961)
- The Inward Journey: Meditations on the Spiritual Quest (1961)
- Temptations of Jesus: Five Sermons Given By Dean Howard Thurman in Marsh Chapel, Boston University, 1962 (1962)
- Disciplines of the Spirit (1963)
- The Luminous Darkness: A Personal Interpretation of the Anatomy of Segregation and the Ground of Hope (1965)
- The Centering Moment (1969)
- The Search for Common Ground (1971)
- The Mood of Christmas (1973)
- A Track to the Water's Edge: The Olive Schreiner Reader (1973)
- The First Footprints (1975)
- With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman (1979)
- For the Inward Journey: Writings of Howard Thurman (1984)
- A Strange Freedom: The Best of Howard Thurman on Religious Experience (1998)
- Meditations of the Heart (1999)
- Howard Thurman: Essential Writings (2006)
I like to let him do the talking: Here is one of his passages, quoted in his book, Meditations of the Heart: "There is in every person an inward sea, and in that sea there is an island and on that island there is an altar and standing guard before that altar is the angel with the flaming sword. Nothing can get by that angel to be placed upon that altar unless it has the mark of your inner authority. Nothing passes the angel with the flaming sword to be placed upon your altar unless it be a part of the fluid area of your consent. This is your crucial link with the Eternal." (from Meditations of the Heart by Howard Thurman )
Yes, Thurman was the chaplain of the university I went to and yes, I heard many many of his sermons. But what stands out to me today is that phrase from Meditations of the Heart. He is not about a class to be taught: he is about who we are individually.
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