Time, Place
The time and place are ever so familiar to all of us who remember Dag Hammarskjöld: Ndola, now a substantial city in Zambia, in the night of September 17-18, 1961. It has been fifty years since the air crash that took the lives of Hammarskjöld and all of his companions. The cause of the crash was investigated at the time and continues to be investigated: a new book by Susan Williams, Who Killed Hammarskjöld?, to be published in a few days, is said to offer much new information without settling the issue; The Guardian online edition recently ran several articles based on new research in Zambia (enter Hammarskjöld in the newspaper’s search box, upper right). But to remember that cart-wheeling, dreadful crash in a wooded hillside a short distance from the Ndola airport is one thing; to remember Hammarskjöld is another.
Dag Hammarskjöld was a truly great man of an entirely special kind. He was a consummate diplomat and peacemaker, wise to the world yet deeply in service to it. And he was a spiritual seeker who found the basis for his life in the Gospels and Psalms, in the writings of medieval Christian mystics, in classic early texts of China and India, and in his private life of prayer to a God whom he knew as Thou. These two—the diplomat and the seeker—lived side by side in him. In his lifetime, scarcely anyone knew the inner man, however much they admired his insight, skill, originality, and verve in the world of diplomacy. With the publication of his personal journal, Markings, after his death, and a little later the four volumes of Public Papers from his years at the UN and a grand biography by Brian Urquhart, his full identity became clear.
All of this awaits a new generation of concerned readers in an era—ours—that makes many of us uneasy, despairing, cynical. How he was, how he thought and spoke, how he struggled for clear perceptions and clean execution, his vision of inner life and dynamic community—all of this and more offers lasting inspiration.
I sometimes think about the value of models from the past. I feel that one has to be willingly captured by chosen models, to give oneself completely to them, studying and absorbing every big and little thing (do you remember that 19th-century disciple of a Hasidic master, who said that he watched how his master tied his shoelaces?). And then release. Step away with a bow of gratitude and a promise never to forget. In that release, the step away, one’s own life and strivings begin, nourished but not constricted by the admired model, whoever he or she may be. This intellectual, spiritual drama enacted between every great model and every dedicated student finds its fulfillment in the knowing, somewhat sad, but necessary step away—into one’s own time and challenges, into the mystery of one's own gifts and fate.
Dag Hammarskjöld offers a powerful model for people today who know that they must engage in community or public life—this is in part what their lives are about—but wish to do so with wisdom. I hope that many of us around the world will be captured by the model he offered, live it imaginatively as if it is one’s own—and then step into our lives. The paradox here is beautiful: after the initial blending with a great model, the essence of what he or she taught and was is more vividly found in one’s own life than in the still record of a book.
At the beginning of his second term as secretary-general, in the spring of 1958, Hammarskjöld spoke memorably with the UN press corps:
"The slow, slow growth which goes beyond not only our time but really beyond the span of generations…seems to us too slow because it cannot be put down in figures and letters and dots and points. There is just no way of saying how far we have got. You have to have it in your fingertips; you have to have the feeling and even what you have in that way is insufficient for you to say, “We have made progress.” Finally, you fall back on that most elusive of things, your confidence in the fact that progress has been made, that we are moving in the right direction, although you cannot prove it, perhaps not even to yourself….
"Very often I ask myself in line with your own questions: “But really, have you got a solid basis for what you say when you voice this so-called optimism?” And somehow the whole system replies, “Yes, you have,” and yet I cannot spell it out….
"I cannot belong to or join those who believe in our movement toward catastrophe. I believe in growth, a growth to which we have a responsibility to add our few fractions of an inch.
"It is not the facile faith of generations before us, who thought that everything was arranged for the best in the best of worlds or that physical and psychological development necessarily worked out toward something they called progress. It is in a sense a much harder belief—the belief and the faith that the future will be all right because there will always be enough people to fight for a decent future….
"It is in a sense a switch from the atmosphere of pre-1914 to what I believe is the atmosphere of our generation…—a switch from the, so to say, mechanical optimism of previous generations to what I might call the fighting optimism of this present generation. We have learned it the hard way, and we will certainly have to learn it again and again and again."
◊ ◊ ◊
Posts
