3 - 2002
Renaissance of spirituality
On the Mount of the Transfiguration
by Sebastian Engelbrecht
"Taizé" remains highly attractive to many young persons. Is Taizé proof of the thirst for spirituality? The following report takes a look.
André finds it hard to keep quiet. He and eleven other men have committed themselves to a week of silence in a country house in France, far away from his hometown of Augsburg, Germany. Three times a day the twelve of them sit around a wooden table eating their meal with spoons. After the prayer, a Spartan blessing that is always the same, one of them turns on the CD player. Calm violin or piano music covers over the sounds of chewing and slurping. Why is someone like André making himself to do this - 24 years old, no church affiliation, a long-distance lorry driver? Go for a walk, have a smoke, do the dishes, sit around the fireplace, all without saying a word to one another?
André, a boyish fellow with a pale, narrow face and hair dyed yellow, heard about Taizé from a friend. He came because his life was falling apart: first his wife left him, taking their child, then he lost his driving licence for driving his car while drunk. Without a driving licence, he also lost his job as a lorry driver and had to give up his house in a tree-shaded neighbourhood. After two suicide attempts, he has run away here to the brothers in Burgundy, on this nondescript hill which draws 100,000 young people every year from all over Europe, indeed, from around the world.
Not many do it the way André has chosen, a week in the ”House of Silence”. Most go to prayers three times a day, take part in Bible study, get to know others while doing the dishes. "In the outside world,” says André afterward, "you always try to be a bit more than you really are.” But here in Taizé, it’s different, he realizes. ”People don’t care whether you’re German, French, Italian, dark-skinned, yellow, red or whatever. You’re just yourself, and you’re accepted, that’s all.” He wanted to find himself, he says, without any disturbing outside influences.
Three times a day - morning, noon and evening - the church resounds with Alleluias. The little Romanesque church has long since been too small for the onslaught of youth. A concrete church bigger than a sports hall was completed on the hilltop in 1962. Three times a day, 60 men in white robes enter there in procession. From the brothers and their guests together, a cloud of song fills the space, the typical chants of Taizé consisting of simple statements of faith, repeating like a prayer wheel: ”Christ, your light shines in our darkness, let not the darkness speak to us.” To enter this wave of sound is to find oneself in a spiritual trance.
Wolfgang, from Regensburg, decided at the age of 23 to spend his life at Taizé. He is now 48, a kindly man with a soft voice. Brother Wolfgang looks after groups of German-speaking visitors. He followed the head of the community, Roger Louis Schutz, now 86 years old. Roger finished his Protestant theological studies in Switzerland in 1940, during World War II, and was drawn to Taizé. He felt a call to help victims of the war. He looked for a house in Burgundy, found one at Taizé, and used it to hide Jews fleeing persecution - and then to make his dream of brothers sharing a life together real.
Most recently, Brother Roger no longer appears at every prayer service - and when he does, he holds onto the shoulder of another brother when processing in and out. The founder of Taizé has become physically frail. Once a week, following evening prayers in the church, he speaks to Christians throughout the world, breathing words of blessing or of Christian wisdom into the microphone.
Mystical silence, prayer and song are the keys, for Brother Roger, to what he calls ”peace in the heart”. Everyone becomes caught up in the prayers. In the concrete church, the space around the altar is hung with triangular and rectangular, deep orange, sail-like banners, stretching several metres up to the ceiling. In front of them stand clay chimney-pipes of various heights, holding flickering candles. The whole inner space is as warm and friendly as a student’s room, and the young people make themselves at home. They kneel on the red carpet, take off their shoes and lay their jackets on the floor beside them.
Beyond the old village houses where the brothers live, the barracks they have built over the decades for sleeping, cooking, eating and for Bible study, where their guests gather between the prayer services, now stretch further than they can see. Taizé is like an ongoing church convention, all year round. It all came about more or less by chance.
In any case, Brother Roger had actually had something quite different in mind. He wanted to live together with a small group of men who would draw strength from a life of prayer for daily work and in order to help those in need, the poor and the persecuted. Right after World War II, he and the first brothers looked after German prisoners of war, just as they had previously helped Jews.
But after that the history of the community took a different turn. Taizé grew, because in the course of time it attracted more and more young visitors. As Brother Roger describes it, they came of their own volition, fascinated by the life of the community.
Today the brothers can welcome up to 7,000 guests at a time, in the barracks and in tent campsites. The youth come from all over Europe and from every continent, and they come for the most varied reasons. Johannes, from Marburg, Germany, is 22, was brought up Catholic, and is studying to be a stage technician. This is his eighth stay on the hill in Burgundy. He finds no meaning in the ”rather backward” rites of the church.
”Here,” he says, ”I have found a place where I can experience what I need, and receive what I want.” When he goes home afterwards he feels his head is clearer, because in Taizé he has had the chance ”to think about things one has never really thought about before.”
All this does not necessarily sound very Christian. There can be no doubt, however, that Taizé is an ecumenical Christian community. The brothers do not feel that they belong to any particular confession, or that they represent a movement on their own, but there is an unmistakable Catholic influence. The Eucharist on Sundays is celebrated according to Roman Catholic rites. The daily Bible studies show a Protestant influence, but they confine themselves to a small canon of texts.
The brothers follow the ideals of medieval monasticism, poverty, chastity and obedience. Brother Wolfgang interprets these so-called ”three Gospel counsels” for the 21st century as follows. The brothers share their possessions, emphasize simplicity in their life and beliefs, and send brothers singly or in small groups to slum areas in Africa, India or East Asia, where they pray and work in small ”fraternities”. About a third of the hundred or so brothers live among the poorest people, far away from Taizé. ”Chastity” Wolfgang sees as celibacy, and obedience is owed to the prior, the ”Servant of the community”, Brother Roger.
As Brother Roger’s strength declines, the brothers live out his legacy. In speaking with them about the principles they follow, one keeps hearing the words, this life is a struggle. The struggle is not made easier by the guests. There are always hundreds, if not thousands of them there, and they do not live anything like a monastic life - couples snuggled up together, youths who like to party until late at night, middle class people arriving in their cars.
After Bible study and prayers, the young people mix. Portuguese get to know Czechs, Germans come in contact with Poles. Their usual shyness is gone with the wind. Thus the day’s happenings at Taizé do not always end with the ”silence during the night” indicated in the schedule. Taizé does remind one a bit of Woodstock - in summer people go barefoot on its sandy ground, hippie styles of dress are widespread, and the extensive campsites for tents, foam mattresses and sleeping bags arouse associations of unlimited freedom, free love.
Almost everyone who comes to Taizé leaves as a changed person, whether the week has been spent taking part in various events or in the ”house of silence”. Brother Roger calls this phenomenon a ”crisis of the meaning of life”. Each person deals with it in his or her own way. Johannes from Marburg has found the inner peace he was looking for, ”enjoyed the simple life” and just ”turned his head off” for a bit. André, the lorry driver from Augsburg, who had felt so shattered, actually does see the world more clearly after seven days at Taizé. Shortly before the end of his week of silence he privately confides, ”I can hardly wait to get home and start putting a new life together again.”
Sebastian Engelbrecht, a writer for chrismon magazine, stayed in the ”house of silence” at Taizé and had to practice quietness. His article, here slightly abridged, appeared in chrismon No. 5/2002.