READING, WRITING & MARKINGS
July 28, 2005
READING, WRITING & MARKINGS
I often tell people about broadcasters who influenced my career, but seldom about writers and their books, who grabbed my attention as a youngster.
Today I'll mention two.
The first "grown-up book" I ever purchased with my own money, for myself -- not for some school assignment -- was "For 2 Cents Plain", a series of light hearted, poignant, essays written by a newspaperman named Harry Golden.
I bought that book around 1961, and was smitten with the humor, form, and style of his essays. Somewhere along the way, over decades of moving, packing and unpacking, that book was lost, forgotten, or given away.
Another of my favorite early books was "Markings", by Dag Hammarskjöld.
I purchased the book around 1965 and still have it.
Dag Hammarskjöld was born in 1905 into a family well known in the Swedish government.
He lived his life as a diplomat and peacemaker.
He became Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1953, and stayed in that position until his death in a plane crash while on a peace mission in Africa in 1961.
He's still considered the greatest and most effective Secretary-General of the U-N.
He helped negotiate and calm conflicts and crises in every continent of the world.
He personally negotiated the release of American soldiers captured during the Korean War.
As a legacy, he left a set of guideline still used today by U-N Peacekeeping forces.
He was a true Renaissance man, a master of languages, arts, humanities, politics, finances and foreign affairs.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize posthumously in 1961.
Yet.... amazingly.... during his remarkable life and career.... Hammerskjöld never wrote a book.
"Markings" is a collection of some 600 entries in his personal diary and journal, published after his death.
Even though he was front and center of the world stage, "Markings" hardly makes mention of the people or situations of those years.
It is, instead, a look inside the spiritual journey of a complex man, with notes ranging from a few words, to essays on religion, and even poetry.
He called it a "...book concerning my negotiations with myself and with God".
Here a few quotes from "Markings".....
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"What! He is now going to try to teach me! -- Why not? There is nobody from whom you cannot learn. Before God, who speaks through all men, you are always in the bottom class of nursery school."
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"Forgiveness is the answer to the child's dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is again made clean."
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"God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason."
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"Never, 'for the sake of peace and quiet,' deny your own experience or convictions. The only kind of dignity which is genuine is that which is not diminished by the indifference of others.
Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for. Never measure the height of a mountain until you have reached the top.
Then you will see how low it was."
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"Your position never gives you the right to command. It only imposes on you the duty of so living your life that others can receive your orders without being humiliated."
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I am being driven forward
Into an unknown land.
The pass grows steeper,
The air colder and sharper.
A wind from my unknown goal
Stirs the strings
Of expectation
Still the question:
Shall I ever get there?
There where life resounds,
A clear pure note
In the silence.
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This week, July 29, 2005, Dag Hammarskjöld would have turned 100.
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