Howard Thurman: A Worldview of Oneness
Feast of Mary Magdalene
Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do that, because what the world needs is more people who have come alive.
—Howard Thurman
Dr. Lerita Coleman Brown (1953–2025) reflects on the legacy of Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman (1899–1981) and the wisdom he continues to offer us today:
To read a Thurman book, or listen to his deep baritone voice, is to understand why people refer to his writings, sermons, and lectures as living wisdom. More than forty years after his death, Thurman’s words continue to feed … any hearts or souls willing to listen….
Howard Thurman is known as the spiritual adviser to Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders of the civil rights movement. But … this label doesn’t begin to represent the full breadth of his contributions. His quest for a profound experience of the presence of God, of connection to all living things, serves as a model for any spiritual seeker venturing into uncharted territory. Thurman’s witness, through his life, writings, lectures, and sermons, serves as sustenance for the journey. [1]
The interfaith minister and author Liza J. Rankow describes Thurman’s work and witness in this way:
Thurman’s was a prophetic mysticism that engaged the world rather than withdrawing from it. His mysticism sought to bring the vision glimpsed in what he sometimes called the “creative encounter” into manifestation in human relationships, social institutions, policies, and the practical “for instances” of our lives. He writes, “… [Mystics] must embrace the social whole and seek to achieve empirically the good which has possessed [them] in [their] moments of profoundest insight….” [2]
There is a stereotype of mystics seeking to escape the world, concerned only with the ecstasy of their own experience of union with the Divine; yet in that union is a doorway that opens out into everything and everyone. The experience of oneness brings us back into relationship with the allness. The oneness and the allness inter-be…. Thus we feel deeply the wounds of a battered world, and the suffering and the needs of the people—including, as Thurman puts it in Jesus and the Disinherited, those “with their backs against the wall”—the disenfranchised, the marginalized and the oppressed. Inaction is not an option. The mystic worldview creates an ethical mandate, and it offers a new way to enter the world of social transformation—from the position of oneness rather than dualism. It shifts the paradigm…. Thurman often quoted social union leader Eugene Debs: “While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” [3]
Thurman spoke of spiritual disciplines as those practices by which we remove the barriers to our “inner altar”—our place of communion with God. And through this definition, he included activism as a spiritual discipline…. He affirmed the necessity to identify with, and work for the liberation and reconciliation of all parties in order to restore beloved community. [4]
References:
[1] Lerita Coleman Brown, What Makes You Come Alive: A Spiritual Walk with Howard Thurman (Broadleaf Books, 2023), 6, 8.
[2] Howard Thurman, “Mysticism and Social Change” (1939), in A Strange Freedom, Walter E. Fluker and Catherine Tumber, eds. (Beacon Press, 1998), 121.
[3] Eugene V. Debs, Statement to the Court, upon Being Convicted of Violating the Sedition Act, September 18, 1918, transcribed by John W. Metz.
[4] Liza J. Rankow, “Mysticism and Social Action: The Ethical Demands of Oneness,” in Anchored in the Current: Discovering Howard Thurman as Educator, Activist, Guide, and Prophet, ed. Gregory C. Ellison II, (Westminster John Knox Press, 2020), 120–121, 122.
Image credit and inspiration: John Mccann, untitled (detail), 2017, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. The path of contemplation is lined with the great exemplar trees—those who have gone before—practicing contemplation and action in unique and interconnected ways.
Story from Our Community:
I grew up in a church where God was the Judge and I had to be a good girl. The Daily Meditations have created the space for personal transformation, providing me with an experience of God as loving abundance, motherly care, and gentle friend. They have helped to move my heart and soul from a frightened child to a woman. I am continuously amazed by the wild, generous, unlimited love of my Creator and friends.
—Kathleen P.
