If you have been in worship on various Sundays over the years, you have heard me mention Howard Thurman. Howard Thurman was an American author, philosopher, minister, theologian, Christian mystic, educator, and civil rights leader. He is also known as a spiritual and intellectual mentor of numerous men and women who have influenced civil rights leaders and spiritual seekers. According to AI, a few of the individuals he has mentored during his life that ranged from 1899 to 1981 were:
*Martin Luther King Jr.: Thurman was a friend of King’s father and later served as a mentor to the younger King while he was a doctoral student at Boston University. King famously carried a copy of Thurman’s book, Jesus and the Disinherited, during his civil rights campaigns.
*Jesse Jackson: A civil rights leader and politician who looked to Thurman as a spiritual advisor.
Marian Wright Edelman: The founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, who was influenced by Thurman’s focus on social justice and spiritual growth.
*Pauli Murray: A prominent civil rights activist and the first Black woman ordained as an Episcopal priest.
*James Farmer: The co-founder of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), whom Thurman urged to establish the organization.
*Bayard Rustin: A key strategist of the Civil Rights Movement and advisor to MLK Jr..
*Vernon Jordan: A civil rights leader and advisor to multiple U.S. presidents.
*Whitney Young: A civil rights leader who served as the executive director of the National Urban League.
*John Lewis: The late congressman and civil rights icon, who frequently cited Thurman’s influence on the movement.
*Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi: A major figure in the Jewish Renewal movement, who was a student of Thurman at Boston University and credited him with encouraging his exploration of mysticism.
Yet, this intellectual and spiritual powerhouse believed that everyone needs a mentor if they are to reach their fullest potential as a child of God. Thurman during the span of his life talked about mentors who influenced him and assisted in him becoming the man he became. I want to share one of these stories. Why? It shows that spiritual and intellectual mentors can be any of us. We do not have to be a spiritual powerhouse ourselves. In addition, we can be mentored by anyone.
I have started reading a book called: “What Makes You Come Alive: A Spiritual Walk with Howard Thurman” written by Lerita Coleman Brown. In the book, Lerita Coleman Brown tells the story of his first mentor: Grandma Nancy. “Grandma Nancy served as Howard Thurman’s first mentor. She pushed him to develop his mind and live from his spirit. A close friend of Thurman’s, George Makechnie, notes, “Grandmother Nancy was Howard’s rock. Her spiritual strength, wisdom, and good sense had a profound influence upon his growth, shaping, and development.” Makechnie highlights, as Thurman himself did, the way he would read to her from scripture. I imagine him sitting beside her, how proud he must have felt, how precious were these moments he shared with her. She could not read, Makechnie writes, but “she firmly believed an education was of primary importance, and especially so to Blacks. ‘Your only chance,’ she told Howard, ‘is to get an education. The white man will destroy you if you don’t.’”
A tale about Grandma Nancy’s redemptive love demonstrates something of what she modeled for Howard. The story circulates today in sermons and lectures, although it’s hard to know whether it actually happened. Still, the story holds value for what it evokes of Grandma Nancy’s character. When Howard was a child, a white woman who lived adjacent to their home apparently resented having Black people live near her. Each night she dumped chicken manure she had scraped from her chicken coop over the fence onto Grandma Nancy’s garden. Young Howard wondered why his grandmother did not become enraged at her neighbor’s hateful act and exact some sort of revenge. Grandma Nancy chose instead to rise early and mix the manure into the soil and use it as fertilizer. This practice continued for years. One day the old white woman, who lived alone, became ill. Being an authentic Christian, Grandma Nancy stopped by her neighbor’s house with some chicken soup and a bouquet of roses. The woman was deeply moved by Grandma Nancy’s acts of kindness and asked her where she had found the beautiful long-stem red roses. Grandma Nancy Ambrose told the neighbor that she herself had played a role in growing the beautiful roses. She reminded her about the chicken manure she had dumped regularly in her backyard.
The God Grandma Nancy worshipped showed her how to turn hate into love. Thurman espouses this form of redemptive love in Jesus and the Disinherited, in which he reminds his readers that Jesus treated people not in proportion to who they were but to who they could be. Thurman knew that healing a fractured nation would require this type of transformational love.”
We should all have stories like this in our memory. During Lent we should search our memories to renew those stories and the effect they have had on our life.
Blessings, Rev. Gloria
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