Learn to Trust the Spirit

The invitation sat on Howard Thurman's desk like a challenge. The bus boycott needed voices, bodies, leadership. His former student Martin Luther King Jr. was calling.

Thurman could be there in two days. Standing with MLK. Adding his voice to the chorus demanding justice. But he folded the letter and placed it in his drawer.

Others took to the streets. He turned inward. Into silence. Into the chapel where he spent hours each morning listening for what he called "the sound of the genuine." That inner voice beneath all the noise.

His colleagues couldn't understand it. Some called it cowardice. Others whispered about his retreat from the "real work" of justice. But Thurman had learned something they hadn't. The most powerful revolutions begin in silence.