Al-Huda
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Newsletter for November 2011
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Old Creeds In A New World
Dag Hammarskjold
-
New York, New York
As heard on The Bob Edwards Show, August 27, 2010
The world in which I grew up was dominated by principles and
ideals of a time far from ours and, as it may seem, far removed
from the problems facing a man of the middle of the twentieth
century. However, my way has not meant a departure from those
ideals. On the contrary, I have been led to an understanding of
their validity also for our world of today. Thus, a never
abandoned effort frankly and squarely to build up a personal
belief in the light of experience and honest thinking has led me
to recognize and endorse, unreservedly, those very beliefs which
once were handed down to me.
From generations of soldiers and government officials on my
father’s side I inherited a belief that no life was more
satisfactory than one of selfless service to your country–or
humanity. This service required likewise the courage to stand up
unflinchingly for your convictions.
From scholars and clergymen on my mother’s side I inherited a
belief that, in the very radical sense of the Gospels, all men
were equals as children of God, and should be met and treated by
us as our masters in God.
Faith is a state of the mind and the soul. The language of
religion is a set of formulas which register a basic spiritual
experience. I was late in understanding what this meant. When I
finally reached that point, the beliefs in which I was once
brought up were recognized by me as mine in their own right and
by my free choice. I feel that I can endorse those convictions
without any compromise with the demands of that intellectual
honesty which is the very key to maturity of mind.
The two ideals which dominated my childhood world met me fully
harmonized and adjusted to the demands of our world of today in
the ethics of Albert Schweitzer, where the ideal of service is
supported by and supports the basic attitude to man set forth in
the Gospels. In his work I also found a key for modern man to
the world of the Gospels.
But the explanation of how man should live a life of active
social service in full harmony with himself as a member of the
community of the spirit, I found in the writings of those great
medieval mystics for whom “self-surrender” had been the way to
self-realization, and who in “singleness of mind” and
“inwardness” had found strength to say yes to every fate and
demand life had in store for them when they followed the call of
duty. “Love,” that much misused and misinterpreted word, for
them meant simply an overflowing of the strength with which they
felt themselves filled when living in true self-oblivion. And
this love found natural expressions in an unhesitant fulfillment
of duty and in an unreserved acceptance of life, whatever it
brought them personally of toil, suffering–or happiness.
I know that their discoveries about the laws of inner life and
of action have not lost their significance.
Swedish economist and diplomat Dag Hammarskjold was the second
Secretary-General of the United Nations, serving from 1953 –
1961. He worked to ease tensions between Israel and Arab
nations, and to defuse the Suez crisis. Hammarskjold was killed
in a plane crash in Zambia in 1961.
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