A week at Taize

Prayer and worship service

cute wee church in a nearby village

The Taize church, the monks sit on the wee stools up the middle

that will do for breakfast thanks... very healthy and nutritious

We decided to take the advice of a couple of friends and spend our second to last week in the Taize community. The community is a monastery that was started in the Second World War by Bother Rodger (a Swiss protestant monk) as a place of refuge for political prisoners, especially Jews. Taize is the village where it is located. Bother Rodger strongly believed in inter-denominational relationships between Christians and so gathered around him like-minded brothers from different denominations to live in an ecumenical community with him. Brother Rodger had a passion for young people and wanting them to also value inter-denominational relationships he began to invite youth from all over the world to share a week with them in Taize. Now the community has around 100,000 visitors a year to share a week with the 100 brothers reflecting on life and discussing life’s issues with other young people from all over the world…. Pretty amazing!!!

A typical day at Taize consists of morning prayer then breakfast (one dry 6” baguette a block of butter and two sticks of dark chocolate, and bowl of cocoa or a tea-ish like drink). After breakfast you either have a session with a brother or you do work duties, then there is a mid day prayer followed by lunch(one slice of baguette some bland pasta or rice dish flavoured with bay leaves and overcooked and a piece of fruit) then a session in the afternoon for those who did duties and then a workshop in the evening if your lucky, followed by dinner (similar to lunch, however pasta is sometimes substituted by mushy, previously frozen or from a powder vegetables) then evening prayer and bed…

Our days at Taize however were comprised a little differently… I, Sharon was lucky enough to be in the same dorm room as a German girl who liked to set her alarm an hour and a half earlier than one needed to just roll out of bed to get to morning prayer, and then she would keep pressing snooze for the next hour until she finally decided to get up and do goodness knows what, and still get to prayer meeting later than me who got up 10mins before… So begins our day, we have prayer, which consists of chanting in different languages and hearing scriptures from the brothers, and then breakfast (see above). Andrew and I were unfortunate enough to get a job that only needed to be done at night and so after breakfast we had nothing to do except for mid-day prayer and lunch until 3pm. This would have been fine if the weather had been good, but being not so good we ended up being holed up in Andrews dorm room in our sleeping bags going stir crazy with nothing to do, this by the way makes Andrew a very grumpy person!… At 3pm we finally have our meeting with one of the brothers who would talk about a topic for a while and then we would go off in groups of our own age and discuss the topic further, my group would then have a session with ‘brother click’ the coffee machine while Andrews group (who’s leader was slightly more serious about life) talked on and on. Andrew and I went to all the workshops in the afternoons and then there was dinner…yummy… And after dinner we were responsible to change toilet rolls, yay! Actually much better than cleaning the toilet and it gave us something to do between dinner and evening prayer. Next was evening prayer and then one could go and buy a beer at a wee shop over the road until 11pm then head off to bed to begin another very similar day…

Our experience of Taize was sadly tainted by the fact that one week before we were due to arive the weather turned bad and the temperature dropped well below what our meagre belongings allowed. So when we got to Taize it was at about 0 degrees, with a cold northerly wind blowing and misty rain (even with all our clothes on, it still did not cut it)… this weather continued for the next couple of days and since there was not many places one could shelter, Andrew became unwell and was not a happy camper… Things did improve (apart from the food) as the weather got better and we met some good people to hang out with and chat to… I must mention that we also arrived at a time when there were not many other travellers like ourselves, due to it no longer being summer in Europe. So therefore the camp comprised mostly of German and Dutch school children, so it took a bit of work and some poor English to find friends who spoke English well and also were our own age… We did however enjoy the brother’s insights into life and our discussion groups even if at times our view on things was quite different from our very conservative Catholic group members (my group comprised of 9 Dutch, 1 American and myself (Sharon) and Andrews was similar)! And with prayer and singing services 3 times a day we left feeling very holy and sadly ‘unfortunately unwell’ once again. I myself seem to have managed to catch the dreaded ‘swine flu’ whilst Andrew has gotten off more lightly with a dry cough and being a bit clogged up…

So advise on Taize…. Even though in this post I may sound a bit bitter and twisted (due to ill health), I do recommend it…. However it is not worth getting sick for, and would be much better with more people from all over the world… I mean there were only a hand full of people from outside of Europe and WE were the interesting ones “Oh so you’re the Kiwis!...Yes have heard about you!...wow your from sooo long away”.... So if you want to go, go in summer, and I think anyone would enjoy it . Oh on that note there are also adults who go (anyone over 30) and they too enjoy it too with their own special rooms, toilets and even food, jealous much?!