What Makes You Come Alive: A Spiritual Walk with Howard Thurman

by Lerita Coleman Brown

“To sit quietly and see one’s self pass by! The streets of our minds seethe with endless traffic; Our spirits resound with clashing, with noisy silences, While something deep within hungers and thirsts for the still moment and the resting lull.”

Listening is also prayer. When I explain to retreatants or spiritual companions that prayer is not a monologue but a dialogue and that I believe our Creator wants to commune with us, they are often surprised. Like me, they were taught specific forms of prayer, such as petitionary or intercessory prayer, prayers of gratitude, and prayers of contrition. To pause, be still, and listen? They’re not sure that even counts. I often remind people that the words silent and listen contain exactly the same letters, just rearranged. One must be silent to truly listen.

Has a person ever suddenly appeared with exactly what you need? Has a chance encounter or what seemed like happenstance changed your life? Have you ever opened a book to a phrase or word that solves a problem or illuminates what has been obscure? Are crazy coincidences just that—coincidence—or are they proof of God’s intervention?

While paranoia is the sense that others are out to do us harm, pronoia is the feeling that a force or divine presence is conspiring to help us.

how might the course of American history have changed had Thurman not crossed paths with a member of Gandhi’s party that day?

taught me to ignore men who thought women were inferior and to deflect verbal attacks that might dampen my aspirations. She showed me how to respond to people who held to certain social conventions about race and gender or presumed I wasn’t intelligent because of my skin color. As I got older and began to read about historical figures like Jarena Lee, Zilpha Elaw, Julia Foote, Harriet Jacobs, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and more recently Nancy Ambrose, Sue Bailey Thurman, Pauli Murray, and Coretta Scott King, I saw in them the same kind of inner authority I saw in my mother. They shared the same steely resolve to fight for racial and gender equality.