This article explores the phenomenon of displacement in the context of the post-secular age and examines it through the lens of hospitality as modelled in the Benedictine tradition and its ‘receiving’ of the ‘Other’/ the ‘Stranger as Christ, the one who is the stranger. 

This article presents a variety of contexts where I argue displacement is present and includes an analysis of current immigration policies and procedures in Ireland. 

Habermas proposed the concept of “post-secularism”, to address “the continued existence of religious communities in a continually secularizing environment.” In this new context, Habermas called for mutuality between religion and the secular that redressed the classical assumption in modern secularism of the subordination of religion to the authority of secular reason. He claimed however that religion has to be “translated” by neutralizing its general “dangerous” components beforehand in order to contribute to the secular sphere and be compatible with secular liberal principles. He writes:

Religious consciousness must, first, come to terms with the cognitive dissonance of encountering other denominations and religions. It must, second, adapt to the authority of the sciences which hold the societal monopoly of secular knowledge. It must, last, agree to the premises of a constitutional state grounded in a profane morality

However, here the authority of religion seems to be subordinated to that of the state in the name of complementarity.  I would concur with Dermot Lane when he warns, that ‘it would be naïve to think that Habermas is ‘a new apostle’ intent on promoting the interests of religion or Christianity.  Instead, Lane suggests that Habermas uses religion, 

[ … ] in the service of the needs of secular reason, especially in the area of discourse ethics and the challenge this faces in terms of providing motivation for global solidarity and the holding together of community. 

Nonetheless Habermas directives for a religious consciousness provides a useful framework to highlight the relevant attributes of Hospitality as depicted in The Rule of Benedict which I would argue, create a receptive ground for the alterity of cognitive dissonance, the authority of the sciences and the profane morality of the constitutional state. The instruction in RB Ch53 , ‘On the Reception of Guests’ that ‘all guests’ who arrive should be ‘received as if they were Christ’ evokes the image of Christ in Matthew 25:35, as ‘the outsider’, to reinforce the importance of administering hospitality, but also to provide guidance on how guests should be received:

 

Let all guests that come be received as Christ himself, for He will say, ‘I was a stranger and you took me in. (53:1)

The presentation of hospitality in Ch 53, is modelled on the paradigm of the ‘Last Supper’. Here the emphasis is put on the reception of the other as other. By his auto-identification, with the symbolic elements of the Passover meal, Jesus the host, becomes the bread for the estranged and ending the celebration at the third cup of wine, his blood becomes the cup of redemption. His invitation to his guests, to ‘do this in memory of me’, becomes a perennial invitation for humanity to assume the double role of guest and host for one another. Thus, the pattern of the guest-host-guest cycle of transformation set up that which facilitated them to identify the radical otherness of the risen Christ in themselves and the other. 

 

The following section aims at making the theoretical frameworks and content more immediate and real. It identifies key insights in terms of hospitality and displacement I have gained through the reflective research, privileged encounters and peer mentoring of recent years.

Migrating across various institutional contexts, including family, educational, religious, clinical, I have always been drawn to the potential and advocacy of inter disciplinary approaches and dialogic thinking. An exclusive institutional and cultural mindset which I had experienced at times in each of these settings left me feeling claustrophobic and inhibited. Ironically these same environments ironically fuelled in me an intense desire for the ‘more than’ the sum of the parts of the whole and subsequent curiosity of what we all might be missing. Although it had a degree of wisdom in its cautioning, ‘grass is always greener’, was a rhetoric, which was especially to my younger spirit, an empty resounding gong which belonged to the archive of social control mechanisms and exclusive stance of the given paranoiac system.

Twenty years ago, I spent three years in monastic life as a novice. This experience set up inside me a yearning to provide a space where the rhythms of nature manifest in the body, mind and soul of the person was allowed to flourish. Here community through Koinonia, Ascetike, Theoria (Community, Contemplation and Work) solitude, shared meals, prayer liturgical life created a vortex which challenged insular mindset and restrictive procedure and had an obligation to provide a holding for that. Here, one could be received into their identity and purpose and connection with the source of their being and feel the impulse to reach out to the other in service through work in common and table communion. Eventually for me personally this call to service led back to life and pastoral outreach outside the cloister. Like most communal settings this one was challenged through the limitations of human competitive instinct and defences against the unconditional love at the heart of every human being and configuration of human being. Nonetheless in its vision and charism the forum facilitated a space which received the spirit of truth and love to a relatively significant degree. 

Ten years later having worked in addiction treatment and as a psychosynthesis psychotherapist which met my sense of urgency to find a psychology that married the psychological and spiritual, I embarked on an epic journey of PHD research. The research question looked at the practice of hospitality in the Benedictine tradition as a model for developing the spiritual consciousness of the post-secular age?

I had over the years taken moments in the year to go apart and refuel, refocus in monastic settings. Here I had encountered others on a similar mission in these monastic contexts participating in liturgies, meals and routine of the monastic life. The guest profile tended to be those on the so-called margins of church life but who recognised in these experiences a connecting device to the original baptismal call. What was that device? Typically, it was the desire to be welcomed and received as they are, who they are, how they are in this bigger context. They were mirrored not dimly as in a hall of mirrors but as in a vortex that holds one beyond their social role identifications to a ‘more than’ of inner spirit that is both edifying and sustainable. This experience provided food that they could bring away into their working lives and relationships beyond the ‘welcome’.

Through this period of research and often soul rending reflection, I had been working in the diocese of Dublin as a Pastoral Worker. I found myself constantly asking how does the church reach out to those who are not entering the refuge of the sanctuary be it for sacramental or rites of passage? How as Christians do we take responsibility for our call to bring out the good news to those on the famous margins and in any case who were they anymore, dis-affected, abandoned behind the doors in depression, elderly no longer functioning in their role as ‘mass attender’?  When a missionary group running a mission in the parish for two weeks outlined the focus they were going to have, I was very captivated by a brief which reached out into the crevices of parish life which were not visible on the parish daily agenda brief especially those who were less obviously connected like the commuters, households, schools, workplaces. What shape could hospitality the most primal exhortation of the Christian experience – Welcoming the Stranger as Christ, take in this milieu. Where was Christ?

This seemed an expression of hospitality outreach on behalf of the church, in a more vibrant, risqué fashion holding the possibility of re-engagement side by side with that of dis-engagement and rejection. In preparation for this venture the parish leadership was called upon to reach out into the recesses of the dis-engaged and to restoke the fire of leadership and ministry in the community.  Those who seemed to have receded to individual prayer/ social group expressions of the desire for spiritual food were included on the daily parish schedule and seemed to find their place and voice in the parish common purpose over that fortnight. This fragmentation of communal identification and displacement in the collective consciousness seemed to have been reinforced beneath the monopoly of parish financial and building agendas which had subsided over the mission process. The scaffolding for the mission – house visitation teams, hospitality, school ministry, shop front pastoral outreach and prayer ministry, commuter outreach presented as a breath of fresh air. This was a celebration of Pentecost empowerment that emphasised the indispensable role of grace i.e. welcoming the otherness of the divine into the strivings, longings and vision building of human effort. In the experience of the parish mission was a dynamic manifestation of my Phd research findings i.e. Community, Contemplation, Work/Service in action.

Lynch writes in the context of opening the consciousness of the late 20th century church establishment to its community birth mark: 

The Jerusalem community was very visible and impacted on the culture of its day. This type of community was known as koinonia … the solidarity of common life and service of those called by God. The corporate nature of the Gospel finds its expression in the coming together of this early community. [As] one unit and not just a collection of individuals. [They] had solidarity with each other as members of one body with Christ as head and empowered by the Holy Spirit.

 

Following on from my work in diocesan ministry, as part of my role as a Psychotherapist in a private mental health company, one of my briefings was to go onto the Social Media corporate site as a Wellness Coach for individuals and Teams. It seemed a ‘beam me up Scottie’ moment in time and I was certainly getting to reach out to multi-universe with diversity of culture, life experience, educational background, age group. The key presenting issues was anxiety not simply as a result of the content that was being moderated, or the robotic way they had to clock on and off using ‘wellbeing time’ to go to the toilet, or the over demanding targets which depended on whether their assessment of what was horrific and removable was in line with the latest policy document,  but as a result of the experiences many had been through of war torn homelands and terrorism and finding themselves displaced. 

The symptoms of stress and anxiety indeed required immediate attention in terms of self-regulation and resilience training. However, these were very often rooted in a deeper sense of disconnection from one’s sense of meaning, purpose and place of value in the work environment, family and society in general. Furthermore, for the Irish minority that were working in this multi global satellite district of Dublin, there was a similar presenting issue anxiety and similar issues around accommodation, finding a home. Sharing rental rooms with strangers was becoming a luxury which called to mind Maria Antoinette’s declaration of cake for the masses. The question presented itself to me as a ‘wellbeing coach’, were these case profiles presenting a new categorization of Irish homeless i.e. those who are displaced from their right belonging, safety and a home shelter.

 

What seemed to bring consolation, life and energy to these social media corporate sites was the experience of community, the refectory style dining facilities, abundance of food, snack kitchen on each floor in the more fortunate corporate sites and team building exercises. Those who had a strong cultural affiliation identification with their traditions and rootedness in a faith practice stood out as most resilient. This variable appeared to override the pressures felt at an individual level and any experience of anomie. 

 

This microcosmic context reflected the greater whirlwind that was created in the Irish social and political forum where basic human needs provision, let alone the right to have life to the full, is called into compromise.  Questions gape open mouthed – Who are the migrants* of 2020 – displaced, refugees, homeless, dis-enfranchised? The ambiguity becomes even more pronounced when we examine the process of allocation of social housing facilities and who should get right of place on the housing list? In September 2019 with 10,000 people being declared homeless 50 and many thousands more in unstable and precarious housing situations, the right to housing in Ireland is reduced to a remote privilege of those who can afford it. In this human crisis, there is further discrimination housing agencies have pointed to – migrants being over-represented in the rental market and therefore more at risk of housing instability/ homelessness in the current housing crisis.

Research from the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights found Ireland to be one of three countries with the worst records in the EU of racism based on skin colour.  

However, confronted with the cold face of realism we need to question – is re-inforcing anti-racist policies going to be enough to stem the tide of resentment when the primal scream for food and shelter is being stoked by rationed housing and economic provision for all those individuals and families nationwide who are fighting for survival. In such a malaise, respect and welcome of the other becomes a luxury for those who can afford it. Furthermore, approaches of government to meet the refugee crisis that focus on creating provision facilities on remote spaces like Achill Island seem to be based on a policy of separation rather than inclusion and a splitting off mentality where what we don’t see won’t affect us. This is simply creating a deeper divide of us and them where the other is seen as something to be dealt with as other and one step removed. Direct provision centres were established in late 1999 and run under a public procurement process. This has resulted in inconsistencies and inadequacies in the quality of accommodation, overcrowding, sudden closures and severe upheaval for the individuals and families, institutionalisation and physical and mental health problems. 

 

So how do we as a nation welcome in a conscious and ethical manner those who come knocking on our borders? Derrida spoke about the importance of hostipitality. 

In order to convey the aporia (meaning “no way out,” something that does not allow passage) and ‘impossible’ demands of hospitality, Derrida coined the word, ‘Hostipitality’, which joined hostility and hospitality into one word. Derrida observes that there is always a little hostility in all hosting and hospitality:

If I say ‘Welcome’, I am not renouncing my mastery, something that becomes transparent in people whose hospitality is a way of showing off how much they own or who make their guests uncomfortable and afraid to touch a thing.

When considering the ethical dimension in terms of the ‘otherness’ in hospitality, Derrida differentiates between the ‘law of unlimited hospitality’ which ‘gives of one’s home and oneself’, without compensation or conditions, and the ‘laws of hospitality’: those ‘rights and duties that are always conditioned and conditional’, that have been defined historically and philosophically “across the family, civil society, and the State.”

In order to realise our welcome of the ‘stranger’ and to withstand the paranoic pull into exclusive attitudes and behaviors in the face of scarcity, I would argue that we all need and especially the young, to know what our own roots are, language, culture, identity. In a country which is progressively dis-associating /displacing itself from its inheritance as a nation i.e. primary anchors in identity at the level of religion, language, culture, how can Ireland authentically welcome the stranger? 

 

Since the Maastricht agreement 1992, Ireland has been at the behest of the global economic agenda which is at the root of the vast majority of cases of emigration and displacement. 

Satellite districts like the Dublin docklands show accelerated economic growth levels in past years that look edifying from the outside but surely this benefit is exclusive to the global recruitment agencies and the C suite of those multi-national corporate. Has Irish politics got a framework to dialogue with this global machine, if it did would it be free to? On the one hand under the appropriate surveillance of governmental employment ethical standard and economic guidelines, one could argue that these multi-national corporate sites are a microcosm of what could be possible in terms of a prolific unity in the diversity. On the other however, in the present economic and social climate and housing crisis, they have the potential to become conglomerate of mindless soup of compliancy of the diverse collective.

 

Lynch wrote in the late 90’s that:

The modern-day attitudes of liberation and enlightenment have freed us from the bonds of faith, Church, family institution and all kinds of so-called oppression; yet we are left alone and lonely. Sciences which were to have unlocked the realm of nature have given us the power to destroy it. … We do not seem to have learned the lesson that together we get it together.

Over twenty years on, in the national constitutions worldwide, the most vulnerable living human form has been displaced from its natural right to be received and welcomed into the human community, essentially to exist on this planet. The exclusive nature of this ruling reflects ultimately the social, economic and political policy making of separation and not inclusion. We seem to see the ludicrous of that relativistic thinking now as we witness the annihilation of entire species of animal and plant form due to the economic policies of the consumerist marketplace.

 

Modernity and Post-modernity have tried to obliterate the culture of community, but they cannot erase it from our memory because at the end of the day the calling to unity and community is the domain of the [Divine]. It is a call to integration and belonging to [the Divine] and each other. 

 

The final stages of this article have been written in the shadow of the rising tide of Corona Virus  19. This pandemic has already left a devastation at all levels of human interconnection not least of all in terms of building up an immune system to each other of mind and hearts which is evident from empty supermarket shelves and Intubation procedure which excludes the right to the last rights, protective solutions in the hospitals being stolen. On another level one could ask I would argue – Is this disease also a symbolic manifestation of the ongoing global pandemic of psychological, social and economic isolation and the consequent rising death toll of the human population due to mental, physical, emotional spiritual displacement? On the other hand, the window of reaching out to the vulnerable is opening as pre-occupation with routine and thereby often unconscious maintaining systems of security and leisure, is by default reducing dramatically.  As well as the appropriate hygiene procedures and social distancing directives of the World Health Organisation, there is also a call some are hearing to missionary outreach in the form of being of service to ageing neighbours and other vulnerable groups. Here community identification is not community policing which some illicit videos taken from public transport conduct and posted on YouTube suggests. 

In this groundswell of resurrection for the human spirit, is there a clarion call to the echelons of the Church leadership as it moves into the decade that will welcome the paschal mystery celebrations of 2033? In this context it is important, I would argue, to ask what other implications does shutting down Sunday Mass gatherings have logistically, other than, closing the doors on the day in question, installing webcam and empty collection baskets. What currently marks the boundary of the contemporary parish corporate identification? What is the contemporary understanding of the diaconate? Pope Francis has called on the clergy to be strong and brave and reach out to the suffering population but where is the mandate of the Christian call to mission and evangelisation that compels all Christians to be a dynamic healing sacrament i.e. an embodiment of the reality of their baptism and confirmation in the radical spirit of Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ the Nazarene! How does this mandate translate in the pandemic of Covid 19?

 A paschal prophet of our times wrote:

Easter is a shout of victory! No one can extinguish that life that Christ resurrected. Not even death and hatred against Him and against His Church will be able to overcome it. He is the victor! Just as He will flourish in an Easter of unending resurrection, so it is necessary to also accompany Him in Lent, in a Holy Week that is cross, sacrifice, martyrdom… Happy are those who do not become offended by their cross!

 

In conclusion, I would like to invite the faithful to resound once again with confidence and pride the Christian mandate which points to the reality that all of life, human, animal, plant is a body with irreducible parts of the whole. The heart of that Body is the Spirit which is love and truth. When parts get infected by inauthenticity, greed grounded in the fear of scarcity, there is a displacement of the members from the place of life. Global interaction is good, and the dialogue of cultures and mindsets is dynamic, vibrant and life giving. This is evident from multi-cultural corporate experiences, reflected in our diversity of local range of food and beverage venues, diversity of mindset/ mind potential that populates the educational forums of all age range and content.  However, I would suggest that the dialogue must be grounded in authentic intention. Grounded in a vision that is sustainable and value oriented.  Anti-racist, pro-life, eco-revolution are shallow reverberations taking in isolation, without a foundation in the heart’s intention and function i.e. the wellbeing and life to the full of ALL

This does call for a relinquishing of the ‘deeds’ to entitlement to abundant life for one or the few when the many are grasping an existence out of scarcity. Be this Nation, people, families, individuals. This is not a call to the displacement of inherited rights, this is re-connecting us to our basic human right which is our status as co-responsible members of planetary life, living in dynamic harmony with all forms of life on this planet and beyond.

 

A prayer from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, anticipates the fulfilment of this process and the trajectory of spiritual consciousness in this post-secular age to gradually shed the layers of exclusivity in the expansion of human consciousness in order to embrace the unity in its diversity grounded in the ultimate source of Universal Life:

May the time come when humanity [sic], having been awakened to a sense of the close bond linking all the movements of this world in the single, all-embracing work of the Incarnation, shall be unable to give themselves to any one of their tasks without illuminating it with the clear vision that their work — however elementary it may be – is received and put to good use by a Center of the universe. When that time comes to pass, there will be little to separate life in the cloister from the life of the world.