The Train Temple

After a long day of classes and work, I ran to get on the hot, crowded, and sometimes smelly uptown 1 train. Being squished into passengers by other riders attempting to get on the train, I did not have much room to even reach for my cell phone and earphones to listen to music. As a result, I ended up looking around the packed cart. A man in a business suit hovering a book over a short woman with her grocery cart, a woman sitting down attempting to control her screaming child, and a homeless man who had just walked in from the adjacent cart, squeezing by to ask for spare change to buy himself a meal for the night. After the train cart emptied itself a bit, I was able to move around and make myself comfortable enough to hold the pole and balance myself. As I faced the pole I was holding onto, I looked up and saw the following image:

Spotted on the 1 train

I started being on the lookout for more trains with this phrase, thinking it was in vain. Turns out it was not in vain, as in another instance I was presented with this:

Spotted on the N train

The fact that someone decided to write on with white-out or scratch on the phrase “pray” on its own or accompanied by the word “please” on this train was as if he/she transformed this gritty, smelly moving vehicle into a mobile temple.

And that person was not wrong. The MTA trains, a place where all types of commuters ride, regardless of race, ethnicity, age, religion-- it is the New York temple. It is where we spend a portion of our lives commuting, and in that commute many things occur. We remember significant life events, and get excited to go on a date. We cry over the death of a loved one or the breakup of a significant other as we are on our way to a friend’s place to indulge in Netflix and tubs of ice cream. We get upset because we are getting late to work because of this omnipotent system that somehow controls our time.

This resonates to Henry Ward Beecher’s idea of beauty in everything we see. Although the train is not seen as an object that is aesthetically pleasing to the eye, it is a place where beauty still exists, as there is still resonance towards the train being a reflection of God. Not only is the train a place where one can practice religion, but the train and its space shares similarities with religious houses of prayers. The idea of how much power the MTA has on its riders also resonates with the idea of religion, as the subway system has a lot of influence on riders even outside the train. Even outside a house of prayer, the effect of religion still does not go away from the believer. The train’s beauty is the fact that it can be a place where many ideas are thought and spread--it is the birth of brilliant concepts, of happiness and anger. These ideas can be be communicated in a grand scale to the public through this mass transit system. Certain parts of its scriptures may not sit well with the believer, and certain passages of its holy book may make some happy in joy, and others cry in anger or sorrow. Both “the train temple” and a regular house of prayer evokes a mix of feelings to its riders/believers. The array of feelings are endless, like the feelings one feels in a house of prayer, and just like the chances of a person of a certain ethnic group, sexual orientation, or religion getting on the train are endless. But at the end of the day, riding the subway is a lifestyle--just like following a certain religion.

The grittiness of the subway also makes these emotions as raw as the vehicle itself. It's feelings felt inside and outside of the train are all authentic and part of the identity of a person--just like how the grittiness that exists on the train is part of the train’s identity. The person’s choice to write the phrase “pray” on a train might have demonstrated their will to leave their mark on the train. Maybe they were thirsty for attention. Perhaps they actually do believe people should pray more often. Beecher would still agree with any of the reasons listed above, because he/she creates a word that might lift someone “up,” and spread the word and beauty of God, through the word “pray,” in this space deemed ugly and smelly.  

But the meaning what prayer means in a place where people are of all different types of places and religions, within a space where many of those different types of people enter the space called the MTA 1 train, can only demonstrate how diverse and authentic everyone’s thoughts and interpretations are--which is what America embraces so much. All in all, this word placed in the New York metropolitan subway is not only a reflection of the different array of people who ride the train daily in a city considered a melting pot, but also a reflection of America. Next time you ride the MTA, do not think of it as a mere vehicle that physically transports you, but able to mentally transport you as well.