Blog #3: Reflections from Taizé, Part One

Hello! After a long journey I arrived to Taizé five days ago, and I’m so grateful to be here. I mean it when I say the people here are wonderful, the music is beautiful, and the spirit of this place is very special. My posts from Taizé will be a bit shorter than those before, as I take time to share a few simple reflections and observations while also being present in the life of the community here. If you’re reading this and are not familiar with Taizé, I invite you to read a bit about the community here and about their practice of meditative singing here for more context.

Despite coming alone and only having been here once before it has been both surprising and comforting to feel very much at home here. As I speak to other young people who are here visiting, I have found this experience is far from unique, with many remarking of a profound sense of community and belonging despite the remarkable the differences and diversity of folks here. For reference, it is a slightly smaller week than summer average, with roughly 1,200 visitors here for the week, mostly young people but also a few families and older adults from many different countries and continents.

The pastoral setting of wide rolling hills dotted with small villages also brings a sense of physical rootedness in this place, as the cycles of the sun, stars, and weather play a tangible and comforting role throughout the days here. While the modern urban setting I come from tends to overflow with stimulation of all kinds, the remarkable simplicity of life at Taizé also helps instill a sense of deep peace and incentivize a mindful presence which allows one to witness more fully the richness of each experience and person they encounter while they’re here. While I’m excited to be reflecting on the community-forming impacts of Taizé’s musical meditative prayer, I think it’s important to also keep in mind some of these more basic elements which help to make Taizé a welcoming, restful, and contemplative space.

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This week, I had the privilege of participating in Taizé’s annual meeting of friendship between young Muslims and Christians. About 80 people participated in the program, roughly half Christian and half Muslim representing many different countries and languages spoken. The four-day program included forming of small groups for dialogue and friendship, workshops co-led by Christian brothers of Taizé and Muslim Imams, common meals, and invitations to observe one another’s prayer practices three times daily. I was especially touched by a common tenet of the meeting as a vision of “worldwide brotherhood and sisterhood.” At one workshop Brother Emile of Taizé and Imam Adbelaziz El Magrouti spoke of the important distinction between siblinghood and friendship being that the former is defined by forgiveness and unconditional love. Acknowledging long histories of pain and fighting between the groups, Brother Emile suggested that “forgiveness interrupts the transmission of evil.” In other words, as human factions (political, religious, social, or even in a personal context) repeatedly judge and hurt one another, it takes forgiveness to finally interrupt that cycle and find a new way forward.

I also appreciated that the primary goal of this meeting was not to hash out theological debates and define our differences, but to simply build friendships as we are. This speaks to the element of siblinghood and unconditional love in that we do not need to change one another to love one another in some meaningful way. Rather, it is on the ground of genuine friendship and siblinghood amidst our difference that those more difficult conversations of reconciliation will happen more fruitfully. I will conclude my reflection on the Muslim-Christian meeting by sharing a quote from Imam Abdelaziz which I think is an important reminder as I continue this endeavor of research and inquiry.

“The word of God is not knowledge for the head, but an invitation towards a way of being. ”

— Imam Abdelaziz El Magrouti

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The other major facet of my experience thus far I would like to share concerns Taizé’s practice of meditative singing and its relationship with the sense of belonging and reconciliation in this community. As I have prayed with the community via Taizé’s songbook, it has been striking to observe the breadth of emotions expressed in the songs. Each song seems to embody a particular way of responding to the human condition, to the world, and to God. Much like the Psalms from which many of the song texts originate, the tunes vary in expression between joy, sadness, hope, fear, gratitude, mourning, elation, uncertainty, wonder, and much more. When prayed through meditative collective singing the music becomes a way of holding each of these emotions in sensitive solidarity with the community and within oneself.

The shared musical moments of joy and elation are wonderful, though I find especially powerful prayers that acknowledge our more difficult, but equally valid and important emotional responses to life such as anxiety and fear. In a society which collectively tends to value happiness over all else, we do not often have room in our modern lives to sit with these more difficult feelings, especially together. The singing at Taizé becomes a way to recognize that we all carry some form of anxiety and fear and provides a safe and comforting space for us not only to feel these important emotions but do so in solidarity as a community. Holding those difficult feelings in the light of awareness and love of community can have a deeply healing and even transformative effect on those emotions we carry. One of Taizé’s songs seems to reflect this truth, which includes the text “Our darkness is never darkness in your sight: the deepest night is clear as the daylight” (listen to the song here). This aspect of emotional solidarity within Taizé’s practice seems to be an important cornerstone in contributing to the unique quality of communion and belonging that many feel here.

An especially powerful experience around the musical practice I’ve witnessed this week is the experience of walking out of church. The morning and midday prayers tend to last around 45 minutes, but there is no set ending time so folks gradually filter out while the singing continues. Many continue singing while walking out, and a couple days ago I noticed for the first time how after crossing the threshold of the building I could hear my own voice and those of other individuals in a much more exposed way. The emotional intimacy of the practice touched me when I suddenly heard our individual voices and recognized that each of us were engaging in a genuinely vulnerable expression. It felt almost as if we were seeing one another’s hearts before actually meeting in a conventional way.

Across all the forms of connection I’ve experienced at Taizé, something I’ve observed that seems to be distinct is that dialogue here seems to be largely undergirded with a mutual assumption of similarity, rather than of difference. Though there are a myriad of otherwise polarized political and religious identities present, thus far in interactions I’ve had and witnessed I have not seen the underlying skepticism that is more common other places. While I can’t say anything for sure, considering the aforementioned nature of Taizé’s prayer and its potential to foster a sense of our common human condition, I feel that the practice may help significantly in centering our shared humanity in a way that provides a more open and welcoming ground for connection across what are often otherwise bitter divides. To summarize these reflections on Taizé’s prayer and meditative singing, here’s a small takeaway for this week:

Communal music-making that expresses and embraces deep facets of our being can help create a safe space for emotional vulnerability and contemplation in such a way that empowers reconciliation and belonging in community.

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Below I’ve shared a few photos from this week, along with a link for the livestream of this Saturday’s Evening Prayer at Taizé. Whether you’d like to join in prayer or are just curious to learn more and hear the music of Taizé, I invite you to watch the livestream at 2:30pm EST (8:30pm in Taizé) or view the recording that will be available afterwards. I’ve been lucky to meet and play with a few wonderful musicians also visiting this week and we will be playing together during Saturday’s evening prayer as well!

Taizé Service Livestream: https://www.youtube.com/@taize/streams

Service Recording (after Saturday): https://www.taize.fr/en_article28227.html