Sunday Salute

I am beginning a new series.  For to long I have been listening to politicians tell me how I should vote and now they are telling me how to live my life.  The proposals that we are seeing presented in legislatures all over America by the so called Tea Party Republicans sicken me...or in the words of one of them they "make me want to throw up a little."   I need a  Remise en bouche.  So I am going to pick someone who appeals to me and remind myself that there have been good people in this world.  People for whom service and the betterment of their fellow human beings make them worthy of emulation. Here is the first:

Dag Hammarskjöld

From Wikipedia - Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld ( [dɑːg ˈhamːarɧœld] (help·info)) (29 July 1905 – 18 September 1961) was a Swedish diplomat, economist, and author. The second Secretary-General of the United Nations, he served from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in September 1961. He is one of four people to have been awarded a posthumous Nobel Peace Prize. Hammarskjöld remains the only U.N. Secretary-General to die in office, and his death occurred en route tocease-fire negotiations. American President John F. Kennedy called Hammarskjöld “the greatest statesman of our century"

I can remember this man and being impressed by him but I was generally unaware of what he had accomplished.  If he was assassinated it was because some evil forces recognized him and realized that he stood against them. It is unfortunate that he was taken from us before his work could be completed.  I will let his words speak for him.

”For some people the driving force in life is faith in the success of their efforts. For others it is simply a sense of duty. We need both types of men.”

“In my new official capacity the private man should disappear and the international public servant take his place.”

“Too often our learning, our knowledge, and our mastery are too much concentrated on techniques and we forget about man himself.”

“A mature man is his own judge. In the end, his only form of support is being faithful to his own convictions. The advice of others may be welcome and valuable, but it does not free him from responsibility. Therefore, he may become very lonely.”

“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.”

“The principles of [the Charter of the United Nations] are, by far, greater than the Organization in which they are embodied, and the aims which they are to safeguard are holier than the policies of any single nation or people.”

“We should, rather, recognize the United Nations for what it is – an admittedly imperfect but indispensable instrument of nations working for a peace evolution towards a more just and secure world order.”

Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment. 

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 made clean again. 

"Freedom from fear" could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights.

Friendship needs no words - it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.

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. 

I am the vessel. The draft is God's. And God is the thirsty one.

If only I may grow: firmer, simpler, quieter, warmer. 

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