| Sumario: | Howard Thurman is attuned to bodies under threat. In this article, I argue that his use of vignettes offers a distinctive rhetorical strategy for addressing collective trauma. Through closely examining "The Third Component," a sermon preached in 1958, I display his distinctive contribution to working with traumatic memories. In relying on a third memory--a memory of communing in the Presence of total regard--he connects religious experience to the somatic efforts to heal bodies from trauma. I make the case that, for Thurman, the work of racial justice depends on spiritual practices to hone attention and enable the awareness necessary for the work.
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