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Anchor Report - Fall - 2002"Howard Thurman"© All materials available on this site are copyrighted and require meticulous documentation if any portion of them is used - even the ideas or the thought process - cite the author and you will have a clear conscience. Thanks. Submitted by Marta Flanagan We gathered in the season of Ramadan, Hanukah and on the second day of Advent. We met amidst a troubled economy and the prospect of war. Though there was little overt mention of these ever present realities. We were 27 in number. We missed only one member, Tom Chulak is absent due to a District Executive meeting. Two of us were guests, Ann Fox of Fairhaven, MA and Gail Seavey of the Universalist Church in Salem, MA. Who were we? We are all people with some relationship to Unitarian Universalist parish ministry. Depending on how you count, two or three of us are retired. Another begins retirement in seven months. Six of us are in the midst of long term ministries of between 10 and 26 years. Nine of us have been in parish settlements between three and nine years. Three of us are in our first and second years of settlement. Two of us work at the UUA. One is an interim minister, another a contract minister, and still another is on self paid sabbatical. During check in we spoke of travel to France, Turkey, Russia, and South Africa. We spoke of grandchildren, children, spouses, former spouses, stepchildren and more. We worried for Josh Pollack’s newborn son, Mason, who awaits his third heart surgery. The professional struggles we have endured include four Board meetings in one month, financial challenges, reduction in ministry staff, making our way through burnout and depression and infinitely disparate demands. When one of our congregations was asked to name their favorite hymns, 83 people named 81 different hymns. Professional triumphs included the purchase of a new and larger church building, an off site canvass dinner for 460, and peripheralizing an antagonist in the church. One of our churches which typically collects $4,000 per year in the Sunday collection chose to give their collection plate monies away. So far they have given more than $10,000 this year. When greater things are asked of us we deliver. Kendra Ford told us that in her second year of ministry she is becoming more comfortable with not knowing how to do this. She reminded us all of how little we know. Bob Thayer spoke of his thoughts toward a new eighth principle of UUism. His eighth has to do with balance and harmony. He reminded us that revelation is not sealed. Bill Gardner told us of work at the UUA. He said, “With our country moving to the right, business is brisk for justice workers.” He reminded us of the world beyond, its needs and our tasks. Our theme was Howard Thurman, a man who lived in times of very particular challenges but who gave himself to the timeless issues of the human spirit. In our own ways we are trying to do likewise. Our first paper was offered by Richard Erhardt on the life of Howard Thurman. This anchor has chosen not to summarize the papers this convocation. They are available in print. Instead I will lift up threads of our rambling conversations. Following Richard’s paper we felt the need to clarify that Howard Thurman was not a Unitarian Universalist but a Baptist. He was a teacher of Martin Luther King at Boston University School of Theology. Though Thurman did not speak much of his famous student, Martin Luther King was nonetheless influenced by Thurman’s thought. Two of us spoke of their memories of Howard Thurman. Attending services at Marsh Chapel at BU, Dick Fuchs remembered the intensity of Thurman’s prayers. “His prayers lifted you up to the throne f God,” Dick said. “With Thurman there was no doubt that there was ahigher power.” Will Saunders was intern minister in 1972 at Community Church in New York when Howard Thurman ministered there for a month. Will remembered Thurman’s quiet, reserved manner. He also remembered how everyone listened attentively when he spoke. “He was spell binding in pulpit,” Will said. “His sermons were like long meditations and prayers.” Will also spoke of how taken Thurman was with the South African novelist Olive Shriner. Bob Thayer offered the second paper of the evening, “An interaction with Negro Spirituals based on the Writings of Howard Thurman.” We sang and watched Bob’s passion. Bob told us never to forget that these are not so much Negro spirituals as they are “slave laments.” We shared our associations with the song “We Shall Overcome.” We have sung that refrain at the funerals of colleagues and parishioners, at prisons following executions, in the civil rights and peace movements. At times we have come to that refrain with faithful vigor and other times we have felt melancholy and uncertain of its veracity. We grappled with the question of who could or should sing spirituals. Can we sing slave laments with integrity? Can we sing them without appropriating them? When is it appropriation and when is it reinterpreting it for today? When their words do not apply to us, can we sing them with others for whom their truths hold, can we sign them as an act of solidarity? Bob Thayer challenged us to “accept the fact of you,” the fact of ourselves as oppressor and oppressed, as powerful and powerless. Likewise, own this country in all its glory and all its wretchedness. Tom Wintle suggested we ask the African American members of our congregations how they feel about singing these in church—he reported that his black members would rather we didn’t. Josh Pollack said we need to ask—there needs to be some authorization. This anchor wondered if our discomfort with singing spirituals is a good thing. The very act of singing them invites us to ask who am I in relation to this struggle and who do I want to be? Our first evening closed with worship led by Kendra Ford. Kendra made us aware of the falling snow and the ocean not far from us. In the morning we regathered in worship led by Tracey Sprawls. Tracey spoke of how we are often called to tasks we did not pick or even want. There was silent agreement in the sleepy congregation. The design of the first morning included the “Public Theology” and “Pastoral Theology” of Howard Thurman The first paper of the morning was by Tom Chulak entitled “Howard Thurman: Spirituality and Social Transformation.” In Tom’s absence his paper was read by Rosemarie Smyrzinski. Nina Gray gave the response to Tom’s paper. Because she received the paper late Friday night and did not have time to develop a response, her response was not printed. Nina added to Tom’s list of spiritual sources for Thurman. She credited Thurman’s maternal grandmother, the black church of his youth, and his extended family and friends as spiritual sources. She echoed Tom’s thoughts about the significance of nature to Thurman and his ability “to cultivate a feeling for significance in living.” Nina was struck by Thurman’s thoughts about commitment as a kind of surrender to God. According to Thurman when we surrender to God, we come home, return home. And this surrender is a choice, a decision we make. Nina also stressed that Thurman saw Jesus as someone who had his back against the wall. He was a Jew and a poor Jew at that. Jesus was a man and may remain to this day a God for the disinherited. In other words Christianity is a religion that ideally upholds not the oppressor but the oppressed. The discussion that followed began with our again identifying our seeming need to claim someone we admire as a Unitarian Universalist. This tendency leads to historical inaccuracies and reveals our own hubris. Part of the reason we like Thurman is that he is accessible to us. Charles Stephens said that as a “mystical Humanist” he is very comfortable with Thurman’s theism. It was also pointed out that Thurman deals with our lives with a creative and redemptive spirit. Thurman invites each of us to address the hard truths of our existence in a creative way. Bob Thayer remarked that now we look to Thurman but we did not during the Black Empowerment controversy. Indeed there are those who might then have labeled Thurman an “Uncle Tom.” Times change. Today we see anew the truths Thurman was offering. Anita Farber Robertson offered the second paper of the morning, “Meditations From One Heart to Another: Reflecting on the Meditations of HT.” Fred Gillis offered the response to Anita’s paper. The mood changed with these two papers. The poetic mysticism of Thurman was reflected in these papers and in our more pensive conversation. We noted that Thurman’s relationship to nature is not a significant theme in his meditations. Nor is the theme of forgiveness – despite the powerful story of the former slave forgiving his master on his death bed. Will Saunders then moved the direction of our conversation. He described Thurman’s character and thought as “melancholy.” Thurman rarely expresses deep joy and yet he has a deep conviction that the life force ultimately triumphs. He is able to know the sovereignty of God and the depravity of man, the experience of affirmation and that of sadness. He both names the depths and affirms life. This is the sort of melancholy one hears in the slave laments. This melancholy coincides with reports of Thurman as a mild preacher, a gentle man who kept to himself. He was warm yet reserved. But was his melancholy a matter of individual temperament or a characteristic common to a people long oppressed and denigrated? Bill Gardiner suggested that what we called melancholy in Thurman is actually a manifestation of Thurman’s experience with racism. Thurman both knew the suffering of oppression and was able to transcend that very particular and painful journey. This anchor’s thoughts wandered as she considered the possibility that our labeling Thurman melancholy may actually reveal our own privilege and more optimistic view. Due to our comfortable position in the world, we can afford to be bluebirds theologically. In general liberal religious people do not take suffering as seriously as we might. We do not hold the tragic aspects of life closely. We avoid the crucifixion and look quickly to the flowers of Easter. The noon hour came and lunch called. In the afternoon we listened to an audiotape of Howard Thurman. His speaking manner was slow, formal. He enunciated like a gentleman. Then four of Thurman’s meditations were distributed among the 27 of us. The assignment was variously understood and so we actually did a variety of different things. Nevertheless we each went off for 20 minutes on our own silently reflecting and/or writing about our chosen meditation. Then we met in four groups to share our thoughts. In the large group we bantered in the usual way about directions and lack thereof and then broke for happy hour, dinner and a raucous change of pace led by Susan Suchoski Brown. The evening officially ended with a worship service by Bill Gardiner who testified to the power of the ties of the Greenfield Group at the time of his fathers’ death. The morning began with worship led by Paul Mueller who left this anchor with a question she needs to ask herself again and again: Can I live with it? Our conversation on Thurman ended with an open 45 minutes discussion. We took on the question of whether how one such as Thurman can be both mystic and prophet. Anita Faber Robertson asked,”To what extent the mystic is able to function in prophetic world? Yet some of our most profound change agents have drawn their strength out of mysticism. Is this a useful dichotomy?” We lifted up again the Thurman quote: “On the altar of social change lies the kingdom of god.” It was suggested that you cannot think that way if you’re not a mystic. Dick Fuchs looked back to our own Transcendentalist roots and recalled their way as both mystic and reformer. Dick said “The transformation of self consciousness must lead to the transmort of social consciousness. There is no necessary contradiction between mystic and reformer.” Charles Stephens offered this corrective: “The one way to go (or God?) is not the introverted mystic. We need a variety of social justice types.” Kendra Ford suggested that the dichotomy between mysticism and prophesy is false. Instead there is an inherent tension between institution and mystic… “Mystics tend to see the possible and it is natural for the prophetic to show up in the mystical experience. But it is harder for the mystic to attend to the structures of change.” Bill Gardiner recalled that in the 1940s the very act of an interracial co-ministry such as Thurman created was a profound social invention, a transformational act, and something we still struggle to achieve fifty years later Josh Pollack challenged his supervisor and all of us. In Thurman, he said, “I don’t’ see a call to restructure Rome but a call to survive with your spirit and humanity in tact. Social justice requires a demand in shift and change in social structures. What I see in Thurman co-ministry is a radical experiment but also a naive faith that if people just rub shoulders together eventually things will change. You need to be much more intentional about restructuring power. Thurman’s theology is so attractive and yet it doesn’t go the distance in terms of what is necessary for real social change.” Other questions were raised: The question this anchor asks herself: Is mysticism a choice or a temperament? Is it possible to have the temperament of mysticism and be in the struggle for social change? And a final question: Didn’t Thurman do what those of us who are preachers do? Are our words are our greatest contribution to social change? Do we nudge and support others to actually do the actual work of social change? Is that enough? The anchor ends with these questions.
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