Savor the Serendipity
Savor the Serendipity
My journey with writing, What Makes You Come Alive—A Spiritual Walk with Howard Thurman began with a coincidence. One sweltering July morning in Hot Springs, North Carolina my friend Harriet and I trudged onto a dusty and sometimes muddy campground for the annual spiritual gathering known as the Wild Goose Festival. Bec, a volunteer immediately drove up in a golf cart and offered us a ride to the main stage. We declined the invitation desiring to wander the walking path filled with booths and tables. We thanked Bec and chatted a bit about our respective festival contributions.
Once she heard that my presentations focused on Howard Thurman, the African American mystic, theologian, and spiritual architect of the Civil Rights Movement, she directed us to stay put and quickly sped into the campground. Bec returned with an icon style portrait of him that she painted herself. She handed it to me and said, “This is for you.” We stood there stunned and speechless as she drove away.
I pondered that moment for months. What did it mean? Was I to promote Howard Thurman in another way? As I periodically presented lectures and retreats on him I vaguely outlined possible book chapters in my mind but never wrote anything down.
Two years later a mysterious email from an acquisitions editor appeared in my inbox. Leslie Maddox inquired if I might consider writing a book about Howard Thurman for ordinary spiritual seekers; people who populated my retreats and workshops. She offered to assist me in drafting a book proposal. After a thirty-three year career as a psychology professor, I evaded major work projects. But I continued to meet people unfamiliar with Howard Thurman and his living wisdom. I knew I could never lead enough retreats to satiate the spiritual starvation I witnessed.
For unknown reasons, perhaps curiosity or prescience, I began collecting books by and about Howard Thurman shortly after I discovered him in 2008. Intrigued by the depth of his spiritual vision, I noticed our shared attraction to mysticism. By 2019, five volumes of the Howard Thurman Papers Project, a compilation of his personal correspondence, unpublished papers and other annotated material became available for purchase. Everything required to read and write a book about him neatly filled a large bookshelf in my home.
Like lightening, synchronicity struck as the pandemic spread across the world and I, as an organ transplant recipient couldn’t leave my house. Now I possessed the perfect book writing conditions. I started to feel a call to write this book about Howard Thurman.
Serendipity knocked on my door again in December, 2020, when a clergy friend forwarded an announcement about an online class taught by the renowned Thurman scholar, Walter Earl Fluker. I could enjoy a lovely meal in my own home during weekly evening classes, I delighted in this unexpected opportunity. I also gained access to some of Professor Fluker’s private collection of articles from obscure journals and out of print books.
On days of writing drought I read from my burgeoning Thurman library and prayed for inspiration and a sign that I should continue to write. The answer to that prayer arrived in the form of a 400 page historical tome about Howard Thurman written by the preeminent Thurman historian, Peter Eisenstadt. Insights and previously unrevealed information about Thurman provided useful references to explore and expanded my knowledge of him. I realized if I kept writing, these synchronicities would persist as well.
In between these coincidences, each weekday morning I climbed the stairs to my workroom, tethered myself to the desk for about three hours to grind out a few pages. I stopped for an hour lunch and mental rest, and returned to the desk until dinner. I successfully ignored useless emails, and the piles of papers, books, and middle of the night scribbled notes on my desk. Two precious friends, a retired women’s studies professor and book lover and a psychology professor, therapist, and devotee of Thurman and deeply spiritual matters, read and commented on each drafted chapter.
For my penultimate dance with serendipity, I found myself on a virtual panel to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Thurman’s passing. To my astonishment, one panelist, historian Anthony Siracusa’s announced his book on nonviolence before King would be published soon. In it he highlights Howard Thurman as the quintessential inspiration for the nonviolent movement.
A prior reservation at a retreat hermitage provided the requisite balm for the extraordinarily stressful two weeks before the manuscript deadline. I yearned for spaciousness, an uncluttered mind, no distractions, walks, rest, prayer, and delicious food. If still alive, Howard Thurman would recommend such practices to restore vitality.
Revelations persisted during the editing process. Leslie’s discerning and skillful editing challenged me to dig deeper into topics I scantly mentioned in the manuscript. I learned, for example, about the interconnection and communication of trees, nature quests among enslaved adolescents, and experiences of everyday mystics. Then she kindly and gently pruned 10,000 of my precious words. Humbled, I nearly cried but I knew trimming is essential in order to produce the lush trees and beautiful flowers in my yard.
Though we never met, discipline, meditation, prayer, and attention to sacred serendipities solidified my bond with Howard Thurman. His spiritual insights and my own led me to every ingredient I needed to write and publish a book I love.
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Lerita Coleman Brown professor emerita of psychology, spiritual companion, retreat leader, and speaker promotes contemplative spirituality and mystic and spiritual leader, Howard Thurman on her website, peaceforhearts.com. She is the author of several articles, essays, an edited volume and the book, When the Heart Speaks, Listen—Discovering Inner Wisdom.
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What Makes You Come Alive: A Spiritual Walk with Howard Thurman
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”–Howard Thurman
Known as the godfather of the civil rights movement, Howard Thurman served as a spiritual adviser to Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders and activists in the 1960s. Thurman championed silence, contemplation, common unity, and nonviolence as powerful dimensions of social change. But Dr. Lerita Coleman Brown didn’t learn about him during her years of spiritual-direction training. Only when a friend heard of her longing to encounter the work of Black contemplatives did she finally learn about Thurman, his mystical spirituality, and his liberating ethic.
In What Makes You Come Alive, Brown beckons readers into their own apprenticeship with Thurman. Brown walks with us through Thurman’s inimitable life and commitments as he summons us into centering down, encountering the natural world, paying attention to sacred synchronicity, unleashing inner authority, and recognizing the genius of the religion of Jesus. We learn from Thurman’s resilience in the psychologically terrorizing climate of the Jim Crow South, his encounters with Quakers and with Mahatma Gandhi, and his sense of being guided by the Spirit. Each chapter illuminates an aspect of Thurman’s work and includes reflection questions and spiritual practices.
Decades after their deaths, sages like Howard Thurman offer spiritual kinship and guidance for our contemporary life. Thurman’s spirituality enlivened an entire movement, and it can awaken us to intimacy with God and to authentic action today.
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Category: On Writing
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