Perpetual Change

Taize 07/08

Last year, I had the great pleasure of attending the annual European Youth Meeting in Zagreb, Croatia. It made such a wonderful impression on me, that I made a goal to attend the next year. I also told lots of people about it. Well, I made it to the meeting in Geneva, Switzerland with my Ukrainian friends, and I made many new friends, but not one American did I bring, or did I even meet in the crowd of 30,000. Maybe someone is interested in Brussels next year?

To refresh your memory, the conference is the 5 days leading up to the New Year. It happens each year in a different European city because the youth (understood as under 32) are invited into the homes of the surrounding hosting communities. Prayers are done in the Taize style, which is a small inter-denominational Christian monastery in France. They have been doing this for about 20 years. There are small community prayers and discussions in the morning in the communities, and then group prayers and seminars in the afternoon and evening. And they feed everyone! In an hour and a half! (The food is nothing to write home about, but it is still noticeable how better food products are in Europe; the organization of meals is, obviously, worth writing home about). On New Year’s Eve, there is a prayer for peace, then a festival of nations (each doing a skit or song) and then a disco. The host families supply plenty of food, and the next day you have a home cooked meal with a family, before getting on your way home (most people come by bus and they leave early evening; I heard there were 800 busses this year).

These are my impressions this year:
The food may be better in Europe, but the B.O. is not. Something I always have to get used to anew.

Geneva was such an incredibly modern and efficient city; Zagreb wasn’t lacking, but yet the difference was clearly evident.

Someone once said something like ‘how many languages you speak, that’s how many times you are a man.” After a conference like this, I can’t help but agree, especially when you are so used to being able to talk to people (mostly with English) and then you get stuck because the international language that someone else knows is French, which to the best of my abilities this year, I made little progress in learning (ok, maybe it wasn’t the best of my ability). By the way, I love when French people say ‘voila’.

French is still very much a language of international science, religion and diplomacy. There are so many other languages spoken at the Taize meetings, but there are always plenty of individual volunteers to translate them. This is part of the magic of Taize.

I think I only heard a cell phone go off once, during any session. Of course the prayer room was so big that I am not sure you could have heard one on the other side, but in the small prayers and seminars, no one ever forgot to turn theirs off. Isn’t that amazing? What else could we accomplish if we always offered so much attention and respect?

The prayers usually take a few days for everyone to settle in to the routine. They are very simple, but beautiful. The simplicity is replicated in both decorations and songs which are almost chants, but master-able in whatever language it is sung. The prayers always remind me of both: the immensity of existence, and yet the insignificance of each of our little pieces. And the whole can’t be less than sum of its pieces, can it? There is something rather wonderful about sharing a silence that a vastness of people settle into.

Thoughts from my small group comprised of Spaniards, Ukrainians and 1 Frenchman:
-Based on a discussion of celebrating difference, we need to say to each other, “help me to understand the differences” if we want to respect diversity.
-How much will we risk to do what we believe is right?
-Do we feel alone when we pray? Do you pray to Jesus, or God, or the Holy Spirit? Or to Mary?
-When we are agents of change do we change small things around us, or do we change big things like MLK? Didn’t he start small?

http://www.taize.fr/en_article5524.html

This is the letter, that we read and discussed at these small meetings. Unfortunately the link doesn't include the greeting letters that came with it. They were from the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Secretary General of the UN, the Archbishop of Constantinople, and the Highest ranking Protestant in Switzerland. It is neat to see all these men's words on the same page.

Labels: Taize

posted by jjs @ 5:00 AM