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The first thing that strikes you as you roll into Taizé is that it is very much the rural idyll that you want it to be. The second thing is that this splendid peace is regularly disrupted by up to 7,000 young people at any one time.
This dichotomy represents what is the true essence of Taizé — a place where thousands flock in order to find time to reflect and reconcile their lives and relationships.
Taizé was ‘founded’ by Brother Roger — the prototype of a handful of monks, characterised by their habits, white as the driven snow — in August 1940 to create a community “where kindness of heart would be lived out very concretely, and where love would be at the heart of everything.” For me, and this is a personal account, Taizé represents the place to go when you are in search of spiritual refreshment, a cleansing of the mind and a chance to change the way you think about your relationship with God — without trivialising it, the religious equivalent of a week at a health farm, peace and quiet thrown in.
Taizé is first and foremost a community, where the look on every face is one of “what brings me here?” I suppose, even though I did not realise it then, it is because we are all pilgrims in one way or another and we all need to find our purpose in life. Taizé is one of the paths to that which we are all striving to find.
So why does a person feel a need to go to Taizé? I wanted to experience a faith that is holistic and natural, inspirational yet refreshingly simple and uncomplicated. I wanted a space to think, but more importantly to listen to what God was saying to me. To paraphrase ‘ Desiderata’, in the noisy confusion of our university lives, we all need a space to be ourselves and work out who we are.
For me, Taizé is just one more step down the, not as yet, beaten track — and at the end of it a brighter horizon than before awaits, one which doesn’t dwell on the ‘what might have been’ or the ‘ maybe I should have done this’. For my part, it accepted all that had gone before and encouraged me to move on.
The Church of Reconciliation — the beacon in the midst of the Taizé landscape — hosts the thrice daily time of prayer. These times, ultimately, were my reason for being at Taizé. There is a certain composure and peace in the dull-lit surroundings of that church, with its plethora of candles randomly arranged on odd- shaped shelving. The sound of the brothers in song provides the mainstay of the ‘enjoyment’, but it is the accompanying people and quiet, yet sharply spiritual atmosphere that really makes it the joy it is.
What prayer at Taizé taught me was that true prayer demands that we be more passive than active, it requires us to be silent, rather than to speak, to adore rather than study, to concentrate rather than rush about, to have faith rather than reason.
The power to listen and evoke Christ through and within you is what makes that silence a truly remarkable thing. For those of you who know me, you might be surprised to read how much I enjoyed it.
And I have never quite enjoyed that thing called ‘prayer’ so much — maybe it was something to do with the ease and languid nature to which one could devote time and patience and so find something deeply unique in those moments — whatever it was, even now I picture those times when I reopened my eyes to see the flicker of the flames beneath the scarlet curtains as something truly of God and of his people who surrounded me.
Away from prayer, there were times of both work and discussion. The former contributes to your sense of achievement and purpose, allowing you a chance to combine strength of body with that of mind, whilst the latter is a chance to share with other people who you had never met before, and in so sharing to feel a greater sense of community. During my time at Taizé, those people were my brothers and sisters and to have shared those experiences is a fortune I will never retire from.
Whilst there, I heard of one girl who came to ‘serve’ and stayed six months. There are countless stories similar to that and there is no logical reasoning for why people do that. But it doesn’t matter — Taizé invokes all your feelings, your thoughts, your emotions, your entire existence whilst you are there, and beyond.
My journey is different to those, but like them it is not easy. Yet when the path splits, when I am forced to make a decision, I am able to reach inside myself and call on the serenity I found at Taizé. And when that journey is disturbed, I struggle, like us all, to find a better way to live, a way wholly fulfilling and meaningful, so that I can enter a time of peace and calm, where my footsteps, like all our prints in the sand, can make the starkest impressions. Where our paths fall not at the wayside, but stand solid and well trodden.
And what of the brothers? Why do people devote their lives to Taizé and the young people who come, in their thousands, to it each week? I guess that is the true power of vocation, the true spirited gift of calling that God gives us. I was, and still am, in awe of people like them.
The search for my vocation will go on until I make my difference and Taizé helped me to clear away some of the confusion that gets in the way. It taught me to forgive by learning to love and to entrust myself to God by living that enigma we call faith.
I learnt some important lessons there and none so more than this: we are called to live good lives, and what better than to live out an existence that is good, uncomplicated and simple, that evokes the very best of the word of God. So how do we do this? My advice, if you can call it that, is this: live your life, be a beacon to others and be humble; live simply, do not try consciously to achieve anything; be still, be at peace with yourself and know that God is in you.
We are each blessed by our individual gifts and we are able to shape and influence the things around us. In doing so, we embrace the communion of brotherhood as one and we are never alone if we belong to this communion.
My experience at Taizé taught me that I am no better than my brother if, on my individual journey, I go one way and arrive before him. Nor am I any worse, because the communion of Christ is such that one day we shall arrive and the paths we have travelled to get there will make us what we are today and we should never be ashamed of that. Rather we should be thankful that we have arrived, battered perhaps, but not broken, tired but not apathetic, knocked down but never beaten.
What I realised, eventually, sitting in the Church of Reconciliation on that last evening, is how important my faith was and is to me. I know that sounds obvious, but such a simple honesty still speaks volumes to me.
And how would I sum up Taizé if I had to? Simply, that people have come from every corner of the world for some peace and reflection, maybe because of a particular event, or perhaps just because they arrived here one overcast Monday morning. And there they find the time to reflect on their lives, their friendships, their futures, their existence, and they come to learn from each other, those who have been before and those who haven’t and whether or not it profoundly changes their lives, it still offers that opportunity for stillness and calm in their souls — their ‘inner lives’.
There is no other place on earth that can provide the tranquillity and yet awesome power that Taizé does and all of this through its most potent and poignant theme — that of silence, that which allows God to talk to us and for us to listen.
And what would the dictionary entry for Taizé look like? Well, T. S. Eliot once said “What life have you if you have not life together? There is no life that is not in community. And no community not lived in praise of God.”
The meaning of life, the essence that is Taizé.
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Last modified: 25th November 2005