30 min
Talk
The Dilemma of Commitment
Half an hour on what it costs to commit to anything, and what it costs not to.
About the teacher
Howard Thurman
American mystic, minister and civil rights leader (1899–1981), grandson of a woman born into slavery. He was dean of chapel at Howard University and then at Boston University, co-founded the first major interracial, interdenominational church in the United States, and wrote Jesus and the Disinherited, the book Martin Luther King is said to have carried with him. His theology of radical nonviolence shaped a generation of activists.
Talks & videos
Watch.
Short introductions and longer conversations, to hear this teacher in their own words.
29 min
Talk
The Single Mind
A recorded sermon on being undivided, in the voice people describe as the quietest in any room he was in.
15 min
Talk
The Sound of the Genuine
His address to the graduating class of Spelman College on 4 May 1980, a year before he died: how to hear your own sound in a world full of noise.
44 min
Talk
Love or Perish
One of the Lost Lectures found in the Morehouse College archives: three quarters of an hour of him on love as the only workable politics.
Path
The wider context.
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Prayer & contemplation
Christian mysticism
Silence, prayer and direct experience within the mystical traditions of Christianity.
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