October 11, 2025 • 59 mins
In this episode of Curry Café, guest Robert O’Sullivan explores Dag Hammarskjöld’s remarkable legacy as the United Nations’ second Secretary-General. Hammarskjöld’s aristocratic Swedish upbringing instilled in him a sense of selfless service and belief in equality. Deeply influenced by Albert Schweitzer’s reverence for life, Hammarskjöld championed newly independent nations, often clashing with colonial powers during […]
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(00:03):
Well, hello again, KCIW
listeners, and welcome to Curry Cafe.
I'm volunteer and producer Rick McNamer.
Every Sunday from three to four, your host,
Ray Gary, puts together a panel of guests
to discuss various topics of interest.
Listeners can participate by texting questions or comments
to
(541)
(00:23):
661-4098.
Again, that's (541)
661-4098.
Now today, a little different. Before we get
to Ray and our guests, we'd like to
air a brief but important message from Katrina
Thompson Upton from the Northwestern American Indian Coalition.
And,
(00:44):
here we go.
Katrina Thompson. I'm the founder of Northwest American
Indian Coalition.
So October
starts
as National Archives Month.
It's a time to remember
that the history of this region belongs to
everyone who lives here. Our photos, our stories,
(01:07):
our maps,
and our oral traditions are all threads that
tie us together across generations.
By caring for them and sharing them accurately,
we give our children and our grandchildren
a clearer picture
of where we come from and who we
are as a community today. During the October,
we have Fire Prevention Week. This is a
(01:29):
national Fire Prevention Week, and it's important time
to uplift, traditional ecological knowledge, or TEK. Some
call it indigenous science. This includes cultural burning
and indigenous fire stewardship practices. For indigenous people,
fire has always been a tool of care
and renewal long before
modern firefighting. Cultural burns have been used to
(01:50):
tend the land, promote healthy ecosystems, and also
prevent larger wildfires.
Today, that wisdom
continues.
NAIC
is proud to support the Wild Rivers Coast
Forest Collaborative's new Prescribed Burn Association,
where we are bringing traditional knowledge and community
safety,
together.
Also, the first week in October, we have
(02:13):
the Lupton Massacre, which is noted as the
start of the Rogue River Indian Wars. So
on 10/08/1855,
the Rogue River War entered into its most
violent chapter.
Volunteer militia attacked native encampments near Table Rock
Reservation in what is now known as the
Lupton Massacre. This event marked the start of
(02:34):
the more organized and more devastating military campaign
against the tribes in Southern Oregon. While this
battle is often seen as the beginning of
the war's
final phase or the beginning of the end,
if you will, tensions had already been simmering
for years. Earlier conflict
sparked by the gold rush, settler encroachment had
resulted in many skirmishes
and
(02:55):
massacres
and ways of violence and displacement,
but it was this October,
eighth event that marked a turning point, a
day when the violence escalated into a full
scale war, and native communities were forced to
fight for their survival, their families, and and
their homeland. The stories of this land and
our communities still echo in our hearts, and
(03:15):
we carry them forward. We're still here, and
we're still still caring for what's always been.
Thank you, Katrina. Very important message.
Okay. And now back to our show. Now
here's Ray to tell us about today's show.
Yeah.
We're gonna be talking about, the UN and
some here history in the UN anyway.
(03:36):
And about the time most of this was
happening, I was in school, and we were
learning about the UN.
And being my naive little 10 year old
or 12 year old cell phone, I thought,
oh, wow. This is the greatest thing going.
We get just get all these countries together,
and they can talk out their problems, and
we won't have any more wars because it's
meant it's easy to sit at the table
and just
(03:57):
get things squared away.
So this morning, I was watching the news,
and there were two main stories on the
news station I watched. One was, something about
Miley Miley Cyrus.
I didn't pay much attention, but she must
have a new album or something out.
And the other story that was given equal
time, and maybe it was before Miley or
(04:17):
after it, I don't know, is we now
have a new drone system
that cost unbelievable amount of money.
And they had this, Air Force officer talking
about how it works and how you fire
it and this and that. And,
I think the
interviewer said, well, why is this system needed?
And he says, well, because the Chinese have
(04:39):
the x amount of planes and if we
ever got in a fight, they'd win.
Which made me think of,
what's the name of the Oh,
yeah.
I can't remember.
Anyway
Good news. No. Obviously, the UN didn't didn't
really work that well as far as
(05:01):
preventing wars and preventing the need for us
having more
jets to to kill somebody.
Kinda goes along with one of the things
our
secretary of war, not secretary of defense anymore,
said
during his little meeting that he had was,
(05:21):
our job is to break things and kill
people.
So
I don't know. I think it might be
more than that.
Real interesting thing,
when when I was in the army, if,
we were in any kind of a situation
at all and more than two people standing
close to each other,
there's to be over sergeant yelling at us
(05:41):
all the time. Spread out. One round will
get you all. So our intelligent leaders,
not only got more than one. We got
every single major person in the military
and the president and
the secretary of war
all in one room.
Was it a secret? Nope. Nope. Nope. It's
(06:02):
well planned for, and people for a long
time knew exactly where everybody would be.
So I didn't, from a tactical
perspective, I didn't think that was a very
good idea. Fortunately, we did get away with
it. And we got to got to hear
some wonderful words of wisdom
from our creator of Athens.
(06:23):
Not war, but go ahead. And we learned
about the two n words,
or one of them, but couldn't say the
other one. Yeah. Why he needed to use
that as an example. I don't know. Anyway,
enough of my ranting. Maybe we can get
on now to somebody who knows something,
and I'll have him introduce himself
and tell us a little about
what he's here to talk about or tell
(06:44):
you a lot about what he's here to
talk about.
Okay. My name is Robert O'Sullivan,
and, I've been retired in Brookings for about
ten years now.
Before I retired, I lived in Oakland and
had lots of activities based in Berkeley.
And,
I
(07:05):
just kinda moved up here, and it's it's
a wonderful place, and I'm glad to be
here.
I'm talking today about a man whose
name is not easy to pronounce.
The first name is alright. It's dog. It's
not dog.
But the last name is spelled h a
(07:27):
m m a r s k j
o with two dots over it, l d.
And most Americans
pronounce that as hammer, shoulder, something like that.
Not with the two dots. I mean, they
should know better with the two dots mean?
I don't, but, they should.
(07:48):
Anyway, they're they're
it's finding the right way to maneuver a
keyboard to make sure you put those dots
up there when you're trying to write his
name. I don't always succeed at that. I
I imagine the countries where they speak that
language, there probably is a key. It could
well be. That. Yeah. It
it might be. I I
(08:08):
my my wife has a Swedish cousin and
she may be visiting soon, so I'll try
and clarify it a little better at that
point. And you can come back on another
show and tell us. Maybe I can put
her on the show and,
it can be half in Swedish and you'll
you'll get a better You could welcome it.
Feeling of what that all,
is like. Some of our German speaking people,
(08:29):
and maybe that's pretty close. Right?
I would say no. I would say no
also. I mean, the
Norwegian and Swedish and Danish are clearly pretty
close,
but,
and
most European languages come from,
(08:49):
what are called Indo European roots, which go
to India, basically.
So,
there there's similarities
in structure and
in vocabulary and that sort of thing, but
the the Scandinavian languages are pretty separate from
the Germanic ones. I, I can remember, like,
(09:10):
well into the fifties, so if somebody spoke
with an accent like that,
it was always, I'm Swiss.
Not German. I'm Swiss. Uh-huh. Well, that's an
interesting thing in the,
Trump family. His family name was originally Frumpf,
and
his father
(09:33):
originally was in
Alaska during Gold Rush days. Grandfather, I think
that was. Or grandfather,
and made a lot of money
involved
in food and other stuff coming to Alaska
during its Gold Rush,
and there may have been some whorehouses involved.
(09:53):
That's where the real money was. And others.
I have no idea at the time, but
I wouldn't be surprised.
But
anyway,
Trump's father
later
changed the name to Trump
and,
also he
basically said he was Swedish.
And,
(10:13):
but,
he was not. And,
anyway, but we're digressing
a bit. Let me get back to Mr.
Hammersch.
I
feel like pronouncing it differently at the end
of each time I say it, but, Kind
of works. Maybe you'll get it right once.
Out of sheer luck. I will I will
(10:33):
get a text from somebody who says, he
got it. Speaking of text, by the way,
I don't think we've given the number yet.
If you wanna join in this conversation and
make a comment or in some way be
involved,
the number is
(541)
661-4098.
That's (541)
661-4098.
(10:56):
Operators are standing by.
Let me, first of all, talk a little
about Hamrick West's,
upbringing.
He came from a very important and aristocratic
Swedish
family,
and,
(11:18):
they had two distinct
sides to the family.
Often
people who are from aristocratic families
marry people from similar aristocratic families, but these
were quite different.
His father
was
a public servant,
(11:41):
a public administrator,
whatever you wanna call that,
and actually became the prime minister of
Sweden during World War I.
Sweden's had a funny
place in the history of Europe when it
had to do with both World War I
and World War II.
(12:02):
And
in World War I's case,
there
were issues about
food and
and,
transportation
and all that sort of thing.
And
although as prime minister, he was not very
popular because,
for example, they could get some food from
(12:23):
England if they did something with the train
system and things like that
were making him unpopular
and they actually started calling him
hunger because,
there was some famine
going on in Sweden during the war that
had to do with
how the prime minister was conducting
(12:46):
his role. And,
he later,
became
no longer prime minister,
but,
a leader of the
major,
one of I I don't know exactly how
many, but there are probably
four or five major kind of government,
(13:08):
things in in,
in,
that were related to
this year.
I'm
trying to get something on my iPhone and
I made a somewhat mistake in doing it
and if I Uh-oh. Uh-oh. You made a
mistake. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
(13:28):
I just have real quick questions, Robert, about
does some of that,
attitude against Sweden, does it have to do
with their weren't they new to their neutrality
in both World Wars? Yeah. I'm,
I'm not totally
clear about World War I. It definitely was
an issue in World War II. Okay.
Hamrick,
(13:48):
his father
became governor of one of four or five
regions in Sweden, this one based in Uppsala.
Uppsala is a,
mid sized town right in the middle of
Sweden, but is very important as an educational
center. The university there was,
(14:08):
among other things, a place where Linnaeus
was a professor,
and he is the person who,
developed the whole system of identifying
natural phenomena and plant life
and animal life and species
and all that goes with that. And,
(14:31):
the,
as governor of that particular
part of Sweden,
the
Hamer Kvald family lived in a great old
palace there,
the the government center for that area.
And,
he had an idyllic,
(14:51):
very pleasant childhood.
He loved to wander,
around and he had a lot of interest
in botany and and some of the things
that Linnaeus was so important about.
And,
generally speaking,
it was a peaceful world when he first
was growing up, but it soon
got much worse as World War I,
(15:14):
developed.
And,
in
Linnaeus,
he
or or
in his
youth,
he had
two aristocratic
parents,
but they were quite different. And, in fact,
I I,
(15:35):
want to
read what Hammerschold once said in a Edward
r Murrow, this I believe interview,
from he says about his father, from the
generation of soldiers and governmental officials
on my father's side, I inherited a belief
that no belief no life
(15:56):
was more satisfactory than one of selfless service
to your country or humanity.
This service requires a sacrifice of all personal
interests, but likewise,
the courage to stand up unflinchingly
for your
convictions.
And then he talks about his mother's side.
From scholars and clergymen on my mother's side,
(16:18):
I inherit a belief that in the very
radical sense of the gospels,
all men were equal as children of God
and should be met and treated by us
as our masters in God.
Now,
that was quite a contrast, and
his life
did indeed
(16:39):
involve public service, did involve,
bureaucratic
jobs. He was, at one time the head
of the Bank of Sweden
and was involved in some
international things relating to the
development of international laws that had to do
with money and that. He was a very
important fig the father was a very important
(17:02):
figure,
but one who,
did not do very well during the World
War I era, but did
well as the governor of this province
of Sweden and
raised two
or raised, I think it was four children
altogether.
(17:22):
And,
they both influenced who he
later in his life became.
His mother's spirituality
ran deep, as the
quotation there
read.
She was from a family of clergy
and professors
and theologians,
and that and it came natural that that
(17:45):
she was,
interested in those things and apparently was a
very vivacious, caring woman.
And,
an example which was probably fairly unusual in
those days
when he was confirmed in the Church of
Sweden as young
people would have been in those days, probably
(18:05):
around age 13 or 14,
his mother gave him two
classics of Western Christian,
mysticism
and,
spiritualism.
One is the Imitation of Christ by saint,
Saint Thomas of Kempis,
and later she provided him with other kind
(18:26):
of,
theological,
mystical,
poetic
expressions that dated back to
to the medieval mystics.
He was
very well educated,
very sophisticated.
He was
fluent in Sweden and the other Scandinavian
(18:48):
languages, of course, but he was also fluent
in German and French and English
and,
had
knowledge not only of
the languages themselves but often of the literature
and especially the poetic expressions. And sometimes,
even while he was involved in dramatic
(19:09):
jobs as UN secretary general,
he was also,
translating
books into Swedish that were of interest to
him. And, the last one he was working
on and
and indeed was on the plane where he
died was by Martin Buber,
who was a Indian,
or Indian,
(19:30):
Jewish,
scholar and and mystic,
and, write wrote a famous book that from
which we now have the phrase I and
Thou.
And,
Amer Kwad was in the process of translating
that at the time.
He,
after World War
(19:50):
two, became more and more involved in international
affairs
about the economic redevelopment
of Europe
and got to know people in England and
in Germany and the other
parts of
Western Europe that were important powers in the
United Nations.
(20:10):
And,
he became, under unusual circumstances,
the second
secretary general of the United Nations.
Now a little about the United Nations itself.
It grew out of
a not very successful organization called the League
of Nations,
and that was an organization
that was
(20:30):
designed to,
end all wars. It was created after
World War I, but some of the
bad decisions made after World War I lingered
over it. And and,
so,
it's Were they involved in the treaty at
all?
No.
(20:51):
It came after the treaty. Okay. The Treaty
of Versailles and and,
and things were going on in Germany and
elsewhere about paying back debts, and and it
it was just a Draconian
decisions. And terrible, terrible kind of decisions,
were happening.
And,
(21:11):
so
but
even
though World War one was supposed to be
the war to end all wars and this
League of Nations was supposed to help that,
it didn't. How wrong was that, wasn't it?
The war to end all wars. Yeah. It's
it's still not having happening, and we're seeing
the commander in chief of our
(21:31):
armed
forces,
at whim shooting boats out of the water
without any,
Oh, he has he has definite proof. International
law to Yeah. It's definite proof. Well And
if he said he has it, he must.
Oh, okay. Well And they're very anti UN
anything,
you know, which I think the UN,
(21:53):
wonderful idea. It's been struggling here and there,
but we we it would be nice to
get the world together and to have a
force like the UN Yeah. To go in
and handle or take care or help some
of these problems that we got going on.
May maybe if they had accepted
his bid
for refurbishing the the UN building, maybe he
would think better of them. Okay. Could be.
(22:13):
But it was only $500,000,000
and he was gonna put real,
Goldy floors? Oh, marble floors and then absorbent
gold everywhere.
Yeah. The big thing. So I just wanted
to jump back real quick to, mister Hammer.
I'll go Hammersh Gold, best I can do.
But, his religion, you know, and,
we talked earlier in the in the room
(22:34):
before where not a lot of people knew
about this guy, and I'm one of them.
I didn't know when we had talked, you
were gonna talk about it. Interesting, wonderful character.
That's for sure. So his religion,
he was a deeply
had deep faith. He had deep But I
read something about
he
called it or somebody called it, he was
kind of the first one with progressive Christianity.
(22:56):
Maybe that's not the right way to put
it. But he was a he was a
caring, loving man.
Yeah. Didn't have what what we have now
is the Christian nationalism
factor that's just hideous and mean in my
opinion.
But he seemed to have that, a different
way of thinking about
Kinda oh, darn. Along those lines, and especially
(23:18):
after Bob just gave this rundown of how
what a sophisticated
Yeah.
Education and growing up he he had, and
that's probably in an in an area or
era
where people kinda could have their nose in
there a little bit if they were Sure.
More than the average person. But when he
became
the
secretary general, he wanted to
(23:40):
improve relations throughout the building among different people.
So he would frequently eat his lunch in
the cafeteria with everybody else. He,
stopped using the elevator. It was his private
elevator that was an elevator for everybody.
Basically, kind of knew people. Shuk Tanno was
a a normal person. Right. Man of the
(24:01):
people, I guess, I would say. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
In, in an unusual sense.
I mean, he he was,
clearly from an aristocratic
background.
And intellectually
and spiritually,
he had two major influences
that he met as basically
a young person living with his parents.
(24:24):
One was Albert Schweitzer.
Albert Schweitzer
was one of the most predominant
Christians in the twentieth century.
He was a
musician,
organist,
Bach scholar.
He was someone who was also a medical
doctor,
and,
he also was
(24:45):
involved in in quite a few other things
and,
involving,
understanding the New Testament
as
the scientific age had developed and,
his one book was
kind of
the most
predominant one in what did kind of set
(25:07):
off what is now called progressive Christianity.
Medical missionary,
And,
indeed,
(25:27):
Hammerschweld
had knew him in his youth. He was
a student at the University
of Uppsala
when Schweitzer visited
the archbishop of Sweden,
which was a man named Nathan Soderblum.
Nathan Soderblum
was
probably in many ways one of the most
important Christian leaders between
(25:49):
World War I and World War II, and
he was
involved deeply in trying
to set up peace, at least contacts between
Christians in
England and Germany
and that sort of thing. And,
so imagine
being a young man who
had a chance to,
(26:10):
know Schweitzer,
and Schweitzer is most famous for
a phrase called the reverence
for life,
and,
Amerschold
himself
often talked about
Schweitzer's
philosophy
and showing reverence for for all life. I
I didn't know he started that, but that
is kind of a philosophy that I live
(26:31):
by. Uh-huh. Catching spiders and taking them out
of the house instead of killing them. Yeah.
I'm bringing up Albert Schweitzer. He brought back
another blast from the past. That's along with
Harmischal. That's the name I hadn't heard in
I don't know how many years, but
he was he was very famous at the
medical missionary. Oh, for sure.
And,
he apparently was a good friend of of
(26:53):
the archbishop and so
arrived in Uppsala maybe every other other year
for
a lecture series at the university or so.
And in fact, the phrase reverence for life
was, I think, first used in one of
those lectures that
Schweitzer gave,
in
the archbishop's
(27:14):
area. So I'm I'm I'm not ethical enough
that I don't eat meat though. Uh-huh.
Yeah. It should it should actually include that,
but
I don't No. We we all deal with
those kind of issues and conflicts. Yeah. In
in in different sports. So if you're a
spider, you're cool in my house.
My house also.
And,
(27:35):
but,
Well, and you're talking about how Marshall from
my reading, and again, I'm kinda new to
this, but it finding out what an interesting
man this guy really was.
He was kinda
his reign, if you will, during
the secretary general,
who was kind of mostly concentrated on protecting
newly,
nations,
(27:55):
a lot of African nations,
more so
than,
from or protecting them from their colonial masters
is what I read. And
colonialism
if you wanna touch a little bit on
colonial colonialism, that's great, but that's kinda what
his trend was, and that it gathered him
a lot of friends and allies, but a
lot of people didn't like that. But the
(28:17):
colonialists were the big important people, though. Well
no. No. Right. Yeah.
Well,
the colonial
era
to a large degree ended with World War
two.
Yeah. And, in
India,
the biggest colony of of One of the
last ones, I think, remained.
(28:38):
Well, no. There there was another ten years
of other colonies that were
often year by year slowly getting their independence.
Yeah. But
in India, of course, it involved Gandhi and
involved
mass protests of civil disobedience
and
(28:59):
was an important
watershed
in human history.
Colonialism
in Africa,
started like in the thirteen hundreds. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. The
Portuguese especially,
many Musca de Gama and others,
(29:20):
had wandered down
the the African coast and,
eventually
they found places like Angola
to be,
good places to
find slaves to sell in a awful
three way trade that went from
originally more from,
(29:42):
that real Southern part of Africa, Angola, than
than the more the West Coast, which happened
a little later.
And,
what was the trade involved,
Africans
stolen and bought,
shipped in awful conditions and terrible vessels.
And,
all told, there were,
(30:03):
just literally millions that came
from Africa,
to
The Americas.
The largest number wound up in Brazil,
like 40%
of,
4,000,000.
And,
others wound up in The Caribbean
and in the American South.
(30:24):
And
ships would go from Africa to either Brazil
or The Caribbean
or the South,
and there they would pick up things like
barrels of rum
or sugar,
or other crops, cotton,
that
would have been grown in the,
(30:45):
in the,
island areas there as well as the American
South and then shipped to England, and then
England would ship stuff, including guns and other
stuff, to Africa. It was,
anyone who thinks the American economy
was based on the wisdom and fortitude and
(31:05):
all that of white European settlers has no
idea
at the heart
of the existence of what became The United
States and almost all the islands of the
Caribbean as well as much of South America
was based solely
or not solely, but mainly
on the fact that they had imported
(31:26):
free labor
from Africa,
treated them like chattel cattle,
and,
used them to
build all sorts of things, including the White
House and The U. S. Capitol and
a lot of,
Catholic universities and other universities as well. These
were all based on on that colonial tradition.
(31:48):
People people talk about our our,
sainted
founding fathers, and the reality, our our country
was founded on slavery, manifest destiny,
white supremacy, and one other thing. I forgot.
Well, I genocide.
Yeah. Genocide. Yeah.
Oh, I mentioned that once talking to a
group of people and somebody said, what genocide?
(32:10):
There were actually,
well, I I can't say with
absolute certainty, but there were probably more human
beings
in North And South America
than in all of Europe,
before Columbus.
And the genocide
was deliberate by force, but it was also
(32:32):
by
disease
and by hunger and things that we're seeing
about in Gaza. That's all now called the
New World. That was called There wasn't a
world before it became the New World. Yeah,
and,
the pope at the time
came out with a decree
(32:52):
that claimed that the colonization
of those lands was appropriate because that was
a way to convert these people to Christianity.
And that land was What a message.
Set aside by God for us to just
come and take over. Yeah. And that was
considered
manifest destiny. And those brown people have no
idea what to do with it. Yeah. And,
(33:14):
it was just
they really underestimated
the number of Indians or Native Americans or
whatever you want to call them, but
they also,
through disease and through warfare,
killed them off in vast numbers rather quickly.
Well, let's get back to the twentieth century.
(33:35):
Much of the third world
became decolonized
in the 1950s
and '60s.
In Africa, the first one was Ghana.
Nkwame Nkrumah was a charismatic
leader that
led its independence
movement.
There was others
(33:56):
fairly early in Guinea and
West Africa as well
and Nigeria in 1961.
And,
anyway,
the world was changing very rapidly in Africa,
and in Asia.
The French had
their long interest in Indochina
(34:17):
complicated by
the aftermath of the war. And anyway,
Hamer Queld,
who was as much a poet and a
mystic
as he was a government official,
tried to bring order and sense and peace
and justice
to this very, very complicated
(34:38):
world
that was just getting out of the colonial
era. And he saw himself
as someone,
who
should not be representing the big powers, but
should be representing
the newly independent colonies. And that was his
focus pretty much? To
a large degree,
(34:59):
it it was kind of his focus often
involved in what other countries did. There was
a terrible
crisis in
the Suez. France acted very strangely, and
that was one of the first crises
he wound up having to try to resolve.
(35:20):
And,
but the worst one,
was in The Congo,
and it took his life. Now The Congo's,
oh,
I I should mention something about the colonization
of Africa. It goes back to
1875.
There was a council in Berlin
(35:42):
where
the countries,
major countries that already had some colonial interest
in Africa,
Just had a big map, and
and the British says, okay, we're gonna take
Ghana, and we're gonna take Nigeria,
and we'll take Sierra Leone.
The French can have,
these
colonies, and they included Mali and and,
(36:06):
what we call the Ivory Coast. They had
a French way of pronouncing that. Cote D'Ivoire
or something like that. And the Germans wound
up in in,
Namibia,
and in
Cameroon right next to Nigeria,
and it was just like,
a board game.
To them. There's there's that line that Robert
(36:28):
Redford uses in Out of Africa where he's
explaining to somebody how the the division of
of some piece of land
came from. And he said the reason they
the line that's there is
this royal had one mountain, the other had
two mountains, so they had to divide up
the mountains or something like that. Just literally,
that was the difference. Things of that sort.
(36:49):
And, the colonization
was, well,
some refer to the unholy trinity of the
mercenary and the missionary
and the,
search for the I'm trying to try to
remember what the third one was. But,
anyway, the the armies came,
(37:11):
but they were really there
to help
British and Belgian and German and French
and other,
European
colonial countries
to exploit the land,
to get out minerals.
And enslave the people. Enslave their own land.
(37:32):
On their own land and sometimes set up
sugar plantations
and cotton plantations in Africa, but more so
in The Caribbean and Brazil and the Southern
United States.
And this was all free labor.
It really made the economies
of,
United States, including
(37:54):
Northern states, which
weren't necessarily
slave owning states, but had things like,
companies that built slaves or built ships for
slave and slave people,
people who,
built the shackles to keep them
in their
(38:14):
bondage. And
the whole economy
of the,
13 colonies,
the whole economy of the Caribbean,
and there were other countries we don't necessarily
think of as colonial countries like Denmark.
Denmark had a major,
(38:35):
influence in in The Caribbean, and if you
take a cruise ship down there, oh, yeah.
There there there is these islands that are,
originally were Danish or not originally, but became
Danish colonies for a while and and all
of that. So,
and in The Congo,
things were particularly
(38:56):
awful.
The Belgian King Leopold,
back in the end of the nineteenth century
and the early twentieth century,
saw it as a place that could be
could enrich Belgian
economy in big ways because there was copper,
there was gold, there was diamonds, there were,
(39:18):
all sorts of things in a in a
rich area.
And,
why not just
go in there and control the place and
take all these things up to,
Belgium and and others who had invested in
in countries, companies like Union
Manure,
it's not manure,
(39:39):
but manure or something like that.
Some French word. French. But,
anyway,
he
inherited almost an impossible job. There were, like,
90 nations in the UN at the time.
There was a cold war going on between,
Western European nations
(40:00):
and and the Soviet Union.
There were all these newly independent
nations which didn't necessarily have leadership that was
well trained
to start running new governments.
And, was that what they would then and
do now, called the third world mostly?
Yes. Third world countries?
Okay.
(40:20):
Yeah.
I had another oh, well, to simplify it
a little bit is
power and greed
seem to be the,
their own little manifest destiny. Take over whatever
country, you know, that they want for simply
power and greed. Yeah.
Just,
And, again, mister Hammerschold Hammerschold
(40:42):
was just not that way. He was just
antithetical to those per yeah. To those beliefs.
Oh, the three m's were the military, the
mercenary, and the missionary.
Oh, oh.
And,
that Yeah. There was kind of a religious
factor behind some of that. For sure. I
I already mentioned the pope talking about taking
over
the Americas,
so those poor Yeah. Primitive natives could be
(41:06):
converted to Christianity.
Coast Of California
with their missions is a big part of
all of that.
And,
the recent
stuff about
some of the California missions Yeah.
Is just just terrible. Yeah. And it's it's
funny because in I remember in high school,
(41:27):
even junior, whatever, you know, we the missions
were always taught as a very,
wonderful thing that that happened.
Yeah. Yeah. But, there were there were slaves
on,
just about every one of those,
missions in California.
And And back to the genocide or back
to starvation
(41:47):
Genocide. Disease.
And Yeah. And stealing of land. Stuff that
we just need to know about. You know,
we're not you don't have to bad mouth
this whole country. There were a lot of
good things, but they're trying to get rid
of some of that
actual history
that happened that we need to not make
those mistakes again.
It's even in
in the founding documents about to form a
(42:09):
more perfect union, and that was recognized how
imperfect it was at the time.
The only people who really had any power
in
in any of the colonies
were white
male,
property owners. Right. And, the property they could
own could be real estate or it could
be slaves. Mhmm. And if you weren't you
(42:32):
didn't fit those three categories,
you were not allowed to vote, You were
not allowed to hold office.
And
to to say that was the birth of
democracy
is really stretching a point. Oh, yeah. For
sure. You know, before we were getting down,
we got fifteen minutes or so left, but
(42:52):
a big factor in mister Hummer Scholl's life
was the way that he
died
in the plane crash
in '19 well, I can't remember. '61.
I I remember hearing about it earlier.
Yeah. And,
there have been
major,
efforts to explain it all,
(43:15):
by the
local governments, by the UN,
by the Swedes,
and there there is now a book out
called The Golden Thread, which looks at all
of those studies and
pretty clearly concludes that,
Hamer quote was assassinated.
(43:35):
And,
for me, the scariest part of it
was probably with the full knowledge and perhaps
participation
by the CIA.
Yeah. The CIA was was
a loose trigger during the 1950s
and 60s. People like Allen Dulles were
the longtime,
(43:56):
and
if we look back at Kennedy as somehow
a liberal
leader
and
for democratic values and that, we have to
remember that
some of his first appointments were J. Edgar
Hoover as
FBI director and Alan Dulles
as
CIA director. Okay.
(44:19):
The
the circumstances of the crash, how long it
took anyone to get there, it was in
what's now called Rhodesia,
and
there there's just lots of big questions,
but the the only conclusion is that it
was
not an accident as much as it was
(44:39):
an assassination.
Mhmm. And, that's been more widely recognized
in in the last ten years especially.
Yeah.
I wanna talk a little about,
the other side of, Hammershoel's
life, which was
as
a poet and
(45:00):
theologian.
He,
when
he was alive,
put instructions
for
one friend if something should happen to him
to find a manuscript
in a drawer in his bedroom
and if he thought it worthy
(45:22):
to have it published.
Now,
most times when
a world figure of his magnitude,
would give out,
posthumous
writings,
they would be talking about what
Khrushchev was at like, what Kennedy was like,
what Eisenhower was like, what happened in the
(45:42):
Suez crisis and and The Congo and all
these
world shaking events that he was involved in.
But, no, it had nothing to do,
directly with any of those,
but was really basically
a kind
of notebook,
a a kind of journal
where he would,
(46:03):
put in quotations from the media
evil mystics,
and,
things that
came directly
or indirectly out of the
liturgy
of the Western church.
By the Western church, I mean basically Roman
Catholic,
Episcopalian,
(46:24):
Anglican,
Lutheran,
and liturgical churches that grew out of the
Reformation.
And,
what he did in this book was
put down little quotations or maybe
rework part of the liturgy,
in terms of his own life and his
own experience.
(46:44):
There was a time
when his
faith was not very strong,
and in fact, the the,
intensity
and and remarkable
parts of his faith really came out in
markings
around the same time that he became the
secretary general
of of the UN.
(47:05):
And,
I have made my own,
kind of compilation of of his,
reworking of the liturgy into something I now
call markings mass
two point o. And, it's available in on
my YouTube site
and, the Progressive Christianity
(47:27):
website that I also
have involved in. And I've been hearing from
people all over the world about how moving
and beautiful those words are and how refreshing
it is to kind of worship in a
new way, but that is deeply rooted in
an old way.
Hammersho had a lot of interesting friends.
One was,
(47:48):
the
playwright,
or
I'm blanking
on on one
well, the novelist John Steinbeck,
was a good friend of his. In fact,
he corresponded with him
fairly often in his life.
Also, the,
(48:09):
man who was a great poet of the
Midwest, whose name is escaping me right now,
was a good friend of his.
And he had friends who were actors and
and celebrities, and he had a rich and
interesting life.
There was some,
speculation
that he may have been gay.
We
(48:29):
don't really know of any
romantic relationship that he was involved in with
anyone.
And,
but,
he,
just was a
a celebrity who changed the world in dramatic
ways
and then was suddenly wiped out and assassinated.
(48:50):
And,
there there in The Congo,
there were
people from the British Secret Service, from the
American CIA,
from,
French mining interests,
from,
Dutch oil interests.
And there were, you know, just people came
(49:10):
there because they knew how to,
use guns and sometimes were hired on short
term things by the CIA or or so
to to do what they do. And,
it was an awful place to be. He
tried to bring peace, but almost all of
those,
people I just mentioned
(49:31):
didn't share the UN
version of peace as presented by Hamerquote.
And,
previously, Lumumba,
who was the elected president of
of The Congo,
was also assassinated,
and, it's quite possible that the same forces
that got rid of Hamerqot
(49:51):
were involved in his death.
And in America,
much of the abuses by
both,
the CIA and the FBI
were exposed in the seventies by the Church
Committee.
Senator Church was a
fine and very independent
senator from,
Idaho
(50:11):
who,
while exploring
all these awful things the CIA
and,
the FBI had been doing helped reform those
things. But as we know, they're still not
reformed very well even to this day.
Do you know Oh, go ahead, Ray.
From what I've read, they believe the plane
(50:31):
was shot down by another plane?
Quite possibly. Yeah.
So if they're being attacked by another plane,
didn't they get any radio message out or
anything that's there's there's
there's very and this was,
I happened to live in Africa for a
couple years around or a few years later
than that. Aviation in Africa was not what
(50:53):
like it would be in Western Europe or
The United States. And,
but
and and I don't know enough about
all the details of,
of what did and did not happen at
the time of the plane crash, but it
it apparently is pretty clear that
(51:14):
Hummercote
was for a while
at least alive and on the ground.
And sadly and tragically, we'll never really know
at this point. Yeah. That and that is
sad. Although there are documentaries
out on the whole thing Oh, sure. And
Yeah. So I just also wanna
mention that hip he was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize posthumously.
(51:35):
Yes. And oh, there was another little quote.
We talked about JFK,
but JFK,
his quote was the greatest statesman of our
century.
Probably shortly after he was involved in the
assassination.
Well, there you go. And and,
that
the fact that
(51:55):
Truman,
the day after
the assassination,
made that comment about his being taken out,
was He said murdered, didn't he? I He
might not have. Okay. I I don't remember
the exact Definitely referred to it that way.
Yeah. Well, we don't really have people like
that anymore. I don't think that are that
(52:16):
idealistic that they're willing to risk their life
and,
do some of the,
I guess, would be considered,
not outrageous, but different things to
Yeah. I'm a quote certainly could have had
a very comfortable life if he had never
been involved in the UN.
I mean, he was bright, he was
(52:37):
very sophisticated
and And wealthy. Wealthy. And and,
but he,
had this sense of,
based on his religion,
which wasn't really very well known during his
lifetime. I I yeah. That's what I read
too. He kept that kind of under wraps.
Yeah. And probably for good reason. For good
reasons.
And and he was,
(53:00):
one who was
increasingly
open to the heritage of other religions.
Yeah. I
had a good friend that was,
one of the Pakistani
delegation who was sort of
a Muslim philosopher as well that
he was
remarkably
open in his,
(53:21):
theological
and spiritual,
things, although he was deeply rooted, of course,
in the Christian Yeah. One. Right.
Well, you know, we are almost out of
time. We have five minutes left. I was
gonna ask you, do you why do you
feel I I I do feel this way.
His story is important and timely today,
and I think it is with all what's
going on with, with the UN and the
(53:43):
world.
Well, he, in retrospect, was probably one of
the greatest UN
secretary generals, although it was one of the
most difficult times
to be in that role.
And,
he
his openness to
to all the parties, his willingness to defy
(54:03):
the strong
and powerful countries,
and,
and what we have now learned about his
spirituality
have all make him
a a really important role today. I have
in front of me my,
little
version of of Markings Mass, and I I
want to read one part of it because
(54:24):
it it kind of,
sums up the faith as he showed it
in Markings Mass. You bet. Sure.
It it goes like this.
At some moment, I did answer yes.
Remember, he had struggled with his face for
a while. Oh, yes. And from that hour,
(54:46):
I was certain that existence is meaningful
and that therefore in self surrender, and this
is something he got from the, mystics of
fourteenth century and so, had a goal. As
I continued along the way,
I learned step by step, word by word,
that behind every sentence spoken by the hero
of the gospels
(55:07):
stands one man and one man's experience.
To be free, to be able to stand
up and leave everything behind without looking back,
to say yes,
to say yes to life, is at one
at the same time to say yes to
oneself,
yes even to the element in one which
is most unwilling to let itself be transformed
(55:28):
from temptation into strength.
You dare your yes and experience a meaning.
You repeat your yes, and all things acquire
a meaning.
When everything has meaning, how can you live
anything but a yes?
Yes to God,
yes to fate, yes to yourself.
The reality can wound the soul, but has
the power to heal her. For all that
(55:50):
has been, thanks
to all that shall be.
Yes. What an affirmation. Pretty profound. Yeah. Yeah.
Very. You know, I was thinking while we
were just a few minutes ago, is there
anybody in the world today
that has his kind of reputation or is
doing anything close to what he did
that's not in it for some personal
(56:12):
perks?
Another name that comes to mind. There certainly
is not, and,
I'm sure there are some out there, but,
boy, they're not as, out well, I might
try as loud as the other voices are.
I I've been in contact with,
Hammershoel's
biographer, a man named Roger Libsey,
and,
he
(56:33):
kind of saw in Hamer Queld
someone who comes every thousand years or so.
In fact, he talks about Marcus Aurelius, who
was a Roman
kind of philosopher and soldier back in the
second or third century. Jane Goodall just died
recently.
She's probably beyond that list. She's a person
who She,
(56:55):
she was remarkable.
And,
she also
saw what she was doing in terms of
her Christian faith. Yes. And,
and, wow, changed how,
primatology
was
understood
and
changed. And an interesting thing about her is
(57:16):
she didn't even have a college degree,
a a a basic degree. Once she started?
When she started. I mean, she she became
a PhD in that, but,
she she had not gone the regular route
of,
get a BA and then a Yeah. And
and what a passion a lot of research
and came from the field to get the
education. Yeah. And what a perfect way to
(57:38):
I mean, that's, yeah, that's a perfect person
that had has the same qualities, it sounds
like to me. In in many, many ways.
I am glad
you suggested her. I Hooray. Good point.
The there are some people who are involved
in in politics whose motivations are not strictly
(57:58):
the Yeah. The financial and Power and greed.
Power
and all that, but,
they're few and far between.
And what I'm really afraid of is
with more and more of the political violence
that's happening in this country that
that people would decide, I'm just not gonna
rent for office. Well, it's kind of a
valid candidate. Yeah. Alright. Thank you, Robert, for,
(58:21):
again, enlightening us on this important person. We
have a few seconds. I'm gonna inter and
to
Interview. Agree with you, Rick. I'm gonna announce
that KCIW
finally has some merch. You've been asking for
it. We have it. We have new T
shirts.
You can earn $20. You can come in
to, the studio
(58:42):
between two and four on Wednesdays or ask
any KCIW
volunteer who will fix you up with one,
and they're only $20.
Well, hello again, KCIW
listeners, and welcome to Curry Cafe.
I'm volunteer and producer Rick McNamer.
Every Sunday from three to four, your host,
Ray Gary, puts together a panel of guests
to discuss various topics of interest.
Listeners can participate by texting questions or comments
to
(541)
(00:23):
661-4098.
Again, that's (541)
661-4098.
Now today, a little different. Before we get
to Ray and our guests, we'd like to
air a brief but important message from Katrina
Thompson Upton from the Northwestern American Indian Coalition.
And,
(00:44):
here we go.
Katrina Thompson. I'm the founder of Northwest American
Indian Coalition.
So October
starts
as National Archives Month.
It's a time to remember
that the history of this region belongs to
everyone who lives here. Our photos, our stories,
(01:07):
our maps,
and our oral traditions are all threads that
tie us together across generations.
By caring for them and sharing them accurately,
we give our children and our grandchildren
a clearer picture
of where we come from and who we
are as a community today. During the October,
we have Fire Prevention Week. This is a
(01:29):
national Fire Prevention Week, and it's important time
to uplift, traditional ecological knowledge, or TEK. Some
call it indigenous science. This includes cultural burning
and indigenous fire stewardship practices. For indigenous people,
fire has always been a tool of care
and renewal long before
modern firefighting. Cultural burns have been used to
(01:50):
tend the land, promote healthy ecosystems, and also
prevent larger wildfires.
Today, that wisdom
continues.
NAIC
is proud to support the Wild Rivers Coast
Forest Collaborative's new Prescribed Burn Association,
where we are bringing traditional knowledge and community
safety,
together.
Also, the first week in October, we have
(02:13):
the Lupton Massacre, which is noted as the
start of the Rogue River Indian Wars. So
on 10/08/1855,
the Rogue River War entered into its most
violent chapter.
Volunteer militia attacked native encampments near Table Rock
Reservation in what is now known as the
Lupton Massacre. This event marked the start of
(02:34):
the more organized and more devastating military campaign
against the tribes in Southern Oregon. While this
battle is often seen as the beginning of
the war's
final phase or the beginning of the end,
if you will, tensions had already been simmering
for years. Earlier conflict
sparked by the gold rush, settler encroachment had
resulted in many skirmishes
and
(02:55):
massacres
and ways of violence and displacement,
but it was this October,
eighth event that marked a turning point, a
day when the violence escalated into a full
scale war, and native communities were forced to
fight for their survival, their families, and and
their homeland. The stories of this land and
our communities still echo in our hearts, and
(03:15):
we carry them forward. We're still here, and
we're still still caring for what's always been.
Thank you, Katrina. Very important message.
Okay. And now back to our show. Now
here's Ray to tell us about today's show.
Yeah.
We're gonna be talking about, the UN and
some here history in the UN anyway.
(03:36):
And about the time most of this was
happening, I was in school, and we were
learning about the UN.
And being my naive little 10 year old
or 12 year old cell phone, I thought,
oh, wow. This is the greatest thing going.
We get just get all these countries together,
and they can talk out their problems, and
we won't have any more wars because it's
meant it's easy to sit at the table
and just
(03:57):
get things squared away.
So this morning, I was watching the news,
and there were two main stories on the
news station I watched. One was, something about
Miley Miley Cyrus.
I didn't pay much attention, but she must
have a new album or something out.
And the other story that was given equal
time, and maybe it was before Miley or
(04:17):
after it, I don't know, is we now
have a new drone system
that cost unbelievable amount of money.
And they had this, Air Force officer talking
about how it works and how you fire
it and this and that. And,
I think the
interviewer said, well, why is this system needed?
And he says, well, because the Chinese have
(04:39):
the x amount of planes and if we
ever got in a fight, they'd win.
Which made me think of,
what's the name of the Oh,
yeah.
I can't remember.
Anyway
Good news. No. Obviously, the UN didn't didn't
really work that well as far as
(05:01):
preventing wars and preventing the need for us
having more
jets to to kill somebody.
Kinda goes along with one of the things
our
secretary of war, not secretary of defense anymore,
said
during his little meeting that he had was,
(05:21):
our job is to break things and kill
people.
So
I don't know. I think it might be
more than that.
Real interesting thing,
when when I was in the army, if,
we were in any kind of a situation
at all and more than two people standing
close to each other,
there's to be over sergeant yelling at us
(05:41):
all the time. Spread out. One round will
get you all. So our intelligent leaders,
not only got more than one. We got
every single major person in the military
and the president and
the secretary of war
all in one room.
Was it a secret? Nope. Nope. Nope. It's
(06:02):
well planned for, and people for a long
time knew exactly where everybody would be.
So I didn't, from a tactical
perspective, I didn't think that was a very
good idea. Fortunately, we did get away with
it. And we got to got to hear
some wonderful words of wisdom
from our creator of Athens.
(06:23):
Not war, but go ahead. And we learned
about the two n words,
or one of them, but couldn't say the
other one. Yeah. Why he needed to use
that as an example. I don't know. Anyway,
enough of my ranting. Maybe we can get
on now to somebody who knows something,
and I'll have him introduce himself
and tell us a little about
what he's here to talk about or tell
(06:44):
you a lot about what he's here to
talk about.
Okay. My name is Robert O'Sullivan,
and, I've been retired in Brookings for about
ten years now.
Before I retired, I lived in Oakland and
had lots of activities based in Berkeley.
And,
I
(07:05):
just kinda moved up here, and it's it's
a wonderful place, and I'm glad to be
here.
I'm talking today about a man whose
name is not easy to pronounce.
The first name is alright. It's dog. It's
not dog.
But the last name is spelled h a
(07:27):
m m a r s k j
o with two dots over it, l d.
And most Americans
pronounce that as hammer, shoulder, something like that.
Not with the two dots. I mean, they
should know better with the two dots mean?
I don't, but, they should.
(07:48):
Anyway, they're they're
it's finding the right way to maneuver a
keyboard to make sure you put those dots
up there when you're trying to write his
name. I don't always succeed at that. I
I imagine the countries where they speak that
language, there probably is a key. It could
well be. That. Yeah. It
it might be. I I
(08:08):
my my wife has a Swedish cousin and
she may be visiting soon, so I'll try
and clarify it a little better at that
point. And you can come back on another
show and tell us. Maybe I can put
her on the show and,
it can be half in Swedish and you'll
you'll get a better You could welcome it.
Feeling of what that all,
is like. Some of our German speaking people,
(08:29):
and maybe that's pretty close. Right?
I would say no. I would say no
also. I mean, the
Norwegian and Swedish and Danish are clearly pretty
close,
but,
and
most European languages come from,
(08:49):
what are called Indo European roots, which go
to India, basically.
So,
there there's similarities
in structure and
in vocabulary and that sort of thing, but
the the Scandinavian languages are pretty separate from
the Germanic ones. I, I can remember, like,
(09:10):
well into the fifties, so if somebody spoke
with an accent like that,
it was always, I'm Swiss.
Not German. I'm Swiss. Uh-huh. Well, that's an
interesting thing in the,
Trump family. His family name was originally Frumpf,
and
his father
(09:33):
originally was in
Alaska during Gold Rush days. Grandfather, I think
that was. Or grandfather,
and made a lot of money
involved
in food and other stuff coming to Alaska
during its Gold Rush,
and there may have been some whorehouses involved.
(09:53):
That's where the real money was. And others.
I have no idea at the time, but
I wouldn't be surprised.
But
anyway,
Trump's father
later
changed the name to Trump
and,
also he
basically said he was Swedish.
And,
(10:13):
but,
he was not. And,
anyway, but we're digressing
a bit. Let me get back to Mr.
Hammersch.
I
feel like pronouncing it differently at the end
of each time I say it, but, Kind
of works. Maybe you'll get it right once.
Out of sheer luck. I will I will
(10:33):
get a text from somebody who says, he
got it. Speaking of text, by the way,
I don't think we've given the number yet.
If you wanna join in this conversation and
make a comment or in some way be
involved,
the number is
(541)
661-4098.
That's (541)
661-4098.
(10:56):
Operators are standing by.
Let me, first of all, talk a little
about Hamrick West's,
upbringing.
He came from a very important and aristocratic
Swedish
family,
and,
(11:18):
they had two distinct
sides to the family.
Often
people who are from aristocratic families
marry people from similar aristocratic families, but these
were quite different.
His father
was
a public servant,
(11:41):
a public administrator,
whatever you wanna call that,
and actually became the prime minister of
Sweden during World War I.
Sweden's had a funny
place in the history of Europe when it
had to do with both World War I
and World War II.
(12:02):
And
in World War I's case,
there
were issues about
food and
and,
transportation
and all that sort of thing.
And
although as prime minister, he was not very
popular because,
for example, they could get some food from
(12:23):
England if they did something with the train
system and things like that
were making him unpopular
and they actually started calling him
hunger because,
there was some famine
going on in Sweden during the war that
had to do with
how the prime minister was conducting
(12:46):
his role. And,
he later,
became
no longer prime minister,
but,
a leader of the
major,
one of I I don't know exactly how
many, but there are probably
four or five major kind of government,
(13:08):
things in in,
in,
that were related to
this year.
I'm
trying to get something on my iPhone and
I made a somewhat mistake in doing it
and if I Uh-oh. Uh-oh. You made a
mistake. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
(13:28):
I just have real quick questions, Robert, about
does some of that,
attitude against Sweden, does it have to do
with their weren't they new to their neutrality
in both World Wars? Yeah. I'm,
I'm not totally
clear about World War I. It definitely was
an issue in World War II. Okay.
Hamrick,
(13:48):
his father
became governor of one of four or five
regions in Sweden, this one based in Uppsala.
Uppsala is a,
mid sized town right in the middle of
Sweden, but is very important as an educational
center. The university there was,
(14:08):
among other things, a place where Linnaeus
was a professor,
and he is the person who,
developed the whole system of identifying
natural phenomena and plant life
and animal life and species
and all that goes with that. And,
(14:31):
the,
as governor of that particular
part of Sweden,
the
Hamer Kvald family lived in a great old
palace there,
the the government center for that area.
And,
he had an idyllic,
(14:51):
very pleasant childhood.
He loved to wander,
around and he had a lot of interest
in botany and and some of the things
that Linnaeus was so important about.
And,
generally speaking,
it was a peaceful world when he first
was growing up, but it soon
got much worse as World War I,
(15:14):
developed.
And,
in
Linnaeus,
he
or or
in his
youth,
he had
two aristocratic
parents,
but they were quite different. And, in fact,
I I,
(15:35):
want to
read what Hammerschold once said in a Edward
r Murrow, this I believe interview,
from he says about his father, from the
generation of soldiers and governmental officials
on my father's side, I inherited a belief
that no belief no life
(15:56):
was more satisfactory than one of selfless service
to your country or humanity.
This service requires a sacrifice of all personal
interests, but likewise,
the courage to stand up unflinchingly
for your
convictions.
And then he talks about his mother's side.
From scholars and clergymen on my mother's side,
(16:18):
I inherit a belief that in the very
radical sense of the gospels,
all men were equal as children of God
and should be met and treated by us
as our masters in God.
Now,
that was quite a contrast, and
his life
did indeed
(16:39):
involve public service, did involve,
bureaucratic
jobs. He was, at one time the head
of the Bank of Sweden
and was involved in some
international things relating to the
development of international laws that had to do
with money and that. He was a very
important fig the father was a very important
(17:02):
figure,
but one who,
did not do very well during the World
War I era, but did
well as the governor of this province
of Sweden and
raised two
or raised, I think it was four children
altogether.
(17:22):
And,
they both influenced who he
later in his life became.
His mother's spirituality
ran deep, as the
quotation there
read.
She was from a family of clergy
and professors
and theologians,
and that and it came natural that that
(17:45):
she was,
interested in those things and apparently was a
very vivacious, caring woman.
And,
an example which was probably fairly unusual in
those days
when he was confirmed in the Church of
Sweden as young
people would have been in those days, probably
(18:05):
around age 13 or 14,
his mother gave him two
classics of Western Christian,
mysticism
and,
spiritualism.
One is the Imitation of Christ by saint,
Saint Thomas of Kempis,
and later she provided him with other kind
(18:26):
of,
theological,
mystical,
poetic
expressions that dated back to
to the medieval mystics.
He was
very well educated,
very sophisticated.
He was
fluent in Sweden and the other Scandinavian
(18:48):
languages, of course, but he was also fluent
in German and French and English
and,
had
knowledge not only of
the languages themselves but often of the literature
and especially the poetic expressions. And sometimes,
even while he was involved in dramatic
(19:09):
jobs as UN secretary general,
he was also,
translating
books into Swedish that were of interest to
him. And, the last one he was working
on and
and indeed was on the plane where he
died was by Martin Buber,
who was a Indian,
or Indian,
(19:30):
Jewish,
scholar and and mystic,
and, write wrote a famous book that from
which we now have the phrase I and
Thou.
And,
Amer Kwad was in the process of translating
that at the time.
He,
after World War
(19:50):
two, became more and more involved in international
affairs
about the economic redevelopment
of Europe
and got to know people in England and
in Germany and the other
parts of
Western Europe that were important powers in the
United Nations.
(20:10):
And,
he became, under unusual circumstances,
the second
secretary general of the United Nations.
Now a little about the United Nations itself.
It grew out of
a not very successful organization called the League
of Nations,
and that was an organization
that was
(20:30):
designed to,
end all wars. It was created after
World War I, but some of the
bad decisions made after World War I lingered
over it. And and,
so,
it's Were they involved in the treaty at
all?
No.
(20:51):
It came after the treaty. Okay. The Treaty
of Versailles and and,
and things were going on in Germany and
elsewhere about paying back debts, and and it
it was just a Draconian
decisions. And terrible, terrible kind of decisions,
were happening.
And,
(21:11):
so
but
even
though World War one was supposed to be
the war to end all wars and this
League of Nations was supposed to help that,
it didn't. How wrong was that, wasn't it?
The war to end all wars. Yeah. It's
it's still not having happening, and we're seeing
the commander in chief of our
(21:31):
armed
forces,
at whim shooting boats out of the water
without any,
Oh, he has he has definite proof. International
law to Yeah. It's definite proof. Well And
if he said he has it, he must.
Oh, okay. Well And they're very anti UN
anything,
you know, which I think the UN,
(21:53):
wonderful idea. It's been struggling here and there,
but we we it would be nice to
get the world together and to have a
force like the UN Yeah. To go in
and handle or take care or help some
of these problems that we got going on.
May maybe if they had accepted
his bid
for refurbishing the the UN building, maybe he
would think better of them. Okay. Could be.
(22:13):
But it was only $500,000,000
and he was gonna put real,
Goldy floors? Oh, marble floors and then absorbent
gold everywhere.
Yeah. The big thing. So I just wanted
to jump back real quick to, mister Hammer.
I'll go Hammersh Gold, best I can do.
But, his religion, you know, and,
we talked earlier in the in the room
(22:34):
before where not a lot of people knew
about this guy, and I'm one of them.
I didn't know when we had talked, you
were gonna talk about it. Interesting, wonderful character.
That's for sure. So his religion,
he was a deeply
had deep faith. He had deep But I
read something about
he
called it or somebody called it, he was
kind of the first one with progressive Christianity.
(22:56):
Maybe that's not the right way to put
it. But he was a he was a
caring, loving man.
Yeah. Didn't have what what we have now
is the Christian nationalism
factor that's just hideous and mean in my
opinion.
But he seemed to have that, a different
way of thinking about
Kinda oh, darn. Along those lines, and especially
(23:18):
after Bob just gave this rundown of how
what a sophisticated
Yeah.
Education and growing up he he had, and
that's probably in an in an area or
era
where people kinda could have their nose in
there a little bit if they were Sure.
More than the average person. But when he
became
the
secretary general, he wanted to
(23:40):
improve relations throughout the building among different people.
So he would frequently eat his lunch in
the cafeteria with everybody else. He,
stopped using the elevator. It was his private
elevator that was an elevator for everybody.
Basically, kind of knew people. Shuk Tanno was
a a normal person. Right. Man of the
(24:01):
people, I guess, I would say. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
In, in an unusual sense.
I mean, he he was,
clearly from an aristocratic
background.
And intellectually
and spiritually,
he had two major influences
that he met as basically
a young person living with his parents.
(24:24):
One was Albert Schweitzer.
Albert Schweitzer
was one of the most predominant
Christians in the twentieth century.
He was a
musician,
organist,
Bach scholar.
He was someone who was also a medical
doctor,
and,
he also was
(24:45):
involved in in quite a few other things
and,
involving,
understanding the New Testament
as
the scientific age had developed and,
his one book was
kind of
the most
predominant one in what did kind of set
(25:07):
off what is now called progressive Christianity.
Medical missionary,
And,
indeed,
(25:27):
Hammerschweld
had knew him in his youth. He was
a student at the University
of Uppsala
when Schweitzer visited
the archbishop of Sweden,
which was a man named Nathan Soderblum.
Nathan Soderblum
was
probably in many ways one of the most
important Christian leaders between
(25:49):
World War I and World War II, and
he was
involved deeply in trying
to set up peace, at least contacts between
Christians in
England and Germany
and that sort of thing. And,
so imagine
being a young man who
had a chance to,
(26:10):
know Schweitzer,
and Schweitzer is most famous for
a phrase called the reverence
for life,
and,
Amerschold
himself
often talked about
Schweitzer's
philosophy
and showing reverence for for all life. I
I didn't know he started that, but that
is kind of a philosophy that I live
(26:31):
by. Uh-huh. Catching spiders and taking them out
of the house instead of killing them. Yeah.
I'm bringing up Albert Schweitzer. He brought back
another blast from the past. That's along with
Harmischal. That's the name I hadn't heard in
I don't know how many years, but
he was he was very famous at the
medical missionary. Oh, for sure.
And,
he apparently was a good friend of of
(26:53):
the archbishop and so
arrived in Uppsala maybe every other other year
for
a lecture series at the university or so.
And in fact, the phrase reverence for life
was, I think, first used in one of
those lectures that
Schweitzer gave,
in
the archbishop's
(27:14):
area. So I'm I'm I'm not ethical enough
that I don't eat meat though. Uh-huh.
Yeah. It should it should actually include that,
but
I don't No. We we all deal with
those kind of issues and conflicts. Yeah. In
in in different sports. So if you're a
spider, you're cool in my house.
My house also.
And,
(27:35):
but,
Well, and you're talking about how Marshall from
my reading, and again, I'm kinda new to
this, but it finding out what an interesting
man this guy really was.
He was kinda
his reign, if you will, during
the secretary general,
who was kind of mostly concentrated on protecting
newly,
nations,
(27:55):
a lot of African nations,
more so
than,
from or protecting them from their colonial masters
is what I read. And
colonialism
if you wanna touch a little bit on
colonial colonialism, that's great, but that's kinda what
his trend was, and that it gathered him
a lot of friends and allies, but a
lot of people didn't like that. But the
(28:17):
colonialists were the big important people, though. Well
no. No. Right. Yeah.
Well,
the colonial
era
to a large degree ended with World War
two.
Yeah. And, in
India,
the biggest colony of of One of the
last ones, I think, remained.
(28:38):
Well, no. There there was another ten years
of other colonies that were
often year by year slowly getting their independence.
Yeah. But
in India, of course, it involved Gandhi and
involved
mass protests of civil disobedience
and
(28:59):
was an important
watershed
in human history.
Colonialism
in Africa,
started like in the thirteen hundreds. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. The
Portuguese especially,
many Musca de Gama and others,
(29:20):
had wandered down
the the African coast and,
eventually
they found places like Angola
to be,
good places to
find slaves to sell in a awful
three way trade that went from
originally more from,
(29:42):
that real Southern part of Africa, Angola, than
than the more the West Coast, which happened
a little later.
And,
what was the trade involved,
Africans
stolen and bought,
shipped in awful conditions and terrible vessels.
And,
all told, there were,
(30:03):
just literally millions that came
from Africa,
to
The Americas.
The largest number wound up in Brazil,
like 40%
of,
4,000,000.
And,
others wound up in The Caribbean
and in the American South.
(30:24):
And
ships would go from Africa to either Brazil
or The Caribbean
or the South,
and there they would pick up things like
barrels of rum
or sugar,
or other crops, cotton,
that
would have been grown in the,
(30:45):
in the,
island areas there as well as the American
South and then shipped to England, and then
England would ship stuff, including guns and other
stuff, to Africa. It was,
anyone who thinks the American economy
was based on the wisdom and fortitude and
(31:05):
all that of white European settlers has no
idea
at the heart
of the existence of what became The United
States and almost all the islands of the
Caribbean as well as much of South America
was based solely
or not solely, but mainly
on the fact that they had imported
(31:26):
free labor
from Africa,
treated them like chattel cattle,
and,
used them to
build all sorts of things, including the White
House and The U. S. Capitol and
a lot of,
Catholic universities and other universities as well. These
were all based on on that colonial tradition.
(31:48):
People people talk about our our,
sainted
founding fathers, and the reality, our our country
was founded on slavery, manifest destiny,
white supremacy, and one other thing. I forgot.
Well, I genocide.
Yeah. Genocide. Yeah.
Oh, I mentioned that once talking to a
group of people and somebody said, what genocide?
(32:10):
There were actually,
well, I I can't say with
absolute certainty, but there were probably more human
beings
in North And South America
than in all of Europe,
before Columbus.
And the genocide
was deliberate by force, but it was also
(32:32):
by
disease
and by hunger and things that we're seeing
about in Gaza. That's all now called the
New World. That was called There wasn't a
world before it became the New World. Yeah,
and,
the pope at the time
came out with a decree
(32:52):
that claimed that the colonization
of those lands was appropriate because that was
a way to convert these people to Christianity.
And that land was What a message.
Set aside by God for us to just
come and take over. Yeah. And that was
considered
manifest destiny. And those brown people have no
idea what to do with it. Yeah. And,
(33:14):
it was just
they really underestimated
the number of Indians or Native Americans or
whatever you want to call them, but
they also,
through disease and through warfare,
killed them off in vast numbers rather quickly.
Well, let's get back to the twentieth century.
(33:35):
Much of the third world
became decolonized
in the 1950s
and '60s.
In Africa, the first one was Ghana.
Nkwame Nkrumah was a charismatic
leader that
led its independence
movement.
There was others
(33:56):
fairly early in Guinea and
West Africa as well
and Nigeria in 1961.
And,
anyway,
the world was changing very rapidly in Africa,
and in Asia.
The French had
their long interest in Indochina
(34:17):
complicated by
the aftermath of the war. And anyway,
Hamer Queld,
who was as much a poet and a
mystic
as he was a government official,
tried to bring order and sense and peace
and justice
to this very, very complicated
(34:38):
world
that was just getting out of the colonial
era. And he saw himself
as someone,
who
should not be representing the big powers, but
should be representing
the newly independent colonies. And that was his
focus pretty much? To
a large degree,
(34:59):
it it was kind of his focus often
involved in what other countries did. There was
a terrible
crisis in
the Suez. France acted very strangely, and
that was one of the first crises
he wound up having to try to resolve.
(35:20):
And,
but the worst one,
was in The Congo,
and it took his life. Now The Congo's,
oh,
I I should mention something about the colonization
of Africa. It goes back to
1875.
There was a council in Berlin
(35:42):
where
the countries,
major countries that already had some colonial interest
in Africa,
Just had a big map, and
and the British says, okay, we're gonna take
Ghana, and we're gonna take Nigeria,
and we'll take Sierra Leone.
The French can have,
these
colonies, and they included Mali and and,
(36:06):
what we call the Ivory Coast. They had
a French way of pronouncing that. Cote D'Ivoire
or something like that. And the Germans wound
up in in,
Namibia,
and in
Cameroon right next to Nigeria,
and it was just like,
a board game.
To them. There's there's that line that Robert
(36:28):
Redford uses in Out of Africa where he's
explaining to somebody how the the division of
of some piece of land
came from. And he said the reason they
the line that's there is
this royal had one mountain, the other had
two mountains, so they had to divide up
the mountains or something like that. Just literally,
that was the difference. Things of that sort.
(36:49):
And, the colonization
was, well,
some refer to the unholy trinity of the
mercenary and the missionary
and the,
search for the I'm trying to try to
remember what the third one was. But,
anyway, the the armies came,
(37:11):
but they were really there
to help
British and Belgian and German and French
and other,
European
colonial countries
to exploit the land,
to get out minerals.
And enslave the people. Enslave their own land.
(37:32):
On their own land and sometimes set up
sugar plantations
and cotton plantations in Africa, but more so
in The Caribbean and Brazil and the Southern
United States.
And this was all free labor.
It really made the economies
of,
United States, including
(37:54):
Northern states, which
weren't necessarily
slave owning states, but had things like,
companies that built slaves or built ships for
slave and slave people,
people who,
built the shackles to keep them
in their
(38:14):
bondage. And
the whole economy
of the,
13 colonies,
the whole economy of the Caribbean,
and there were other countries we don't necessarily
think of as colonial countries like Denmark.
Denmark had a major,
(38:35):
influence in in The Caribbean, and if you
take a cruise ship down there, oh, yeah.
There there there is these islands that are,
originally were Danish or not originally, but became
Danish colonies for a while and and all
of that. So,
and in The Congo,
things were particularly
(38:56):
awful.
The Belgian King Leopold,
back in the end of the nineteenth century
and the early twentieth century,
saw it as a place that could be
could enrich Belgian
economy in big ways because there was copper,
there was gold, there was diamonds, there were,
(39:18):
all sorts of things in a in a
rich area.
And,
why not just
go in there and control the place and
take all these things up to,
Belgium and and others who had invested in
in countries, companies like Union
Manure,
it's not manure,
(39:39):
but manure or something like that.
Some French word. French. But,
anyway,
he
inherited almost an impossible job. There were, like,
90 nations in the UN at the time.
There was a cold war going on between,
Western European nations
(40:00):
and and the Soviet Union.
There were all these newly independent
nations which didn't necessarily have leadership that was
well trained
to start running new governments.
And, was that what they would then and
do now, called the third world mostly?
Yes. Third world countries?
Okay.
(40:20):
Yeah.
I had another oh, well, to simplify it
a little bit is
power and greed
seem to be the,
their own little manifest destiny. Take over whatever
country, you know, that they want for simply
power and greed. Yeah.
Just,
And, again, mister Hammerschold Hammerschold
(40:42):
was just not that way. He was just
antithetical to those per yeah. To those beliefs.
Oh, the three m's were the military, the
mercenary, and the missionary.
Oh, oh.
And,
that Yeah. There was kind of a religious
factor behind some of that. For sure. I
I already mentioned the pope talking about taking
over
the Americas,
so those poor Yeah. Primitive natives could be
(41:06):
converted to Christianity.
Coast Of California
with their missions is a big part of
all of that.
And,
the recent
stuff about
some of the California missions Yeah.
Is just just terrible. Yeah. And it's it's
funny because in I remember in high school,
(41:27):
even junior, whatever, you know, we the missions
were always taught as a very,
wonderful thing that that happened.
Yeah. Yeah. But, there were there were slaves
on,
just about every one of those,
missions in California.
And And back to the genocide or back
to starvation
(41:47):
Genocide. Disease.
And Yeah. And stealing of land. Stuff that
we just need to know about. You know,
we're not you don't have to bad mouth
this whole country. There were a lot of
good things, but they're trying to get rid
of some of that
actual history
that happened that we need to not make
those mistakes again.
It's even in
in the founding documents about to form a
(42:09):
more perfect union, and that was recognized how
imperfect it was at the time.
The only people who really had any power
in
in any of the colonies
were white
male,
property owners. Right. And, the property they could
own could be real estate or it could
be slaves. Mhmm. And if you weren't you
(42:32):
didn't fit those three categories,
you were not allowed to vote, You were
not allowed to hold office.
And
to to say that was the birth of
democracy
is really stretching a point. Oh, yeah. For
sure. You know, before we were getting down,
we got fifteen minutes or so left, but
(42:52):
a big factor in mister Hummer Scholl's life
was the way that he
died
in the plane crash
in '19 well, I can't remember. '61.
I I remember hearing about it earlier.
Yeah. And,
there have been
major,
efforts to explain it all,
(43:15):
by the
local governments, by the UN,
by the Swedes,
and there there is now a book out
called The Golden Thread, which looks at all
of those studies and
pretty clearly concludes that,
Hamer quote was assassinated.
(43:35):
And,
for me, the scariest part of it
was probably with the full knowledge and perhaps
participation
by the CIA.
Yeah. The CIA was was
a loose trigger during the 1950s
and 60s. People like Allen Dulles were
the longtime,
(43:56):
and
if we look back at Kennedy as somehow
a liberal
leader
and
for democratic values and that, we have to
remember that
some of his first appointments were J. Edgar
Hoover as
FBI director and Alan Dulles
as
CIA director. Okay.
(44:19):
The
the circumstances of the crash, how long it
took anyone to get there, it was in
what's now called Rhodesia,
and
there there's just lots of big questions,
but the the only conclusion is that it
was
not an accident as much as it was
(44:39):
an assassination.
Mhmm. And, that's been more widely recognized
in in the last ten years especially.
Yeah.
I wanna talk a little about,
the other side of, Hammershoel's
life, which was
as
a poet and
(45:00):
theologian.
He,
when
he was alive,
put instructions
for
one friend if something should happen to him
to find a manuscript
in a drawer in his bedroom
and if he thought it worthy
(45:22):
to have it published.
Now,
most times when
a world figure of his magnitude,
would give out,
posthumous
writings,
they would be talking about what
Khrushchev was at like, what Kennedy was like,
what Eisenhower was like, what happened in the
(45:42):
Suez crisis and and The Congo and all
these
world shaking events that he was involved in.
But, no, it had nothing to do,
directly with any of those,
but was really basically
a kind
of notebook,
a a kind of journal
where he would,
(46:03):
put in quotations from the media
evil mystics,
and,
things that
came directly
or indirectly out of the
liturgy
of the Western church.
By the Western church, I mean basically Roman
Catholic,
Episcopalian,
(46:24):
Anglican,
Lutheran,
and liturgical churches that grew out of the
Reformation.
And,
what he did in this book was
put down little quotations or maybe
rework part of the liturgy,
in terms of his own life and his
own experience.
(46:44):
There was a time
when his
faith was not very strong,
and in fact, the the,
intensity
and and remarkable
parts of his faith really came out in
markings
around the same time that he became the
secretary general
of of the UN.
(47:05):
And,
I have made my own,
kind of compilation of of his,
reworking of the liturgy into something I now
call markings mass
two point o. And, it's available in on
my YouTube site
and, the Progressive Christianity
(47:27):
website that I also
have involved in. And I've been hearing from
people all over the world about how moving
and beautiful those words are and how refreshing
it is to kind of worship in a
new way, but that is deeply rooted in
an old way.
Hammersho had a lot of interesting friends.
One was,
(47:48):
the
playwright,
or
I'm blanking
on on one
well, the novelist John Steinbeck,
was a good friend of his. In fact,
he corresponded with him
fairly often in his life.
Also, the,
(48:09):
man who was a great poet of the
Midwest, whose name is escaping me right now,
was a good friend of his.
And he had friends who were actors and
and celebrities, and he had a rich and
interesting life.
There was some,
speculation
that he may have been gay.
We
(48:29):
don't really know of any
romantic relationship that he was involved in with
anyone.
And,
but,
he,
just was a
a celebrity who changed the world in dramatic
ways
and then was suddenly wiped out and assassinated.
(48:50):
And,
there there in The Congo,
there were
people from the British Secret Service, from the
American CIA,
from,
French mining interests,
from,
Dutch oil interests.
And there were, you know, just people came
(49:10):
there because they knew how to,
use guns and sometimes were hired on short
term things by the CIA or or so
to to do what they do. And,
it was an awful place to be. He
tried to bring peace, but almost all of
those,
people I just mentioned
(49:31):
didn't share the UN
version of peace as presented by Hamerquote.
And,
previously, Lumumba,
who was the elected president of
of The Congo,
was also assassinated,
and, it's quite possible that the same forces
that got rid of Hamerqot
(49:51):
were involved in his death.
And in America,
much of the abuses by
both,
the CIA and the FBI
were exposed in the seventies by the Church
Committee.
Senator Church was a
fine and very independent
senator from,
Idaho
(50:11):
who,
while exploring
all these awful things the CIA
and,
the FBI had been doing helped reform those
things. But as we know, they're still not
reformed very well even to this day.
Do you know Oh, go ahead, Ray.
From what I've read, they believe the plane
(50:31):
was shot down by another plane?
Quite possibly. Yeah.
So if they're being attacked by another plane,
didn't they get any radio message out or
anything that's there's there's
there's very and this was,
I happened to live in Africa for a
couple years around or a few years later
than that. Aviation in Africa was not what
(50:53):
like it would be in Western Europe or
The United States. And,
but
and and I don't know enough about
all the details of,
of what did and did not happen at
the time of the plane crash, but it
it apparently is pretty clear that
(51:14):
Hummercote
was for a while
at least alive and on the ground.
And sadly and tragically, we'll never really know
at this point. Yeah. That and that is
sad. Although there are documentaries
out on the whole thing Oh, sure. And
Yeah. So I just also wanna
mention that hip he was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize posthumously.
(51:35):
Yes. And oh, there was another little quote.
We talked about JFK,
but JFK,
his quote was the greatest statesman of our
century.
Probably shortly after he was involved in the
assassination.
Well, there you go. And and,
that
the fact that
(51:55):
Truman,
the day after
the assassination,
made that comment about his being taken out,
was He said murdered, didn't he? I He
might not have. Okay. I I don't remember
the exact Definitely referred to it that way.
Yeah. Well, we don't really have people like
that anymore. I don't think that are that
(52:16):
idealistic that they're willing to risk their life
and,
do some of the,
I guess, would be considered,
not outrageous, but different things to
Yeah. I'm a quote certainly could have had
a very comfortable life if he had never
been involved in the UN.
I mean, he was bright, he was
(52:37):
very sophisticated
and And wealthy. Wealthy. And and,
but he,
had this sense of,
based on his religion,
which wasn't really very well known during his
lifetime. I I yeah. That's what I read
too. He kept that kind of under wraps.
Yeah. And probably for good reason. For good
reasons.
And and he was,
(53:00):
one who was
increasingly
open to the heritage of other religions.
Yeah. I
had a good friend that was,
one of the Pakistani
delegation who was sort of
a Muslim philosopher as well that
he was
remarkably
open in his,
(53:21):
theological
and spiritual,
things, although he was deeply rooted, of course,
in the Christian Yeah. One. Right.
Well, you know, we are almost out of
time. We have five minutes left. I was
gonna ask you, do you why do you
feel I I I do feel this way.
His story is important and timely today,
and I think it is with all what's
going on with, with the UN and the
(53:43):
world.
Well, he, in retrospect, was probably one of
the greatest UN
secretary generals, although it was one of the
most difficult times
to be in that role.
And,
he
his openness to
to all the parties, his willingness to defy
(54:03):
the strong
and powerful countries,
and,
and what we have now learned about his
spirituality
have all make him
a a really important role today. I have
in front of me my,
little
version of of Markings Mass, and I I
want to read one part of it because
(54:24):
it it kind of,
sums up the faith as he showed it
in Markings Mass. You bet. Sure.
It it goes like this.
At some moment, I did answer yes.
Remember, he had struggled with his face for
a while. Oh, yes. And from that hour,
(54:46):
I was certain that existence is meaningful
and that therefore in self surrender, and this
is something he got from the, mystics of
fourteenth century and so, had a goal. As
I continued along the way,
I learned step by step, word by word,
that behind every sentence spoken by the hero
of the gospels
(55:07):
stands one man and one man's experience.
To be free, to be able to stand
up and leave everything behind without looking back,
to say yes,
to say yes to life, is at one
at the same time to say yes to
oneself,
yes even to the element in one which
is most unwilling to let itself be transformed
(55:28):
from temptation into strength.
You dare your yes and experience a meaning.
You repeat your yes, and all things acquire
a meaning.
When everything has meaning, how can you live
anything but a yes?
Yes to God,
yes to fate, yes to yourself.
The reality can wound the soul, but has
the power to heal her. For all that
(55:50):
has been, thanks
to all that shall be.
Yes. What an affirmation. Pretty profound. Yeah. Yeah.
Very. You know, I was thinking while we
were just a few minutes ago, is there
anybody in the world today
that has his kind of reputation or is
doing anything close to what he did
that's not in it for some personal
(56:12):
perks?
Another name that comes to mind. There certainly
is not, and,
I'm sure there are some out there, but,
boy, they're not as, out well, I might
try as loud as the other voices are.
I I've been in contact with,
Hammershoel's
biographer, a man named Roger Libsey,
and,
he
(56:33):
kind of saw in Hamer Queld
someone who comes every thousand years or so.
In fact, he talks about Marcus Aurelius, who
was a Roman
kind of philosopher and soldier back in the
second or third century. Jane Goodall just died
recently.
She's probably beyond that list. She's a person
who She,
(56:55):
she was remarkable.
And,
she also
saw what she was doing in terms of
her Christian faith. Yes. And,
and, wow, changed how,
primatology
was
understood
and
changed. And an interesting thing about her is
(57:16):
she didn't even have a college degree,
a a a basic degree. Once she started?
When she started. I mean, she she became
a PhD in that, but,
she she had not gone the regular route
of,
get a BA and then a Yeah. And
and what a passion a lot of research
and came from the field to get the
education. Yeah. And what a perfect way to
(57:38):
I mean, that's, yeah, that's a perfect person
that had has the same qualities, it sounds
like to me. In in many, many ways.
I am glad
you suggested her. I Hooray. Good point.
The there are some people who are involved
in in politics whose motivations are not strictly
(57:58):
the Yeah. The financial and Power and greed.
Power
and all that, but,
they're few and far between.
And what I'm really afraid of is
with more and more of the political violence
that's happening in this country that
that people would decide, I'm just not gonna
rent for office. Well, it's kind of a
valid candidate. Yeah. Alright. Thank you, Robert, for,
(58:21):
again, enlightening us on this important person. We
have a few seconds. I'm gonna inter and
to
Interview. Agree with you, Rick. I'm gonna announce
that KCIW
finally has some merch. You've been asking for
it. We have it. We have new T
shirts.
You can earn $20. You can come in
to, the studio
(58:42):
between two and four on Wednesdays or ask
any KCIW
volunteer who will fix you up with one,
and they're only $20.
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