There are many of us … across the world who claim Howard Thurman as our personal spiritual mentor…. He inspired, challenged, lifted, and comforted us in a thousand ways. —Landrum Bolling
Author and spiritual director Lerita Coleman Brown comments on Howard Thurman’s (1899–1981) gift of mentoring others:
Howard Thurman serves as an exemplar for both the formal ministry of spiritual direction and informal spiritual friendship. Mentoring, at its best, is an exchange. Spiritual guides are vital beacons of light on the spiritual path, and once a person becomes spiritually mature, they naturally begin to serve as spiritual mentors for others. Maya Angelou instructs, “When you learn, teach.” Howard Thurman taught and mentored many, although not always in a formal classroom. Students found they could share their personal issues with Thurman and frequently sought him out for spiritual advice. His timeless sermons, public lectures, and written meditations endure because they continue to feed the hunger of the spirit. [1]
Thurman encouraged the graduates of Spelman College to listen to and to become their unique selves:
The burden of what I have to say to you this afternoon is, “What is your name, who are you and can you find a way to hear the sound of the genuine in yourself?” There are so many noises going on inside of you, so many echoes of all sorts, so [much] internalizing of the rumble and the traffic, the confusions, the disorders by which your environment is peopled that I wonder if you can get still enough—not quiet enough—still enough to hear rumbling up from your unique and essential idiom the sound of the genuine in you. I don’t know if you can. But this is your assignment….
There is something in every one of you that waits, listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself and if you cannot hear it, you will never find whatever it is for which you are searching.… You are the only you that has ever lived; your idiom is the only idiom of its kind in all the existences and if you cannot hear the sound of the genuine in you, you will all of your life, spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls….
Who are you? How does the sound of the genuine come through to you?… Don’t be deceived and thrown off by all the noises that are a part even of your dreams, your ambitions … that you don’t hear the sound of the genuine in you because that is the only true guide that you will ever have and if you don’t have that you don’t have a thing. You may be famous, you may be whatever the other ideals are which are a part of this generation but you know you don’t have the foggiest notion of who you are, where you are going, what you want. Cultivate the discipline of listening to the sound of the genuine in yourself. [2]
AUGUST 20 I AM A GOD WHO HEALS.
I heal broken bodies, broken minds, broken hearts, broken lives, and broken relationships. My very Presence has immense healing powers. You cannot live close to Me without experiencing some degree of healing. However, it is also true that you have not because you ask not. You receive the healing that flows naturally from My Presence, whether you seek it or not. But there is more—much more—available to those who ask. The first step in receiving healing is to live ever so close to Me. The benefits of this practice are too numerous to list. As you grow more and more intimate with Me, I reveal My will to you more directly. When the time is right, I prompt you to ask for healing of some brokenness in you or in another person. The healing may be instantaneous, or it may be a process. That is up to Me. Your part is to trust Me fully and to thank Me for the restoration that has begun. I rarely heal all the brokenness in a person’s life. Even My servant Paul was told, “My grace is sufficient for you,” when he sought healing for the thorn in his flesh. Nonetheless, much healing is available to those whose lives are intimately interwoven with Mine.
Ask, and you will receive. Ye have not, because ye ask not. JAMES 4:2
To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” —2 CORINTHIANS 12:7–9
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find.” —MATTHEW 7:7
