Good morning…
A few Sundays back, we circled up in a dear friend’s lovely living room for our monthly book discussion of Anchored In The Current. Right now in the wee hours of the night, I am drawn back to some of the words we read aloud from page forty-one, words first spoken in the baccalaureate address Howard Thurman delivered at Spelman College on May 4th, 1980.
“You are the only you that has ever lived; your idiom is the only idiom of its kind in all 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 someone else pulls.”
Hear the sound of the genuine in you. What wise words of encouragement. On the next page, Parker Palmer amplifies Thurman’s genuine voice.
“We are given only one chance to live, learn, and serve in this world as the unique ‘idiom’ each of us is – the unique voice that speaks in us and through us, the Word made flesh in you and in me.”
The sound of the genuine is the Word made flesh in you and in me. The Word became a human being and lived here with us. We saw his true glory, the glory of the only Son of the Father. From him all the kindness and all the truth of God have come down to us (John 1:14, CEV). As we hear and as we follow the sound of the genuine, all of God’s kindness and all of God’s truth come alive in us.
“Don’t ask what the world needs,” Thurman said. “Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
As we begin this new day hearing and following to the sound of the genuine, we personally ponder, “God, what makes me come alive?”
Now is the time to begin to go do it.
…Sue…
