Welcome home

Welcome home, cojourners. I'm glad you're here for another episode of the Homecoming

podcast. I'm Dr. Tama, your facilitator on the journey back home to yourself. I'm a licensed

psychologist, an ordained minister, and a sacred artist, and I welcome all of you here. We're going to start

this episode, as we do most episodes, with a reading. And this is an excerpt from the book,

Deep is the Hunger by Howard Thurman. Deep is the hunger. And I am reading from section 17 on page 87.

The most difficult thing about learning to ride a bicycle is to keep one's eyes away from the

obstacles, such as stones or bits of wood that may be directly in one's path.

The inclination almost always to fix one's attention on the object so as to be sure to guide around

it. Alas, the error. The surest way to guarantee that one will run over the object is to keep one's eyes

focused on it. There is a sound principle here. An idea held steadily on a point of focus in the mind

tends to express itself in action. This reminds us that we concentrate on the

obstacles solely at our peril. Wise words, where your treasure is, there is your heart also.

Obviously, if we are to escape becoming evil in our behavior, we must bring

our minds to bear upon the good and hold them there on dead center until our lives are organized

on that basis. We are living organisms. We are not things. We become like the things we love.

How wonderful, because it places so large a share of our destiny in our own hands.

Thank you so much, Howard Thurman, for that reminder for us to consider where we put our focus

and where we put our energy.

This is an important framing as we focus today on free your mind,

the gift of curiosity. Free your mind, the gift of curiosity. And so I want to encourage all of us

to consider the gift of thinking outside of the box,

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