MCCC Lenten Book Study 4/6/22 7pm

Life is Alive

April 6 – SESSION 5 – Life is Alive for discussion – #3 & 21

The awareness that the universe is dynamic gives to the individual the quiet assurance that wherever he may be located he is in immediate candidacy for the strength that comes from a boundless vitality. This fact makes for a universal kinship among all living things. The blessing of self-consciousness makes possible a deliberate relatedness out of which arise all of the joyous overtones of human relations. To understand another human being even dimly is to bring to a point of focus an Infinite Resource. The Psalmist states it by insisting that “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.”

3. Shall I be Good?

Shall I be good because of some reward, Because the virtuous act pays dividends? THE sentence from one of the Naylor sonnets recalls a familiar aspect of our common experience. It is very difficult to escape the searching tyranny of Reward and Punishment. From early childhood we are drilled in the experience of expecting to be rewarded because we are good and punished because we are bad. Again and again, to be good means to us to be approved. If the act is approved. If the act is approved by those who rate highly with us, then it is apt to be regarded as a good act or a good deed. Under such circumstances, the basis of our morality is located outside ourselves completely and is resident in those persons or that person whose esteem we seek and must have, or we are insecure. It is but a simple step from this attitude to the one which ascribes the role of Recorder and Punisher to God. It is most subtle. We may regard ourselves as being free souls, emancipated from superstitions and even religion, and yet there persists in the background of our lives the insistent feeling that our ill fortune is the result of wrong things that we have done. Indeed, this may be true. There is a wide area of human experience in which we are involved directly in the category of reaping and sowing. We cannot escape the logic of this part of the moral law. Individuals as well as nations do reap what they sow. But there is more involved in our central question than this. It is not enough to be good because of some reward, because the virtuous act pays dividends. The virtuous act may or may not pay dividends. In the last analysis, men cannot be persuaded to be good because of the reward either here or beyond this “veil of tears.”  Men must have finally come to the place in their maturity which makes them do the good thing because it is good. Not because it is a command, even a Divine command, but because the good deed, the good thought, the good life is in itself good. This is the strength of the good deed–that it is good. When this is our awareness, then the whole matter of reward and punishment, approval and disapproval, becomes strangely irrelevant. 

Shall I be good because of some reward, 

Because the virtuous act pays dividends? 

No! I shall be good because it is good.

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21. A Glory! A Benediction

She sat beside the open hearth, her head tilting to one side as if she were listening for some urgent word. I noticed that this was the first time that I had ever seen her without her hearing aid. There was something white in the right ear, which I mistook for the plastic disc of a new aid to hearing. Closer scrutiny revealed that this was a piece of cotton. It was noticeable also that she was not following the movement of my lips with her customary concentration. And then I knew. For the first time in many years, she was hearing unaided. I gathered in a few brief sentences that she had had an extremely delicate operation on one ear, and that thus far the results have been positive.

“Think of it–to hear the sound of a truck or passing car. I find myself listening to hear the light switch from downstairs. Late at night, I sit in the darkness listening, always listening, to the whole new symphony of sounds beating in upon me. I finger them reverently and gently, distilling from each new sound the magic of its music and its wonder. What an exhilaration! What a glory! What a benediction!”

This experience was a high moment among many high moments of a lifetime. Hearing for me had been a part of the normal day’s experience– a gift of God, the wonder of which had been dulled long since by the pattern of familiarity.  Only the rare sound, or the usual combination of sounds had stood out in my mind.  Since then, I’ve been much more sensitive to the meaning of sounds. Much I have learned about the miracle of the moment glorified in a sound, made up of myriad parts of many Melodies. But all of this is threatened constantly by the common place– the risk that the glory will be tamed out by endless repetition. As I left the house of my friend, my heart whispered many thanks to God, that through her ears I had heard with new hearing, and sensed the sheer joy of the Eternal when he created sounds and grand symphonies of melodies to delight the mind and make glad the spirit

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Rev. Chris McCreight (he/him) is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Thurman 5
Time: Apr 6, 2022 07:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
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Email secretary@[email protected] for password if haven’t joined us in the past.

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If desired, purchase “Meditations of the Heart” by Howard Thurman here: Amazon Link

Find just the excerpts for discussion here: Excerpts Link