
Welcome! Dr. Howard Thurman was a mystic, theological icon and spiritual advisor to leaders of the civil rights movement in the United States in the 20th Century. His childhood home, family and community were pivotal in shaping his life, character and early spiritual formation journey. This guide was developed to help you encounter this sacred space and some of Dr. Thurman’s writings in transcendent ways. For more information on Dr. Thurman or his home, click here.
This prayer guide can be used when visiting Dr. Thurman’s childhood home:
Howard Thurman Historic Home
614 Whitehall Street
Daytona Beach, FL 32114
It can also be used wherever you are prayerfully engaging the work of Dr. Thurman.
Tips: It is helpful to be outside. Or, bring inside a leaf, a twig, or a piece of bark from nature. You may want to have a journal and pen to capture your reflections.
Take a Moment 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.
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.
-Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart (Harper & Brothers, 1953)
Imaginative Meditation with Dr. Thurman Reading The Inward Sea
As a boy in Daytona, Dr. Thurman often visited the ocean. This reflection surely pulls from his childhood experiences by the sea.
Click below to hear Dr. Thurman’s voice:
– Credit to American Museum of Paramusicology on YouTube
The Inward Sea
There is in every person an inward sea,
And in that sea there is an island
And on that island is an altar
And there stands God over that altar
the “angel with the flaming sword.”
And Nothing can get by that angel to be placed on that altar
unless it has the mark of your inner authority upon its brow
And what gets by the “angel with the flaming sword” and its place on your altar on your island in your sea becomes a part of what a friend of mine calls the fluid area of your consent, the center of your consent and what becomes the center of your consent is your connecting link with the Eternal.
-Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart (Harper & Brothers, 1953)
When you imagine your inward sea what do you notice?
What might be on your altar?

Transcendence At The Tree
When Dr. Thurman was a boy, he encountered God’s presence under an oak tree in his Daytona yard. As you visit his childhood home, spend time by this famous tree. Perhaps lay a hand on it and listen. Or, wherever you are, hold a piece of a tree in contemplation. What rises in your consciousness?
When the storms blew, the branches of the large oak tree in our backyard would snap and fall. But the topmost branches of the oak tree would sway, giving way just enough to save themselves from snapping loose. I needed the strength of that tree, and, like it, I wanted to hold my ground. Eventually, I discovered that the oak tree and I had a unique relationship. I could sit, my back against its trunk, and feel the same peace that would come to me in my bed at night. I could reach down in the quiet places of my spirit, take out my bruises and my joys, unfold them, and talk about them. I could talk aloud to the oak tree and know that I was understood. It, too, was a part of my reality, like the woods, the night, and the pounding surf, my earliest companions, giving me space.
-Howard Thurman. With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1979)
Lectio Divina (Divine Reading)
“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.”
– Dr. Howard Thurman
- Read the text and allow it to wash over you…
- Read the text again and notice any words that shimmer for you.
- Do these words apply to your life?
- What is the invitation or call you notice?
- Read the text again and simply sit with it in the quiet of your heart.
Thank You to Our Center Partners and Friends
The New Birth Corporation, Inc. for their work sustaining the national treasure that is the Howard Thurman Home in Daytona, Florida.
Kathy Lieffort, Victoria Knight and Audire https://audire spiritual direction.org