Spiritual Touchstone: Celebrating Juneteenth and the Legacy of Howard Thurman
“There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”
- Howard Thurman
Spiritual Touchstone:
Some folks, who object to recognizing Juneteenth as a national holiday, make the argument that “slavery was a long time ago and we’re past it.” And though that might feel true because our world seems to be so different today, it is closer than you might imagine.
For example, the magnificent African-American philosopher and theologian, Howard Thurman (1899-1981) was the grandson of slaves in Florida, but living in San Francisco at the time of his death. And while I didn’t get to California until 1986 and then on to San Francisco to begin seminary in 1991, I’ve had the privilege to have worked with his successors at the church he cofounded in the City in 1966, the Church for the Fellowship of All People, a congregation that has often been labeled the “first interracial interfaith congregation.” The current presiding minister of that congregation, Rev. Dr. Dorsey Blake still teaches at Pacific School of Religion and was given Dr. Thurman’ robe when installed in 1994.
The distance between me and the U.S. slaveholding economy isn’t all that far either. My maternal grandfather was the grandson of proud slaveholders in Springhill, Arkansas just six miles southwest of Hope, Arkansas near the Red River. His father came to still slaveholding East Texas just after the civil war and arrived in West Texas about 1880 with a cattle drive. I was quite close to my Papa Roy whose father died in 1919.
And yet, like my Texas ancestors who willfully ignored the news that Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 until they were “officially” informed at gunpoint on June 19, 1865 by Union Troops landing in Galveston, I was woefully unaware about the contributions of Howard Thurman that have shaped my own life and ministry. But that ignorance of Thurman’s already substantial impact on my life is lessening.
Our spiritual book group, the Live Edge Readers has begun reading What Makes You Come Alive: A Spiritual Walk with Howard Thurman by Lerita Coleman Brown. Brown’s book, published in 2023, invites the reader into her world as a spiritual director and academic while also providing an opportunity to learn from Thurman’s work by applying his great wisdom and mystic knowing to our current spiritual practice. Most helpful, so far, is how Thurman’s work links mysticism and spirituality to social change. Brown writes, “one reason Thurmans’ work necessitates careful study by contemporary activists is that social and political movements without a spiritual base are ultimately unsustainable.”
Thurman was a spiritual advisor and mentor to many of the notables of the Civil Rights movement including Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who it is said carried a copy of Thurmans’ book “Jesus and the Disinherited” in his pocket every time he marched.
After the first chapter, Brown asks, “what feeds your spiritual hunger?” And for me, right now, some of what satisfy’s my activist soul’s spiritual hunger is to metaphorically take a walk with Howard Thurman.
Live Edge Readers meets via zoom each Wednesday, 2:30-4p. Reply to this blog if you’d like to join us.