Thursday, January 26, 2006

taizé reflection part 1

i don't know exactly how to approach this past week in taize, especially from the angle of writing about it in this blog. i guess i'll start with the facts and, as seems inevitable, reflections will edge their way into the picture. i took the bullet train from london to paris on sunday morning the 15th. that was just freaking cool. we were doing 90 mph easy, the cars on the parallel highways were no match for our razor cut through the northern french countryside. i also couldn't help thinking of mission: impossible. no helicopters in the chunnel, though. as far as i know.

made it to paris gare du nord right on time, only to realize just then that my next train to macon, near taize, left from gare de lyon. i figured it was a beautiful day, i'd make the trip on foot. but after i started out going the wrong way for a few minutes (something i like to do in every city i visit), i realized that i was more crunched for time than i had initially anticipated. add in a stop to take off my sweater which also involved an unintetional leaving-behind of my new glasses, and i was backtracking all over the city. made it onto the train with 2 minutes to spare, and i got strange looks from the well dressed young businessman sitting next to me, as i was pretty much in a full sweat.

in macon i met a man named johan from belgium who was also going to taizé, and he kindly explained to me some of the distant and recent events that have shaped taizé into what it is, most specifically the death of fr. roger, the founding brother in august. he was killed by a mentally disturbed woman from romania during one of the common prayer times. despite his relation of these disturbing events, johan was a very calming presence as i went further into the unknown. we made it to taizé at about 6:30, just in time for dinner and evening prayer. i was bunking down with 3 other guys in a small room, naturally the iron bars that enclosed each top bunk were a little constraining on my fully extended human form, but it was nonetheless comfortable.

there are 3 common prayer times at taizé that take place everyday just before or after meals, and last about 40 minutes, although some people choose to stay longer. the brothers of taizé, who have taken a set of vows to 'abandon themselves in silence and love' (also chastity, the old stand-by), kneel in the middle of the church, while all the 'permanents' (young people who come to live and work at taizé for 3months to a year) sit around the outside of their little area. each prayer time is a mix of beautiful, meditative song and silent prayer. these times were both frustrating and encouraging, as i was faced again and again with the difficulty of quieting my intellect and simply listening. the week as a whole provided many opportunities for me to reexamine my highly intellectual approach to faith.

there is a small medieval chapel in the adjacent town of taize (pop. less than 30) where i often went to pray in the down-time before dinner. i have never experienced such silence. i hesitated even to breathe, as even the slightest sound fairly resounded in this space. it was there on wednesday night that i had what i would call the most important conscious realization of the week.

as i mentioned before, moments of exterior silence througout the week often only highlighted the clamor of my interior. i felt and feel like my mind creates a static that obscures and scrambles any opportunity for supra-intellectual reflection. on wednesday i became, as usual, frustrated by this static and that was compounded by frustration at being unable to communicate with the many young people from Germany in their own language. i hate that english has become a sort of lowest common denominator in the international community. anyway, i said to myself in anger 'i can't understand! - i can't understand german - i cannot understand at all!' in this moment, i got the shivers and immediately started seriously disturbing the silence with the sniffles and even a few choked sobs.

i hesitate to admit this. i feel like i'm stretching this medium and perhaps showboating a bit. but i think it's worth it to make the force of this realization real. i can never understand all of what God is. God is beyond my understanding.

however, far from being a moment of defeat (although in many ways it was a moment of surrender), this was a liberation. first, i think God does want to be understood by us, however imperfectly our brains are able to conceive of God and however broken the language we might use to describe God is. that seems to me to be the true beauty and genius of the incarnation - God reveals Godself to us in human form, in terms comprehensible to us. secondly, our inability to completely understand does not preclude our ability to experience. we are in fact invited to experience 'the peace which passes all understanding.' so my search has been reoriented. more to come, my new friends are itching to see another incarnation of God - this one revealed out of marble by michaelangelo.

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