Dag Hammarsjkold

In grade school I remember reading in my Weekly Reader about Dag Hammarsjkold, Secretary General of the United Nations. He remained a dim memory until somewhere along the way, I heard a simple but beautiful prayer that he wrote. It sank back into the cobwebs until one day it burst back to the surface as my wife, Kay, and I were walking back to our car after a doctor’s visit.

Our son, Austin, was three and had not begun to speak.  We learned of a campaign of whispers amongst the family that something might be wrong.  We thought they were overreacting.  Finally ceding to grandparents' concerns, we reluctantly took him for a battery of tests.  A few days later we sat in the doctor's office to hear the results. Before we went in, we thought we would hear something along the lines of, "He's a boy and boys take a little longer to speak. So nothing to worry about."

We were wrong. The doctor patiently went through the results of each test which showed Austin severely behind in developing language and responsiveness to social cues.  Ever the optimist, I asked the doctor, "Will he get grow out of this?"

He paused and said quietly, "He might get worse."

Afterwards, after Kay and I walked back to the car in shock, we knew our life had taken an unexpected and fearful turn into the unknown. We were in store for a life we never envisioned.

The next morning I came into my office in Deerfield and put printed out that prayer and pinned it on my cubicle wall where I saw it every time I sat down at my desk. It served as a constant reminder of the sweetness and preciousness of this life and that with faith and resolve we can face whatever the future may bring. Looking back over those twenty-two years since, it is as meaningful today as it was the day I first hung it. Gratitude, acceptance, humbleness, hope and faith. Fully expressed in thirteen words:

"For all that has been: thank you. For all that will be: yes."

The geese are calling us

Antoine de St. Exupery was an early French aviator and author of the well-known book, The Little Prince.  He also wrote about his exploits across Europe in the turbulent years preceding WWII. As I watch the geese gather outside my window to prepare for their long journey south, I am reminded of a beautiful passage from his book, Wind, Sand and Stars:

“When the wild ducks or the wild geese migrate in their season, a strange tide arises in the territories over which they sweep. As if magnetized by the great triangular flight, the barnyard fowl leap a foot or two into the air and try to fly.  The call of the wild strikes them with the force of harpoon and a vestige of savagery quickens their blood.  All the ducks on the farm are transformed for an instant into migrant birds, and into these hard little heads, till now filled with humble images of pools and worms and barnyards, there swims a sense of continental expanse, of the breath of seas and the salt taste of the ocean wind.  The duck totters to the right and the left in its wire enclosure, gripped by a sudden passion to perform the impossible and a sudden love whose object is a mystery.

"Even so is man overwhelmed by a presentiment of truth…but he can never put a name to this sovereign truth…The call that stirred you must torment all men. Whether we dub it sacrifice, or poetry, or adventure, it is always the same voice that calls.  But domestic security has succeeded in crushing out that part of us that is capable of heeding the call.  We scarcely quiver; we beat our wings once or twice and fall back into our barnyard. We are prudent people. We are afraid to let go of our petty reality in order to grasp at the great shadow. "

Wow! Exupery might have been thinking of people like me when he wrote this over 70 years ago. I wonder if I am so busy in the routine of my barnyard that I might not even notice "the great shadow" much less take the chance at "grasping at it". 

But he continues with another example from nature to draw from about the grand migration of eels each summer from Europe’s inland lakes to the Sargasso Sea in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean:

“There is a day of the year when the eels must go down to the Sargasso sea, and come what may, no one can prevent them.  On that day they spit on their ease, their tranquillity, their tepid waters.  Off they go over ploughed fields, pricked by the hedges and skinned by the stones, in search of the river that leads to the sea.”

I have come to believe that no matter our current circumstance, a grand possibility awaits each of us. What we do to recognize it and to act on is our choice. And there is as much joy in its pursuit as in its success.  So in these coming weeks as I see the geese passing over. I will be thinking about the barnyard ducks…and the eels.