Inner authority is sacred
Howard Thurman, 20th-century theologian and civil rights leader, has long been a Harbor favorite (we wrote a little bio of him on the blog if you’re interested). One of his most profound—and perhaps mysterious—quotes was one of the focal points of this year’s in-person retreat. Here it is:
There is in every person an inward sea, and in that sea there is an island and on that island there is an altar and standing guard before that altar is the angel with the flaming sword. Nothing can get by that angel to be placed upon that altar unless it has the mark of your inner authority. Nothing passes the angel with the flaming sword to be placed upon your altar unless it be a part of the fluid area of your consent. This is your crucial link with the Eternal.
(from Meditations of the Heart)
It might be that you can make meaning and identify with this quote quickly and easily. But for those who like a little companionship in digesting quotes, here’s my take on this passage. There is a part of us that decides what we do and don’t let into our lives. Even among the things we let into our lives, there is a part of us that decides what does and doesn’t define us, change us, form us, make demands of us. Ideally this part of us is calm and still—like an island in the middle of an expansive sea. If so, we can calmly give or withhold the stamp of our inner authority, and in those cases when we deny access to our “altar,” we can say no as if calling upon the flaming sword of an angel to bar entrance.
A lot of the way I understand this metaphor is that it is a mystical rendering of the common and important topic of boundaries. But because it is mystical, it is also more than that—we’ll return to that thought in a minute.
As some of us reflected on this quote at the retreat, I noticed how easy it is to think of this inner authority almost exclusively as the part of us that says no, that calls upon the flaming sword to deny access to harmful people, beliefs, communities, or activities. And yet, just as with boundaries, the island altar of our inner sea is a place where some things are kept out and other things are allowed in.
While some of us may need to focus on the inner authority to say no, perhaps others are in a season when they truly need to use their inner authority to say yes. To find, identify, pursue, or open ourselves up to what will bring joy and hope and life.
What have you been letting onto your inner altar that should have been kept out? On the other hand, what might be missing from the island of your inner sea?
I said we’d return to Thurman’s mysticism, and that will be our final note. Notice the final line of his quotation: “This is your crucial link with the Eternal.” This season Harbor is engaging in a series of discussions (called Are you there, God? It’s me, Harbor.) during our weekly gatherings about who or what God is and how we might experience or know the Divine. So this line seems like an important one to sit with and dwell on: “This is your crucial link with the Eternal.”
It’s not 100% clear what the word “This” refers back to: the fluid area of your consent from the previous sentence, or the entire process of sea-island-altar-authority-sword that he describes in the paragraph? But because of Thurman’s tendency to meditate on a layered metaphor and then sum it all up with a pithy conclusion, what I can find on the internet seems to say it is the latter: the whole structure, the whole process is our crucial link with the Eternal.
In other words, that part of us where we are shaped—and where we decide what will be allowed to shape us—is sacred. The work of setting boundaries is sacred. Both the health of saying no and the joy of saying yes are sacred. When we reverently draw upon wisdom to exercise autonomy and guard the altar of our soul, that is our crucial link to God.
