TWO AREAS OF NEED

The Burghers of Calais, an 1889 sculpture by Auguste Rodin

Thanks to Helen for sending this passage by Howard Thurman from his book Meditations of the Heart.

TWO AREAS OF NEED - One Family

"There are at least two areas of need in which all men are involved. One is the insistence upon finding something to worship. It is not optional. It is not the result of some particularly significant spiritual bias in personality. There is something native in the human spirit that insists upon the offering of one's precious gifts, precious possessions - offering them to something outside of oneself, something that is regarded as supremely worthwhile. What happens when you get a wonderful piece of good news? What do you do? You want to tell somebody - somebody who means enough to you to accept tidings as a symbol of nearness and devotion. What do you worship? To what do you bring the most precious increments of your spirit, your need and your possessins? The need is ever present. Whatever it is that holds so central a place in your reaction to living, that is your God!

There is also the need of being a part of the family, the human family, the human race. I am aware that all the race, in some meaningful sense, breathes through me - that I am a part of the pulsating rhythm of existence. I am not a thing apart, I am not a separate unit; I am deeply involved in the collective experience of aliveness, and of human aliveness. If I am cut off so that only my little life breathes through me, only my little hopes course through my mind and spirit, only my little thoughts penetrate my brain, then life for me is not worth living. I must have a sense of deep corporate vitality, nothing less than that will satisfy. Therefore I must manage somehow to keep open the lines of communication between myself and the human family. How wonderful it is if I can do this by love, by warmth, by kindling flames of abiding fellowship! Often, it cannot be done that way, there is a resort to hate, to antagonism, to beligency. The shouting of defiance is the call of my heart for kinship. If a man cannot become the center of an increasing affection, in his desperation he become the core of a great rejection. For better or for worse, there is only one family under God and I am a member of it."

Howard Thurman played an important but indirect role in the Civil Rights Movement. The commitment of Martin Luther King to nonviolence was under the influence of Thurman's mysticism. 

To learn about the history of the movement with an emphasis on interaction of Thurman and King, read this Smithsonian article which includes these statements from Christianity Today:

"Thurman was not an activist, as King was, nor one to take up specific social and political causes to transform a country. He was a private man and an intellectual. He saw spiritual cultivation as a necessary accompaniment to social activism."

"The relationship of Thurman’s mysticism and King’s activism provides a fascinating model for how spiritual and social transformation can work together in a person’s life. And in society more generally."

You will notice how the passage Helen selected - Two Areas of Need - applies to the Civil Rights Movement. If King had tried to lead the movement without the underpinning of a strong commitment to acting out his love of God, his desire to bring together the human family through social activism may have failed. However Thurman's mysticism alone could not have impelled people to take the steps necessary for change.   

An influential book by Thurman can be read by using the INTERNET ARCHIVE:

JESUS AND THE DISINHERITED