Join our contemplative space, “Peace for the Peacemaker,” a weekly soul check-in for Everyday Peacemakers on Instagram Live with Osheta Moore!
Howard Thurman, a pastor, professor, and contemplative activist, was once called “The Mystic of the Movement,” that movement being the Civil Rights movement of the ’60s. It was common knowledge that when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. traveled, he kept a copy of the Bible and Thurman’s “Jesus and the Disinherited” with him at all times. Thurman’s words were grounding, thoughtful, and hopeful, and they brought peace to the peacemakers of that time.
We, as peacemakers at this moment, need words of encouragement, invitations to center down, and a space for “the peace of the Eternal” to guide and illuminate our next steps.
At Global Immersion, we are passionate about your holistic formation into the peacemaker your context needs. It’s so specific and unique to you. Only you and the Spirit can truly parse it out, and so we’ve created a sacred space for you once a week on Wednesday mornings, where Osheta will bring a reading, a prayer, and a practice for the upcoming week.
Join us on Global Immersion’s Instagram on Wednesday mornings at 9 a.m. Central/ 7 a.m. Pacific.
Savor this poem from Howard Thurman, which gets at the heart of Peace for the Peacemaker.
How Good To Center Down!
How good it is to center down!
To sit quietly and see one’s self pass by!
The streets of our minds seethe with endless traffic;
Our spirits resound with clashings, with noisy silences,
While something deep within hungers and thirsts for the still moment
and the resting lull.
With full intensity we seek, ere the quiet passes, a fresh sense of order in our living;
A direction, a strong sure purpose that will structure our confusion
and bring meaning in our chaos.
We look at ourselves in this waiting moment –
the kinds of people we are.
The questions persist: what are we doing with our lives?
what are the motives that order our days?
What is the end of our doings?
Where are we trying to go?
Where do we put the emphasis and where are our values focused?
For what end do we make sacrifices?
Where is my treasure and what do I love most in life?
What do I hate most in life and to what am I true?
Over and over the questions beat in upon the waiting moment.
As we listen, floating up through all the jangling echoes of our turbulence,
there is a sound of another kind –
A deeper note which only the stillness of the heart makes clear.
It moves directly to the core of our being.
Our questions are answered,
Our spirits refreshed, and we move back into the traffic of our daily round
With the peace of the Eternal in our step.
How good it is to center down!