Who is your favorite of Thurman's mystics in Walking with God - and why?
Dear Engaged Spirituality Family,
On Sunday January 28 Engaged Spirituality will meet and address the above question.
Here is a photo of the summary of the 10th chapter on Meister Eckhart (pages 82-90 from The Way of the Mystics - Walking with God: The Sermon Series of Howard Thurman Vol.2 edited by Peter Eisenstadt and Walter Earl Fluker.)
Here is the link to the audio of Howard Thurman speaking the words of those pages:
Here is a link for another Thurman sermon on Meister Eckhart:
Conversation questions based on text from the summary:
From p. 83 summary: “Thurman adopts the analogy of a spring that “spills over” in the lives of others to describe Eckhart’s creative and revolutionary spirituality: ‘When the Godhead manifests itself, when the Godhead becomes in any dimension self-conscious, then God is born…If when any of the water of the spring spills over, that spilling in Eckhart’s thought is God. You can see the spill, you can deal with the spill: it separates itself somewhat from the spring itself.” This movement of the Spirit, says Thurman, results in a logic that ‘spills over in time and space; therefore when the Godhead which is at the core of me spills over in my time-space relationships, at least I can say that wherever such a person is there the kingdom of God is at hand.”
1) Do you have a favorite analogy or image that you have created, read about or referenced that describes the Spirit of God’s presence?
From pp. 88-89 “Now, says Eckhart, the way by which this core, this Godhead which is the uncreated element at the very core, the way [by] which the individual grows in spiritual awareness, the way by which the individual grows in spiritual stature and in richness is to do the things that will widen the area of the spread of this uncreated element which is at the core of one’s being, of one’s soul. And how do you do that? You do that by, first of all, by working on detachment. And he comes back, you see, to his wrestle with the senses. No man who is involved in attachments can free himself so as to give, to keep from blocking the spread of the Godhead which is [in him] the core of his soul in his life. So, the only way by which you can precipitate this spread is by disentangling the self from all the things that commit the mind and commit the spirit and involve the heart.”
2) Detachment is one of Meister Eckhart’s seminal concepts in his writings. Have you found the art of detachment to be a normal part of the maturing/aging process or a more difficult process to advance? How have you learned to release unhelpful attachments? What practices have been productive in this process?
Here is information on the last mystic discussed in the book Thomas A Kempis – Pages 103-111 of The Way of the Mystics by Howard Thurman.
Link to Audio:
I hope you can join us on January 28!
Take care.
Eileen
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