07:28 min
CLEAR ALL
To be watched is to feel the expectation of the watcher. The driver is more careful with a police car behind, the high school athlete more adept with the cheerleader on the sideline, every performance heightened once there is an audience. To be seen is to behave differently.
Evelyn Underhill was one of the greatest spiritual writers of the twentieth century. Her legacy as a pivotal figure in Christian mysticism endures today.
Howard Thurman (1899-1981) was one of the finest thinkers and most influential preachers of his era. Yet Thurman's importance goes well beyond his influence on Martin Luther King, Jr. and others in the freedom struggle.
Howard Thurman tended not to speak of his own mystical inclinations, conscious that the word mysticism was likely to be misunderstood. And yet Thurman is commonly recognized as a mystic in the sense that he used the word to describe someone who had an acute experience of the Divine Life.