Ramsey Khalifeh
This piece was featured in Charcoal Magazine’s tenth issue, Return
For many years, Charcoal Magazine, and the people who have helped bolster its initiative of inclusivity, augment the voices of creative people-of-color, and inspire the producing of meaningful art, has been centered within a space we call the Howard Thurman Center (HTC). But, how did we get here? In my pursuit of finding these answers, I looked to this person whose name is embellished on the center that this very magazine operates and publishes under. Howard Thurman is an author, philosopher, mystic, and civil rights activist, to name a few. His legacy and written words can show us what power we hold as a magazine and what each individual holds themselves.
The HTC was first established by Dean Emeritus George K. Makechnie in 1986 in the basement of the George Sherman Union. Its entitlement was given to Thurman who was the Dean of Marsh Chapel here at BU between 1953 to 1965. The center quickly became a space for people-of-color, whom most of the time were cast away from the university’s status quo; a minority. It was in January of 2020 when the university opened its doors to the new HTC in the space we know now at 808 Commonwealth Ave. It’s a shared space, a space for Charcoal to exist, and for the community to feel safe and welcomed.
Howard Thurman, born in 1899, published many-a-notable works in the fields of theology, spirituality, and philosophy. I started first by looking at Deep is the Hunger and its second volume, Meditations of the Heart, to understand the depths of his voice and message. With both volumes, the collection of meditations were originally intended for a variety of uses, such as guidance on the self, faith, and navigating through adversity. Thurman concludes in the foreword of Meditations of the Heart that “their use has already been tested,” as these meditations infiltrated Thurman’s church and influenced the masses he preached to.
One of Thurman’s first meditations, under Deep is the Hunger’s first section ‘A Sense of History’, poses an initial question:
“Have you ever been in a position in which you had to stand up and be counted? Really! For most of us life does not make the specifically dramatic demand of taking a formal stand …
Of course, there are people who are always taking positions, always being counted. For such, perhaps, the dramatic character of “stand taking” is neutralized by repetition … We are living in the midst of events that make such demands upon us. The options are very few. It is well within the possibility of the present that we shall be called upon to take a stand which will be, for us and our kind, decisive, in terms of the life and death of the person. It may not be a bad idea to get in practice now and to develop the climate within, that makes it possible for you to make up your mind — to be counted!”
Through our past nine issues, this community has done just that. We have made the intuitive and intentional decision to be counted. To be counted is to create visibility for the unseen and unheard. This value, much like other components of Thurman’s words, is one that I’d hope a platform like Charcoal can foster. What it can allow, and already does, is for each person represented to be more confident in the world, to walk into a space and show all the way up; the opportunities, once counted, are endless. It’s a powerful thing, to live, act, and walk towards a pursuit, and to realize that those attributes have been characterized to you in writing by someone many years your senior. To find it, too, is another powerful act.
I’ve spoken with a few members of our magazine, who’ve said they felt misguided and unheard at our institution. They’ve then gone on to say that in discovering Charcoal, the Howard Thurman Center, and the people involved, they’ve found a home to live, reside, and be themselves. At times, it feels like a physical manifestation that will carry on throughout all of our lives, and what Thurman calls our “track to the water’s edge of a lifelong quest.”
I want to share something that comes later in Meditations of the Heart, where Thurman lists out 54 different internal meditations. Number eight, ‘To See and to Do’, so eloquently highlights what I feel is a pillar of the center, of Charcoal, and of ourselves. It goes like this:
“I seek courage to see the true thing. It is a fearful admission that courage is required to see the true thing.So much of my vision is blurred by my fears, my anxieties, my narrow self-interests that I find difficulty to sometimes in giving full range to a searching scrutiny. It may be that I suspect the effect on me of seeing things in their true light …
I seek courage to do the true thing. To see the true thing is not necessarily to do the true thing. It may be that it takes a heightened form of courage to do the true thing. The act of a person finally involves the person and [they] are required at last to back [their] deed …
I seek courage to do the true thing that my own life may not be double talk. Here, in the quietness of worshipful waiting, I seek courage to do the true thing.”
What this “true thing” may be, I do not know. For every individual it may manifest as different things, an internal truth, unfiltered and real. The commitment we’ve made, however, is to pursue our truth and to take that first step.
I spoke with Dr. Walter Earl Fluker — a Howard Thurman scholar, editor and director of the Howard Thurman Papers Project, and professor in the School of Theology at BU — in an interview over a year ago. In this interview with Dr. Fluker, I was able to understand what Thurman was like first-hand. A man of deep care for the people in his life, Thurman always seeked the truth and clarity both with others and himself. Dr. Fluker told me about a time in which he reached out to Thurman for advice before starting a Phd program in Boston in 1980. Here’s what happened:
“After a millennium, he wrote me back, handwritten. He asked me to answer three questions, which are standard questions for him. And I’ll leave that for you and your viewers. His first question was real simple:
- Who are you, really? That’s a hard question.
- What do you really want? What are you hungering for all the time that you won’t even tell yourself? What do you want, really?
- How do you get what you want? What is your method?
So you have three questions: Identity, purpose, and method. Those have been guiding questions for me throughout my life, and as a result of Thurman, they are also guiding questions, I think, for a new generation of seekers, activists, who really want to see something different in the world and in society. One has to begin first with one’s own self, asking the question of identity ‘Who am I, really?’ ‘What is it that I really want? Why am I out here doing this work, really?’ And the third is ‘What’s the most effective method that I can use to get what I want? The moral and effective method.’
That’s all I got.”
This excerpt from the interview stuck with me since the day I recorded it. I screen-recorded that part on my phone and have it saved in my camera roll. It really made me think about my life and the choices I can make: How I can become more self-aware of my identity, make decisions that benefit who I want to be, and find the best way to live my life. It also made me think how in writing this, we can use Thurman’s words and writing in dissecting who we are as a magazine, as Charcoal Magazine. The message, his lasting impact, is that we can establish a collective consciousness, find solace within ourselves, and trot forward in our pursuit of life.