From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans
How Howard Thurman's insights benefit current discussions about what to do in the face of the injustices that so many people face today: highlighting parts of my recent book, Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans.
The last post featured a sermon by Thurman and a visual exegesis of Albrecht Dürer's The Prodigal Son amid the Swine. Today's post also focuses on chapter 5, the first chapter on the parable of the Prodigal Son: "Listening for the Whisper of God: 'You have to churn the Milk.'"
Here are some key quotes from the chapter:
“We have forgotten that the only true basis for a sense of security…is the awareness that you are precious in the sight of God, that you are of worth, and that your worth is not derived from anything that you do, anything that you have, anything that you know; it is a part of the givenness of God in His children.…Now this is the contribution that the religion of Jesus makes.”
“Thurman captures the essential element of the parable: the father (God) loves the son (the sinner) even before he repents.…The good news is that God and God’s love are relentlessly seeking us, and in response to God, ‘something deep within you will begin to move,’ and you will begin to open doors deep within you until at last you will find ‘that which you have had all along.’”
This quote is especially important for understanding Thurman's thought and insights (emphasis mine):
“‘When [the prodigal] came to himself,’ he came to his father.…When I…come to the very center, the very core of myself, then I come face to face with God. That God is, God is within me. That he is the very point of my being and existence.…That there is that of man which is God. Not a reflection of God. Not some staggering accent of God, but that which is God.”
When you listen to the audio of Thurman, you can tell how much he emphasizes the "is God" in the last part of that quote.
“One of the ways that Thurman explained the presence of God within ‘the inward parts of the human spirit and the human heart’ was to borrow an image from Hinduism: ‘the butter is in the milk,’ and ‘thou hast to churn the milk…if thou desirest to taste the butter.’ God is found within human beings who have to cultivate awareness of God within them, and one necessary path was to ‘limit one’s intake,’ to slow down and focus on important things amid the multitude of distractions in our hectic and harried lives, since there can be a ‘striking relationship between the inner and the outer’ aspects of our lives. Instead, we must churn the milk of our inner selves so we may taste the butter.”
“When we listen for and respond to the sound of the genuine in another human being, we are ascribing to them the same sense of infinite worth that we (should) believe that we have. This sound of the genuine is another aspect of our common consciousness, and here the power of imagination takes root and gives us the ability to put ourselves truly in the place of another human being.”
The next post (on chapter 5, part 3) will focus on some "digging deeper" insights, including a sermon by Thurman, a meditation by Thurman, and other resources.
