Explore how to listen to the genuine within amidst the noise of modern life, inspired by Howard Thurman's teachings and contemporary challenges like AI storytelling.
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What is the sound of the genuine in you?
This episode of Compass explores the influence of Howard Thurman, theologian, teacher, author, and civil rights leader. Howard taught that each of us is a unique expression of God's work i the world--so we search for authenticity and listen for the sound of the genuine in others.
Explore listening to the genuine within and the role of religion in leading you towards authenticity.
Episode Notes:
Howard Thurman wrote many books, but his Jesus and the Disinherited is a often-recommended classic.
Recommended contemplative practices for exploring the sound of the genuine within:
In this episode:
(00:00) Introduction to Howard Thurman's Legacy
(00:30) Thurman's Influence on Civil Rights and Spirituality
(01:24) Thurman's Address at Spelman College in 1980
(01:53) Questions of the Genuine Within and Midlife Reflection
(02:23) The Challenge of Listening to the Genuine in a Noisy World
(03:23) The Impact of AI Storytelling on Authenticity
(05:48) Younger Generations and Genuine Expression
(07:14) Religion, Conformity, and Personal Experience
(08:38) Howard Thurman's Personalism and Dignity of the Individual
(09:37) Practical Tips for Listening to the Genuine Within
(11:05) Contemplative Practices for Inner Listening
(12:33) Closing Remarks and Resources
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This episode posted on July 8, 2026
Episode Transcript:
Howard Thurman [00:00:00]:
There is something in every one of you that waits, listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself.
Ryan Dunn [00:00:17]:
This is Compass, finding spirituality in the everyday. And we just heard the voice of Howard Thurman, who was born in 1900, lived to 1981, and has been called one of the most influential religious figures of the 20th century. But actually, his influence really moves past the field of religion. He made significant investments into the lives of some of the leading figures of the last century, like Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Jackson, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, Vernon Jordan, Arthur Ashe, among others. And his theology of radical nonviolence really gave shape to what we know as the civil rights movement, especially of the 1960s and '70s. His books, including Jesus and the Disinherited, continue to influence religious thinkers today and are often mandatory reading in seminaries. Thurman served as the Dean of Rankin Chapel at Howard University from 1932 to 1944. He also served as the Dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University from 1953 to 1965.
Ryan Dunn [00:01:23]:
In 1944, he co-founded, along with Alfred Fisk, the first major interracial, interdenominational church in the United States. In the recording that we just heard, Howard Thurman was addressing the graduating class of Spelman College in 1980. And he introduced a line of thinking that often brings me to a pause. There are questions in my life that I have a really hard time answering. Questions like, what do you need right now? Or what are 5 things that you want to do with your life? Or what makes you feel the most like you? And these questions are akin to Thurman's challenge in what we just heard. They're indicators of the genuine within ourselves. But here's the issue. I'm middle-aged.
Ryan Dunn [00:02:18]:
I'm far removed from the recent grads that Thurman addressed at Spelman College back then in 1980. I know I should be attuned to the genuine within me. That's there. It's kind of obvious. However, I'm afraid I really don't know how to listen to the genuine within myself. I fear the other voices, the voices of expectations, the voices of culture, even the voices of tradition. Those voices are much, much louder than the genuine within. I'm left to wonder, how does one find The genuine within.
Ryan Dunn [00:02:55]:
And can I, at this point in my life, find the sound of the genuine within? A little more from Howard.
Howard Thurman [00:03:09]:
You— and please don't be bored with my repeating this over and over— you are the only you. That has ever lived. Your idiom is the only idiom of its kind in all the existences. And if you cannot hear the sound of the genuine in you, You will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls. So I come back. There is in you something that waits and listens For the sound of the genuine in yourself. And sometimes there is so much traffic going on in your minds, so many different kinds of, of signals, so many vast impulses floating through your organism that go back thousands of generations. Long before you were even a thought in the mind of creation, and you are buffeted by these.
Howard Thurman [00:04:43]:
And in the midst of all of this, you have got to find out what your name is. Who are you? How does the sound of the genuine come through to you?
Ryan Dunn [00:05:02]:
We've all heard tales of midlife crises. The stereotypical story sounds like someone ditching the family sedan to get a bright red 2-seater convertible, you know, or buying a boat. Or more modernly, it might mean rejecting a gender assumption to take on a new role in the workplace, or to quit a job that's just a paycheck, or to get a tattoo, or even to go on a solo vacation. I believe that generally these responses to midlife crises are actually authentic attempts to get in touch with or to express The genuine within. Even as we age, we still struggle with Thurman's question. How does the sound of the genuine come through to you? I'm going to complicate that question here because this is the age that we live in. It is not an age of the genuine. At a conference that recently happened called Le Book, a studio called We Art the Future gave a talk called Why AI Storytelling Wins.
Ryan Dunn [00:06:05]:
And Their premise was, and actually what they demonstrated was that creators could build online avatars, give them AI personalities so that they're somewhat self-sufficient, and then feed these avatars a list of experiences that the person, the creator dreams of having. And then the AI avatar will supply them with pictures of the creators living through those experiences. And to demonstrate, they actually pulled someone from the audience. They asked him about his interests. life goals, they scanned his Instagram, and a few minutes later, they showed pictures of this person living experiences he'd never actually lived. Experiences like walking in a fashion runway or being on a magazine cover or having his face covered with monarch butterflies, which he is genuinely afraid of. Later, it was revealed that this person was actually a plant in the office. They planned it all out.
Ryan Dunn [00:07:04]:
So you had a disingenuous experience Leading to documentation of disingenuous experiences. But this is what is possible. And in the midst of this, the simple sound of the genuine within is further suppressed. How do we find that sound of the genuine again? So much of our lives, we're groomed to fit in, to really not be genuine. One of the things that impresses me about younger generations is their willingness to allow for genuine expression. Herd mentality is still alive, especially among teenagers, but it's not nearly as prevalent as it was in former generations. At least that's been my observation. I recently attended the Global Young People's Convocation in Dublin, Ireland, and this event happens once every 4 years.
Ryan Dunn [00:07:57]:
It pulls together young Methodists from around the world. In a time when denominational identity does not seem as important as it did in years past, I really wondered what drew young people to such a, I guess, denominationally branded event? Why were they there? And for that matter, why did they serve as leaders in Methodist churches? Was the term Methodist really all that important to them? Many expressed that, yeah, in fact, it was. And the reason being is that the theological system of Methodism allowed for expression of the genuine for them. It provides space to pay attention To the sound of the genuine within. In my work as a social media moderator for a denomination, I find that this runs counter to the narrative that many people hold for religion in general. Many people equate religion with conformity, right? The religious ascribe to a checklist of beliefs while performing a checklist of rites, rituals, and behaviors. And there are certainly instances of religious expression where this is an accurate assessment. we express piety by conforming to the expectations of the religious culture.
Ryan Dunn [00:09:10]:
But a number of the young people who I spoke with noted that in their experiences, they were drawn to the Methodist expressions of the Christian faith because, as one participant put it, he was allowed to experience God instead of being coerced into religious practice. He said that previous churches had told him, This is how you pray, and this is where you go to pray. And to him, subscribing to those behaviors felt disingenuous. He felt communion with God in other ways, and a Methodist faith community provided him space just to explore all that, all while saying, you are a part of this community. And this isn't meant to be a commercial for Methodism. There are many, many faith traditions that value this sense of holding space for the genuine. Howard Thurman was an advocate of personalism, and this is a deeply spiritual and socially active philosophy that centers on the inherent dignity of every human being as a child of God. And you can get how that could relate to the social rights, or I'm sorry, the civil rights activism of the last century.
Ryan Dunn [00:10:22]:
It might be obvious from Thurman's speech, but you, You matter. Who you are matters because you, as yourself, are an expression of God's work in the world. For Thurman, a full experience of God meant that each person acknowledged the validity of their own experiences. And this doesn't mean that there isn't space for orthodoxy or orthopraxy— that's specific beliefs or practices— but it limits the extent of religious gatekeeping in a way. I still haven't answered the questions that I posed earlier regarding how we might hear the genuine within. Here's where I'm going to disappoint a few people because I'm not going to give a checklist of things to do to uncover the genuine sound within yourself. Instead, I'm just going to recommend leaving space for the sound to emerge. Do you have a morning routine? I like playing pocket games on my phone and pocket games can be passive, meaning aspects of the game go on even when I'm not online with the app open and playing.
Ryan Dunn [00:11:30]:
So in my baseball game, that looks like games getting played and skills being replenished while I'm actually logged off the app. So in the morning, I like to find out what's been happening with my game while I slept. And the rub of this is that it has often looked like me picking up my phone when I first wake. Most of us groan hearing that in recognition that this is not a healthy practice. It's a bad practice. My wife and I got advised to resist that urge to grab the phone upon waking. Instead, we're to connect with each other, but we're to connect simply just by leaving space. So the advice we got was just to be in contact with one another in some way as we wake up.
Ryan Dunn [00:12:18]:
So that might be just to grab and hold hands or to hug or to put hands on each other's hearts and to do so without the pressure of further interaction. Because what all can we have to say that early in the morning? We just want to hold space for each other, intentionally place attention on the other person without making demands of them. What might it look like to take a practice like that and apply it to the sound of the genuine within. Can you think of a current point in your typical day in which you might turn attention to your inner self? Many of us have been conditioned to think that really thinking too deeply on ourselves is vain or selfish. But again, Thurman notes that giving healthy attention to the self is a way of reflecting on God's work. God is expressed in you. And so the genuine within is a means of connection with the divine. It's not the only way.
Ryan Dunn [00:13:21]:
In our Methodist tradition, we also point towards Scripture, tradition, and reason as means for understanding God's work. And in fact, none of those items work well in isolation from the rest. The point in dwelling on our personal experience here is that we have become so accustomed to discounting our own genuine experience And expression. Contemplative practices become important for listening to the genuine within. In past episodes of this podcast, offer a number of those contemplative practices in detail. Quickly though, I recommend checking into the Ignatian Examen and its variations. Questions like, when did I feel most alive? Or when did I experience or share love today? Those are significant ways to reflect on the voice within. But I think even more important is to leave space for the sound to emerge in your own way.
Ryan Dunn [00:14:19]:
Practice that intentional open space. How can you turn this moment into a moment of reflecting on the sound of the genuine within? And with that, I'm going to sign off of this podcast episode. You can find out more at umc.org/compass. I'll put some I'll put some links to contemplative practices on the show notes for this episode. And then I'll be back again in 2 weeks' time. In the meantime, peace to you.
Peace to you.
