Talitha writes:
Great thanks to the Spiritual Activists committee! Betsy King, Eloise Gilland, Barbara Peters and Jean Gregory worked together to bring the community an experience of Taizé prayer last Wednesday (3/30). It was a quiet, reverent, and peaceful time full of meditative singing and long silence. Many of us found our hearts were opened by the simple time of prayer. Many also participated in the “wilderness journey” set up around the sanctuary, leaving their mark in the sand of our Godly Play “desert box,” or adding a leaf to a dry branch, or lighting a candle in the darkness. In all these ways and through spoken and silent prayer, we had a time of reflection and celebration.
The Taizé community in France (from which this prayer style originated) has found it to be a powerful way of bringing people together across boundaries of nation, language, culture, and even denomination. (More here: http://www.taize.fr/en_article3148.html) Brother Roger, Taizé’s founder, was a great bridge between the Catholic and Protestant churches. He received Catholic mass daily, and even received it from the pope, yet remained Protestant and never converted to Catholicism. The brothers at Taizé are a unique mix from the Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox churches. By singing simple songs in many languages, people discover that they are able to pray with people of other nations. People who cannot share a conversation can share a deep spiritual connection, and can pray together this way. Taizé has a rich history of hospitality, from war refugees in 1940 to the thousands of young people who now come on pilgrimage each week, many of them non-Christian, seeking a spiritual experience.
I wonder how the meditative style of Taizé prayer can help us bring people together. I wonder whether it will help us build any bridges, or connect what has been torn apart. I wonder how we can best welcome a stranger, a seeker.