Fifty years
ago tomorrow (18 September), the plane carrying then-UN Secretary General Dag
Hammarskjöld crashed under suspicious circumstances. He was traveling to Congo to negotiate a
settlement in the conflict brewing in the southern region of Katanga. There was a secessionist movement led by Moise
Tshombe, who was backed, not only by the former colonial power Belgium, but
also by the UK and the US.
Dag
Hammarskjöld’s death was deeply troubling in his native Sweden. He received a state funeral, a rare thing for
a diplomat.
He was more
than a political leader, however. He was
a deeply spiritual man. He seemed to
meld together the right balance of the mystical and the political. We truly need that self-effacing spirit in
our world today. On the fiftieth
anniversary of his death, I want to include a quote from his book, Markings, which was published
posthumously:
“The ‘mystical
experience.’ Always here and now—in that
freedom which is one with distance, in that stillness which is born of
silence. But—this is a freedom in the
midst of action, a stillness in the midst of other human beings. The mystery is a constant reality to him who,
in this world, is free from self-concern, a reality that grows peaceful and
mature before the receptive attention of assent.
“In our
era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.” (103)
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