NEW YORK, April 3 (C-Fam) Two things likely strike anyone walking into the UN Meditation Room for the first time — a welcoming silence and an unwelcome strangeness.
Strangeness would strike any orthodox believer first and hardest. A decided new age feeling fills the tiny room that is oddly shaped, with indirect lighting illuminating an enormous altar in the center. A large and dated abstract painting takes up one wall.
There are no chairs, only benches.
The first UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld, a Swede who died in a mysterious plane crash in Africa, inspired the room. In the UN Oral History Collection, journalist Pauline Frederick says, “He said that ‘this house’ – which he referred to the UN frequently – this house must have one room dedicated to silence.”
The altar is very much the center of the room, six and a half tons of raw iron ore with a polished top; it was a gift of the King of Sweden and a Swedish mining company.
Hammarskjold described the altar as “a meeting of the light, of the sky, and the earth . . . it is the altar to the God of all . . . we want this massive altar to give the impression of something more than temporary . . .”
A hand-out distributed to visitors quotes Hammarskjöld. “But the stone in the middle of the room has more to tell us. We may see it as an altar, empty not because there is no God, not because it is an altar to an unknown god, but because it is dedicated to the God whom man worships under many names and in many forms.
“There is an ancient saying that the sense of a vessel is not in its shell but in the void. So it is with this room. It is for those who come here to fill the void with what they find in their center of stillness.”
It is not entirely surprising the room is little used by UN officials. Tourists come inside, pivot and exit confused and maybe even annoyed because it seems so strange.
Wild rumors circulate about the UN Meditation Room. At least one conspiratorial site says Pope Paul VI participated in some Masonic ceremony in it after his General Assembly talk and before his Mass at Yankee Stadium.
Pope Benedict prayed outside the Meditation Room in 2008 for the victims of the Baghdad bombing memorialized by a flag draped on the wall outside the Meditation room.
The UN is the site of quite a bit of religious and anti-religious fervor. Billionaire Ted Turner once gave a speech in the UN denouncing his childhood Christianity. He received a thunderous standing ovation.
Faithful Christians do not feel entirely welcome inside the UN. European delegates and UN bureaucrats frequently denounce the influence of faith on UN proceedings.
Catholics have walked the halls sprinkling holy water; others have secretly distributed Miraculous Medals throughout the building. One ecumenical group invited a priest to lead them in the prayers of exorcism prior to an important UN conference.
And one very orthodox New York priest, a frequent guest on EWTN and author of numerous books, once told this writer that he went secretly inside the UN Meditation Room years ago and blessed the stone altar.
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