{"id":345,"date":"2008-09-18T18:15:59","date_gmt":"2008-09-18T22:15:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/?p=345"},"modified":"2008-09-19T11:07:03","modified_gmt":"2008-09-19T15:07:03","slug":"into-an-unknown-land","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/?p=345","title":{"rendered":"Into An Unknown Land"},"content":{"rendered":"

September 18, 2008
\nThursday<\/strong><\/p>\n

Blessed are the peacemakers . . .\u00c2\u00a0[They] are the salt of the earth. . . .\u00c2\u00a0 the light of the world.
\n<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Matthew 5: 9, 13, 14, 16,\u00c2\u00a0 NRSV<\/p>\n

Today marks the forty-seventh anniversary of the death of Dag Hammarskj\u00c3\u00b6ld, Swedish diplomat, second Secretary-General of the United Nations, and Christian mystic. At the time of his death in a plane crash in what is now Zambia he was on his way to try to negotiate a cease-fire between warring factions in the newly-independent nation of Congo. The cause of the crash remains unclear, and some people still hold theories that Hammarsjk\u00c3\u00b6ld was the target of assassination. He is commemorated on this day in the Lutheran Calendar of Saints as a renewer of society.<\/p>\n

As\u00c2\u00a0I explain elsewhere<\/a>, the title of this journal is taken from Markings<\/em>, the excerpts from Hammarskj\u00c3\u00b6ld’s private writings published first in Swedish in 1963.\u00c2\u00a0The material in Markings<\/em> begins with a poem Hammarskj\u00c3\u00b6ld wrote in 1925, when he was twenty and studying law and economics in his native Sweden. “I am being driven forward into an unknown land,” he writes, and what follows is a record of his trying to come to terms with his faith and with his destiny. The writings never mention his career as an international diplomat, neither the people he met nor the historical events of his time, many of which he influenced directly. They record only his inner life, his private transactions with the divine, his continual efforts to examine his conscience and to say Yes<\/em> to the Way, the Truth, and the Life.<\/p>\n

I was fourteen when Hammarskj\u00c3\u00b6ld died, just beginning ninth grade, not particularly interested in world events. Somehow, though, I knew who Hammarskj\u00c3\u00b6ld was, probably because my wonderful ninth-grade English teacher, Sister Margaret Loretta, knew who he was and why he was important and what a tragedy for peacemaking his death was, and told us about him at the beginning of class and led us in prayer for the repose of his soul and the continuation of his work.\u00c2\u00a0Markings<\/em> was published in English in 1964, when I was seventeen and just becoming aware of my own inner life. I first read some of it when it was excerpted in Reader’s Digest<\/em> or The Saturday Evening Post<\/em> or some other magazine that came to our house.<\/p>\n

Hammarskj\u00c3\u00b6ld\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work made an impression on me, although I did not own a copy of Markings<\/em> until some time after August 1971. At least that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the date\u00c2\u00a0in the twenty-seventh printing in the hardbound edition I bought for $5.95. I was in my twenties then, and keeping a diary from time to time, although nothing before 1980 survives. Those undocumented years were my Agnostic Period when, like Francis Thompson, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I fled Him down the nights and down the days\u00e2\u20ac\u009d until I stopped, took stock of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the dust o\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 the mounded years,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and said my own Yes<\/em> to the Way, the Truth, and the Life. I took up journal writing as a personal growth tool, and am now working in Notebook #24.<\/p>\n

These are troubled times we are living in. I write that sentence and look at it and think it is a clich\u00c3\u00a9, a facile phrase. When have we not been in troubled times? In my own adult awareness I have lived through the civil rights movement, the war in Vietnam, the women’s rights movement, the economic turmoil of the 1980s, the Gulf Wars, the terrorist attacks of September 2001, and the invasion of Iraq by U.S. forces. The war in Afghanistan continues, the U.S. economy is in meltdown, and we’re in the middle of a presidential election season that will get uglier and more contentious before it’s over.<\/p>\n

When Hammarskj\u00c3\u00b6ld wrote of being driven forward into an unknown land he could not have known what lay before him, what part he would personally play in the world-changing events that were to come. At twenty he already knew that life is uncertain and that we need mighty internal resources to help us through both good times and bad.<\/p>\n

I’ve let my prayer life get a little ragged in recent weeks. My morning period\u00c2\u00a0 of Coffee and Contemplation has become mostly Coffee and Moodling in My Novel. I’m making astonishing progress on that, but I need some balance. I’ll be enrolling in Practicing Spirituality with the Peacemakers<\/a>, a course led by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat,\u00c2\u00a0teachers of spirituality whose\u00c2\u00a0work I have found valuable before. It runs from September 26 (Lynn’s twenty-third birthday) to November 4, Election Day, when the noise won’t stop, but it will change tenor.<\/p>\n

And getting out my copy of Markings<\/em> again.<\/p>\n

To be included on the notify list, e-mail me:
\nmargaretdeangelis [at] gmail [dot] com (replace the brackets with @ and a period)<\/em><\/p>\n


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