The Experience of Growing Up

The hard way of self-reliance—the uneasy tensions of self-confidence,
What there is to be done in accordance with the persistent desire,
Each must do for himself,
Often by trial and error, by fumblings and blunderings,
Here a little, there a little more,
Step, by uncertain step, we moved in the direction of self-awareness.
In this strength of intimate disclosure, each person faces his world,
Does battle with nameless forces,
Conquers and is defeated, wins or loses, waxes strong or weak.
Always experience says, “Rely on your own strength,
hold fast to your own resources, desert not your own mind.”
In the same sure moment, the same voice whispers,
“Upon your own strength, upon your own resource, upon your own minds,
At long last you cannot rely.
Your own strength is weakness
Your own mind is shallow
Your own spirit is feeble.”
The paradox:
All experience strips us of much except our sheer strength of mind, of spirit.
All experience reveals that upon these we must not finally depend.
Brooding over us and about us, even in the shadows of the paradox,
there is something more—
There is a strength beyond our strength, giving strength to our strength.
Whether we bow our knee before an altar or
Spend our days in the delusions of our significance,
The unalterable picture remains the same;
Sometimes in the stillness of the quiet, if we listen,
We can hear the whisper in the heart
Giving strength to weakness, courage to fear, hope to despair.

(For the Inward Journey: the writings of Howard Thurman.
Selected by Anne Spencer Thurman. pages 62-63
Originally published in Meditations of the Heart)

And so I sit, preparing for this morning’s workshop and the long dance of being with a congregation, being with a people, listening to hear the whisper in the heart. I feel blessed and able.