The Howard Thurman Podcast

In the final sermon of this series, Thurman affirms that Jesus does not struggle with the fact of death but the fact of finality swallowing all future possibilities. When Jesus asked God whether the cup before him might pass, what he possibly considered, Thurman notes, is whether more time living might be better than dying. The test of faith, Thurman says, comes when life’s agony is not relieved....

Thurman’s fourth sermon in this series expands the traditional frame of the wilderness temptations and portrays Jesus’ decision to go to Jerusalem for the last time as a crossroads dilemma. In this instance, Jesus must decide whether to go to Jerusalem, where he would be rejected and killed, or, to continue his ministry elsewhere and live. Thurman explains the crossroad faced by Jesus as a dilemma...

In his third sermon regarding Jesus and the tempter, Thurman discusses the dilemma one faces when deciding whether personal ascent to power will compromise one's spiritual integrity. It is possible, Thurman says, that Jesus considered how ruling over the kingdoms of the world might position him to further the aims of God’s kingdom. Perhaps Jesus contemplated the potential of his teaching, heal...

In the second temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, Thurman explains why Jesus resisted making himself an exception to the rule of the natural order. The tempter’s efforts to convince Jesus to operate beyond the logic of physical reality was an effort to get him to be less human. Jesus did not act outside of life so that he could speak to human life, Thurman notes. No one can do as one pleases or...

In this sermon, Thurman discusses the strangeness associated with following Jesus and taking up the life of ministry. The strangeness of this act is that one must leave the known for the unknown, convert family into strangers, and assume a spiritual orientation to a material world. When Jesus opted not to turn stones into bread he must have done so, Thurman muses, knowing that while humans do not...

In the final lecture of “Quests for the Human Spirit,” Thurman discusses three fundamental assurances that underly spiritual quests. First, it is necessary to achieve a sense of being totally encompassed and embedded within a dependable reality. Second, more than maintaining a sense of the all-encompassing, one’s faith must become a “tutor,” Thurman says. Believing that God exists, is “close at ha...

In Thurman’s second lecture on peace, he focuses on the collective experience of harmony in a world context. While human beings are deeply embedded within the ambitions and structures of governments and states, it is essential for the individual to establish a sense of being separate and distinct from the world in which one is nourished. Amid Cold War politics nearly twenty years after the use of...

In the first of this two-part lecture, Thurman defines peace as a sense of “inner togetherness.” Experiences of peace are diverse and unfold through manifestations of innocence, exhaustion, reconciliation, conformity, and triumph. Here, Thurman emphasizes peace associated with “trials.” He does so because only tranquility on these terms persist within when external conditions do not change. This,...

Possessing a name provides a sense of being situated in the world. It is how the person marks one’s claim against society, Thurman notes. Identity in this regard requires the person to have a sense of one’s own body and idiom. Distinctive character underlies the capacity to probe the social world wherein one exists so that who one is becomes more articulate and more integrated within the whole. Pa...

Integrity is the alignment of self-image with the facts, or, the truths concerning a person. It is the “creative synthesis and wholeness inside the man.” Such inner “unanimity within,” Thurman claims, allows a person to take a stand and possess humility. Never fooled by any single or biased opinion about oneself, one must turn to ultimate judgment – to God. Meaning can only be defined in the prese...

Authority is more than a final limit. It also the persisting substance of limitations that remain with us after withdrawing from the presence of power. For Thurman, this sense of abiding authority is summed up in the biblical words “thus says the Lord.” We are “naked without authority,” he argues. There must be authority wherein one can lay oneself bare and yet not feel violated. Thurman believes...

In this brief lecture, Thurman addresses the need for stability. The sense of stability can be experienced when a person possesses what is most “significant and worth-full” to them. One must have morale to be stable, belief in one’s cause, faith in the enterprise to which one has committed, affirm these feelings, and finally, relate to the community. Stability is peace and security within with the...

When the sense of personal reality becomes part of an enlarging reality, one encounters truth. The quest for truth may be the essence of all quests, Thurman notes. Such striving is a sole aim and may not always produce or correlate with social change. It is more than a technique. The pursuit of what is spiritually true compels something within the individual to participate in a broader meaning. Wh...

For Thurman, the quest for value cannot be distinguished from the human experience of meaning. He suggests that ideas regarding value are not created in isolation within the mind, but they are “indigenous to the very life of personality.” The content of values largely reflects our communities of meaning and when one begins to develop a personal way of assessing them through her own experiences, sh...

Thurman explains that freedom is the “capacity to determine the future by action.” He sees the possibility of death as the guarantor of the experience of freedom because that possibility is always open to the person. The fact that this option is available rather than accepting any present conditions is only to suggest that this means one can imaginatively project oneself into another possibility....

In his introductory lecture to “Quests for the Human Spirit,” Thurman describes the quest as an act of bringing to focus the purpose of one’s life. Thurman notes that this is a creative work wherein one’s mental resources are organized into the raw materials needed to energize and pursue growth within the human spirit. Choosing between alternatives on the life journey is a matter of mind and heart...

In this eighth installment of the Discipline of the Spirit, Howard Thurman uses Goethe's Faust to set the tone as he discusses the principles of dualism and redemption. Thurman goes on to discuss whether our contradictions in life are final considering the righteousness of God. The movement of the creator through the experience of man is also discussed. Part of the Collection, Disciplines of t...

In this seventh lecture in the Discipline of the Spirit series, Thurman uses Matthew 5:39 as a framework for discipline as it relates to our decision to act. Thurman reminds listeners of the responsibility to act or react in integrity centered around core values as we are responsible for the actions we initiate as well as the reactions we initiate in other people. One must always be careful when d...

In this sixth installment of Disciplines of the Spirit, Howard Thurman talks about commitment in the framework of good and evil. Commitment is a level of dedication that gives us structure, order, and provides a basis for integrated action in life. Commitment rises against whatever comes seeks to come between self and that which self is committed to. In this lecture, Thurman poses the question of...

In this fifth lecture in the Disciplines of the Spirit series, Howard Thurman discusses the propensity to idolize perfection in our commitments. When we worship our commitment rather than that which we are committed, we give up the ability to be influenced by the vitality, power, and dynamism of that to which we are committed. This is especially true of our moral commitments which, when idolized,...

In this fourth lecture of Disciplines of the Spirit, Howard Thurman discusses commitment and its significance. Deep within every man, there is a profound sense regarding the meaning of life itself. Those that believe that life is dynamic and essentially unfinished tend to also be of the mindset that there are always alternatives and options to be considered. In these instances, commitment becomes...

In this third installment of Disciplines of the Spirit, Thurman is lecturing about personal stability. In this lecture, personal stability is defined as the experience through which an individual passes when he thinks he has that which is of most importance to him. An additional definition of personal stability used in this lecture is private morale, which is the belief in one’s cause, whatever it...

In this second installment of Disciplines of the Spirit, Thurman builds upon the concept of growth introduced in part 1 of the series. Here Thurman describes growth as the ability to accept what is fact and to handle change, whether the change is gradual or radical. Our desire to resist change for fear of being without a familiar structure requires us to grow in wisdom as we navigate the anxiety a...

This initial lecture in the Disciplines of the Spirit series is a discussion about the development of patience through the discipline of growth. Thurman describes discipline as the training, development, response to, and often responsibility for something. The spirit is disciplined, trained, cultivated, and fashioned by many things. One of these things is the experience of growth. Growth is charac...

Part 12 of Jesus and the Disinherited. In this he defines love as the "maintenance and furtherance of life at its highest level". He begins with a quote from Olive Schreiner. Love is not an ethic in the sense of being a "yard stick" for measuring oneself, but the inner intent of God in creation. He uses the life of Jesus as a model for love, especially for those with their "bac...