Taizé

Finally, a post about my experiences in Taizé, with apologies for the delay.

I've been apprehensive about writing this post, mostly for fear of being unable to translate my experiences accurately into words - people at Taizé speak about an ambiguous Taizé "feeling" or "vibe" that's hard to categorize and nearly impossible to replicate back in the real world. But I figured that if I kept putting it off I'd never write it, so here's my best shot. Be forewarned, this one's a bit long.

First, a little background. Taizé is a monastic community that was formed by a Swiss protestant monk named Brother Roger in 1949, when the first seven additional Brothers were committed to the order. Today there are over 100 Brothers, most living in the community of Taizé but some living in small groups abroad. It's an ecumenical community, meaning that there are both Protestant and Catholic monks living there, and apparently they've got some sort of special recognition from the Pope to allow for this arrangement.

Sometime in the 60's, groups of mainly youth started coming to Taizé in increasingly large numbers, and so the Brothers began organizing week-long visits for them; now tens of thousands of people come every year, still mostly youth, but with programs for adults as well. The week I visited, there were around 700 people, but the following week they were expecting 4 to 5 thousand for Easter.

Another interesting factor about the week I chose was that it happened to coincide with the German spring break, so the vast majority of the people there were from Germany; only after learning this did I realize my luck at having met one of the few other native English speakers, a girl from the States, on the bus on my way there.

In exchange for a bunk and three daily meals, plus afternoon tea (!), they request a donation of 7-10 Euros per day, and a couple of hours of volunteer work in the community daily, which I'll touch on in a minute. So really, my week ended up costing about $100 cdn, plus the travel there and back (train, mostly, with a small and phenomenally cheap bus from the nearby city of Macon to Taizé).

Perhaps outlining an average day will help to convey the experience:

First and foremost, the entire day is structured around prayer. At around 8 the bells on the tower start ringing like crazy, summoning everybody to the church, which is a large concrete building onto which several wooden wings have been added, with doors that can open to accomodate larger numbers.

The Church

Likewise, there is a midday prayer that takes place directly before lunch, and an evening prayer that ends the day at 8:30 pm. The prayers generally take between 30-45 minutes, and for me were one of the most meaningful parts of the Taizé experience, in that my day was entirely built around these times of silence and prayer. I would usually try to arrive 15 minutes early, just to sit in the silence (there was no talking allowed!) and reflect. The monks sat in a rectangular strip in the middle of the church with the other people sitting around, and something that really struck me was that everyone was facing the same direction, towards a small altar and a cross and some candles - there was nobody visibly leading the prayer, nobody at the front running the show. Prayers and songs were started by monks with mics, but they did so from their places, such that you could rarely tell who was speaking. 

The prayers were dominated by the singing of simple chants, sometimes with piano accompaniment, which were generally only about 1-2 lines long and repeated again and again, lulling you into a very hypnotic sort of state. There were spoken prayers and some Bible readings as well, interspersed, and it was amazing to note the vast number of languages used: English, German, French, Latin, Polish, Italian, Portugese, etc, etc... it seemed like all of the monks spoke about 5 different languages. But my favorite part of the prayers was the time for silent prayer, usually in about the middle, where the last song lingers off and nothing else starts up, and you see everyone around you start to bow and pray in their own ways. They allotted usually around 5-10 minutes for this, and it was great to have this time - you've got nowhere to go, you might as well pray, right?

Cameras weren't permitted during the prayers, so here's a shot of the church in action, lifted from Google.

The last thing I wanted to touch on regarding the prayers was the Saturday evening prayer, which is a "candle" prayer. Each person was handed a white prayer candle on the way in, unlit, and there was a large candle situated just behind the Brothers. After a couple of songs, Brother Alois (the community's leader), lit his prayer candle from the larger one, and used it to light the candle of a small girl. She in turn walked around lighting the candles of the Brothers and visitors within reach, and each person subsequently lit the candle of the person next to them. From where I was sitting, near the front, it was a mesmerizing spread of little pinpricks of light, all through the church, until everybody's candle was lit. It reminded me of the proverb "A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle," which I've found attributed in some sources to James Keller. I thought the symbolism was beautiful.

After morning prayer was breakfast! It was a simple breakfast, the same every day, a couple of rolls, butter, chocolate sticks (it wasn't until Tuesday that I figured out you're supposed to put the chocolate in the rolls), and tea or hot chocolate. Another remarkable thing about Taizé was that, despite going there without knowing a single person in advance, I didn't spend a single meal alone. I shared some delightful dinners with my roommates, a pair of Germans visiting with a church group, and really great guys. I also shared some with my small group, which I'll talk about in a second. And when I had nobody to sit with I sat down alone, and within minutes was joined by somebody new.

The eating/common area, mostly outdoors, which made for some chilly meals when it was raining.

At 10:00 I went to my volunteer assignment, which ended up being, of all things, a "cook!" When I was signing up I was practically begged - as a "strong-looking man," to choose it, a designation which baffled me until I saw the giant pots and the canoe paddles (I'm not kidding) used to stir them. There were a couple of long-term volunteers, lovely ladies from Switzerland and Poland, who coordinated four guys, consisting of myself, my two German roommates and a third German guy. Our jobs were basically to do the heavy lifting/stirring, so we weren't so much cooks as assistants, but it was a blast to cook lunches for 700+ people, kilograms and kilograms of food. Highlights included chili sin carne, featuring delicious pineapples, and couscous, among other things.

After mid-day prayer and lunch I tended to go to "song practice," which was an opportunity to join a small choir of 20-30 people practicing the four-part harmonies for the chants. And after that was Bible study.

Our Bible study was a large group of at least 60 people, and led by a Portugese Brother named Brother David. He was a very animated, excited, small person, and I was really interested by his utterly holistic take on the Bible passages we examined. When thinking of monastic orders, I tend to get images of very rigid interpretations, but Brother David was extremely eager to look at the passages in different ways and concede that they could have different meanings for different people in different times. I think talking about each of the passages and our ensuing discussions would require another couple of posts.

Talking with Br. David took about 45 mins, after which we split off into predetermined small groups (mine being the one designated English-speaking group, featuring myself, another girl from the States, and a bunch of fun folks from Germany). At first we were a bit tentative, chatting and getting to know one another and going over the questions associated with the reading until it was time for afternoon tea. But by the end of the week we were skipping afternoon tea and eating dinner together, sometimes talking about one of the topics at hand, and other times chatting about other things. In retrospect I couldn't have asked for a nicer group. 

Another fun connection I made was with a girl from Belgium. I stopped her ecstatically on one of the first days because she had a big Canadian flag on the front of her jacket  - she seemed sorry to disappoint me that she wasn't from Canada, but her siblings have both spent time in Canada, hence the jacket. In the end it wasn't a disappointment at all (though I never did find a single other Canadian), and we had a great time time chatting on most of the subsequent days. Hopefully Lauren and I will have the chance to meet up with her in Belgium towards the end of our trip.

I think that pretty much covers it for now; I'll probably have to make a supplementary post with all of the things I forgot. I've really been having a hard time talking about the experience, because it was so much more a feeling than anything I can put my finger on. For the whole week I just had this remarkable sense of inner peace that seemed unshakable, a sort of serenity that I honestly don't think I've ever felt anywhere else. A last interesting thing was that I went there as a Christian, and in that sense it was wonderful to be reminded of God's presence so often in everyday life, and to experience this very unique kind of spirituality that Taizé embodies. But I'd say about 50% of the people I spoke to didn't self-identify as Christians; contrary to what I'd expected, I don't think I met any people who I'd tend to label "hardcore" Christians, but I met many, many people who said they were searching, or curious, or they just loved the atmosphere and weren't sure what they thought. So it ended up being less a place to reinforce beliefs or feelings, and more a place to explore and change and, if you can stomach the cliche, to feel more than you think.

The monastic community of Taizé is on a hilltop. Below the hill on one side is the actual village of Taizé  and on the other side is the village of Ameugny, both of which were fantastic for peaceful early-morning or late-afternoon walks. I'll leave off with some pictures of them, both exceptionally beautiful places. For more info on Taizé you can head to http://www.taize.fr/en, though the wikipedia article has some basic info that's tricky to find on their own website at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiz%C3%A9_Community.

-Brock

Taizé

Ameugny