"The example Hammarskjold offers is complex and challenging. Many parts of it, I think, cannot be denied. That he understood and lived political relations as an exercise in awareness and reserved but ready empathy sets a great challenge. Great but not impossible: there are ways and means in today's culture to approach this challenge. That he was exquisitely well educated and viewed human affairs in wide and deep ways is exemplary. Some today will have the privilege of comparable educations and continue learning for a lifetime, as Hammarskjold thought necessary; others without access to such grand educational opportunities will find their way just as well, owing to who they are and what they care for.
"I suggested . . . that Hammarskjold's way — fundamentally and richly religious — would reunite up ahead with the paths taken by others who care as much as he cared but go by another way. How so? Look into the eyes of your child or grandchild, nephew or niece. Watch them live, feel their concerns, their promise, their need for a sound future which cannot be theirs alone. If they are to flourish, then the town, the nation, the network of nations, must also flourish. When the human family and our responsibility for planetary welfare are deeply recognized, all the rest can follow. It seems weak, doesn't it: to look into a child's eyes. I know of nothing more powerful. Then one knows what to do next. It may be that protection 'to the seventh generation' is appropriate — so the Iroquois elders teach — but that surely starts with the first generation.
"I believe that the creed of the twenty-first century, the guiding light if there is to be one, will have everything to do with self-awareness, kinship, and acknowledged responsibility for the planet in our care. For some of us, there will, of course, be a link with religious traditions and practice. That is marvelous. For others of us there will simply be a willingness to work with this human substance we are, with all its promise and frailties. That is marvelous.
"Hammarskjold, that man of great mind, knew that not everything can be defined and specified. That isn't needed or possible. But something else is needed: a certain faith, not necessarily faith in heaven but in ourselves. That is needed, alongside a certain warmth of feeling and careful hope."
