Father Behrens is a monk at Holy Spirit Monastery in Georgia, he writes beautifully of our struggles in the world, with great acuity.This article is about being 'shoved and pushed' in our faith, to make room for the whole world. With all the political , economic, and religious struggles today I think a lot of us are feeling pushed. We react with anger, anxiety, maybe we push back. But here is gentle prod,to look at our lives and the changes, through a different paradigm.  


The A Train

Being Pushed !

No one I know of likes being pushed out of his or her way. I have been on long lines many times during my life – we probably all have –when tensions rise when there is an unwelcome shove. I have seen some explosive results from one person shoving another. A flash point seems to be ignited when we are forcibly bumped out of our hard-won way in life, be it on a ticket line, a grocery store line or a waiting area in a packed restaurant. On an individual basis, I suppose there is not much we can do to shield ourselves from an intrusive and rude nudge from a stranger.

Groups are another matter. Power is more easily accessed and harnessed by a group so as to wall off an unwelcome force that wants to incite a shift. There are laws, walls, codes of behavior, definitions of the acceptable and the like.

Recently, one of the monks mentioned that he had read an article on the death of religious orders.If I understood him correctly, the article couches the demise in terms of the larger shifts in religious sensibilities that are blowing winds of change all over the world. The monk said that the article really shook him up. The other monks who were present when he said that responded as best they could to him. Some agreed with the article and added even more as to why religious orders – and the institutional church as we know it – are in trouble. Big trouble. Basically, the responses took two directions. One called for the need for the world at large to shape up and embrace the dangerously neglected teachings of the church. The other response was one that soberly suggested that the church should listen to the world and trust in the rough road that lies ahead. 
    
I am in the second camp. I think God likes to push. 
    
For many centuries, the church created and enjoyed a special insulation from the unwelcome pressure to move ahead. Walls of all sorts were erected, keeping out the aggressively perceived Other and keeping in, to a large extent, a blindly obedient or oblivious faithful. There were always those who seemed to hear a different drummer liked it. Unfortunately, the drum was out of sync with the officially sanctioned symphony. So there were declarations of heresy, condemnations, silencing and the like. Yet the sound of that drum is as persistent as the weather. And there are those who yet hear it and wonder about its difference and the nature of its call. 

Have you ever ridden a subway in New York City and looked about you? Maybe the A Train? Any ride to anywhere offers areal insight into the “push” of these times. There may well be as many cultures and religious persuasions as there are seats and standing room. And that may well be just scratching the surface. Human differences and the need to learn from them and ride with them areeasily seen on a ride on a Manhattan subway.

One might wish that everyone be Catholic or at least Christian or straight or gay or white or black or legally married or whatever. If you think about it too long, you may feel that “push” that is not too comfy. For the situation forces a rethinking and even re-being of all of our cherished notionsof the good, the true and the beautiful and the “worth saving.” 

Admittedly not everyone who is along for the ride will think along those lines. Maybe he or she walled out thinking a long time ago. Some folks are like that. But maybe your gaze will meet that of another, one who is looking about in wonder and fascination at the faces in the car,each one being a living revelation of the Divine. Eating hot dogs or an enchilada, with a pierced tongue and maybe a wild tattoo or two. It is all moving beneath the greatest city on earth, and high above, moving below the stars and the place called Paradise, that heavenly home to where we all hope to arrive. 
    
It is all unfolding and moving along. And it is all being pushed,in no different a way than the guy wearing a turban next to you may nudge you to move your derriere to make room for him on the seat. 
    
Do so with faith. The time has come for us all to trust in the movement of God’s Spirit as our world grows smaller and we need to learn how to make room for everybody, how to clothe and feed everybody,how to make of this world a home – for everybody. We may feel as if we are losing the comforts of our seats, for the ride is increasingly more crowded, the commuters more anxious, eager to get home.

Not long ago I saw one of the monks trying to understand religious pluralism by the careful reading of a book. Which is fine. I would only suggest,were he to ask, that he take the book with him on the A Train, and be patient with the nudges he is bound to feel. I recently came across a line from a poet – it may have been Maya Angelou – and she wrote something like “God is the only one who got me here and he is the only one getting me home.”

I like that line. It is good to ponder while with all those people, on the A Train, heading home. 
 
-- James Stephen Behrens, O.C.S.O. 
Monastery of the Holy Spirit