Hammarskjold................

     I have a vague recollection of the day Dag Hammarskjold died in a plane crash.  It was 1961.  He was flying to negotiate a cease fire in the civil conflict in the Congo when his plane crashed in what was then Northern Rhodesia.  I knew he was the General-Secretary to the United Nations.  At age 9, I wasn't too sure what the United Nations was.  I do know that his death affected my father powerfully.  He considered Hammarskjold a great man, a great statesman, and a great hope for the UN. He was not alone.  John F. Kennedy was quoted as saying Hammarskjold was  “the greatest statesman of our century."
     So it was with great interest that I recently came across the book Markings.  Hammarskjold kept a journal, not of his day-to-day professional activities, but of his day-to-day spiritual journey.  He left instructions that, after his death, the journal could be published, which it was in 1964 as Markings.
     A few excerpts:

"Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step: only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find his right road."

"Never measure the height of a mountain, until you have reached the top.  Then you will see how low it was."

"Life only demands from you the strength you possess.  Only one feat is possible - not to have run away."

"Sun and stillness.  Looking down through the jade-green water, you see the monsters of the deep playing on the reef.  Is this a reason to be afraid?  Do you feel safer when the scudding waves hide what lies beneath the surface?"

"To rejoice at a success is not the same as taking credit for it.  To deny oneself the first is to become a hypocrite and a denier of life; to permit oneself the second is a childish indulgence which will prevent one from ever growing up."

"Do not look back.  And do not dream about the future, either.  It will neither give you back the past, nor satisfy your other daydreams.  Your duty, your reward - your destiny - are here and now."

"The light died in the low clouds.  Falling snow drank in the dusk.  Shrouded in silence, the branches wrapped me in their peace.  When the boundaries were erased, once again the wonder:  that I exist."