Moment of Oneness October 23, 2024 - Prepared by Deven Horne

 

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The Meaning of All Things

Howard Thurman Part II

“Embrace mysticism for compassionate social action”. Lerita Coleman Brown

Opening Prayer: Beloved, help us to withdraw, to detach for a moment and dive into the Great Silence. “Here the Presence of God is sensed as an all-pervasive aliveness which materializes into the concreteness of communion: the reality of prayer. Here (You) speak without words and the self listens without ears. Here at last, glimpses of the meaning of all things and the meaning of one’s own life are seen with all their strivings”. Howard Thurman

 

Silence

 

More Background of Howard Thurman

 

Howard Thurman believed that certain conditions would increase the likelihood of a religious or mystical experience of God. “Quieting the surface noise in our minds is what Howard Thurman urges us to do when he instructs us, as he does throughout his writings to ‘center down’. He demystified mysticism as an experience open to anyone open to the experience”. Howard had many mystical experiences as a young boy. His encounter with Rufus Jones later in his life when spent a semester with him immersed in the study of Plato, Augustine, Meister Eckhart, St Francis of Assisi and Madame Gugan transformed his thinking about mysticism, religion and spirituality. Both Jones and Thurman used personal experience to inform their thinking and writing and to make mysticism more accessible to spiritual seekers providing everyday people with the vocabulary to describe mystical encounters. Thurman provided a working definition of mysticism as “the response of the individual to a personal encounter with God within his own spirit”. “Howard sympathized with the bewilderment many Black people held about mysticism as he was ridiculed for such thinking and writing”. He educated people about the transformative powers of mysticism. “The mystic yields, he writes, ‘the nerve center of his constant purpose or cause, a movement or an ideal, which may be more important to him than whether he lives or dies’.

“Thurman’s overall approach to mysticism and social change was significantly affected by the growing debate over the inability of Christianity to extricate itself from social conventions – conventions that openly victimized large segments of the population. Thurman was labeled a ‘mystic-activist’.

 

Quotes from Howard Thurman

 

          “Despite the personal character of suffering, the sufferer can work his way through to community. This does not make his pain less, but it does make it inclusive of many other people, sometimes he discovers through the ministry of his own burden a larger comprehension of his fellows, of whose presence he becomes aware in his darkness. They are the companions along the way”.

 

Silence

 

          “Social Action is an expression of resistance against whatever tends to, or separates one from, the experience of God, who is the very ground of his being…The mystic’s concern with the imperative of social action is not merely to improve the conditions of society, it is not merely to feed the hungry, not merely to relieve human suffering and human misery. If this were all, in and of itself, it would be important surely. But this is not all. The basic consideration has to do with the removal of all that prevents God from coming to himself in the life of the individual. Whatever there is that blocks this call for action.”

 

Silence

Affirmations and Intentions:

May we be inspired by holy people.

May we have the fortitude to seek silence and alone time with the Holy Presence.

May we discover the direction within to create a peaceful world and bring justice for those in need.

May spiritual guidance be our saving grace.

May all those who hunger for spiritual food be fed.

 

Silence to add your own intentions.

 

Closing Prayer: Holy Presence, fill us with your spirit, as we empty our minds and souls of us, of our worries, of our plans, of our puzzling, our musings, our insights; anything that distracts us from your presence within, inviting us to praise in communion with you. Here we are emptied and ready.