A CHALLENGING SCENE

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APOLOGY. Why no blog posts the past two weeks? Two weekends ago I was delightfully busy giving a day of reflection to our Benedictine Oblates, then celebrating a mass and a reconciliation service for high school senior retreatants, and, on Sunday attending a memorial service for a former student.  Then last weekend I spent traveling back and forth to Pittsburgh to celebrate a family wedding. The problem with the blog is that I can't find a way to simply paste into it a Word document. Otherwise I would have shared with you a couple of homilies. Oh well... Anyway, it's nice to be back. 

THE CHALLENGING SCENE

Just this morning, after finishing breakfast, I walked into the school's reception area to find it crowded with students. The members of our rowing (crew) team were waiting for the bus that would take them, they told me, to Lawrenceville for a rowing match. Maybe even a regatta, I didn't ask. More about this scene later.

I'd been planning to reflect in today's post on the idea of unity that has filled the mass lectionary this week, especially the excerpts from Ephesians. It's abundantly clear that any kind of enmity and division is contrary to God's plan for humanity. It is also clear to all of us that today's world is shattered into splinters by divisions of every kind, led by the very leaders whose noble calling used to be to offer their country a vision of unity and harmony and peace.

Okay, so that was what I was thinking about this morning as I stepped through the door from the monastery into the lobby. As I jostled my way through the throng of rowers, I started to think of what rowers aim at. They call it "swing." It's the state (seldom achieved, I hear) when every rower is working in perfect coordination with everyone else in the boat. Each individual leaves behind on the dock his own worries and concerns in order to concentrate completely on being one with the rest of "the boat." I've read that when that happens, the boat takes on a whole new feeling, and begins flying across the water. The rowers are able to ignore pain and fatigue, lifted along by the "swing" that they're sharing, something much larger than any single person, larger, in fact, than the sum of their efforts and abilities. 

I believe that "swing" is what our Lord was praying for for the church and for the world. I've experienced it a few times -- in my family, in the monastery, maybe even in the classroom.

Unfortunately, I've seen the opposite of swing in our city, our country, and our international scene.

He was different from me, so I KO'd him.

Someone has convinced us to stop aiming at productive harmony and cooperation in favor of competition, where the most important thing is to come out on top. You can write the rest of that description yourself.

As Christians we can respond to the challenge posed by all the divisions and discord in our world first by praying to this Lord who told us that that we are all brothers and sisters, children of the same God. Second, if we can't make much of a direct impact on our government's policies, we can certainly take responsibility for our own heart and work to fight against discord and disunity in our own family, our workplace, our own worldview. Third, to the extend that it makes sense, we can make ourselves heard by voting for candidates who seem less prone to fomenting bigotry and egoism of all kinds.

I was encouraged by the sight of our crew members in the lobby -- a typical St. Benedict's group: Kids from Sri Lanka and South America, African Americans and European Americans, all of them looking forward to the challenge of working together as one unit to make their boat fly over the water, and hoping for "swing" that will let them share the joy of crossing the finish line together.

I hope to hold onto that image for as long as I can.