And two of them thoughtfully left their camels outside!
Happy Christmas to all Orthodox Christians.
Thursday, 6 January 2011
6th January
And two of them thoughtfully left their camels outside!
Happy Christmas to all Orthodox Christians.
Friday, 31 December 2010
Latest News
After a short break with my Mum in London, we missed Christmas at Taizé and we missed catching the events at the crib as they unfolded, but here is the latest news. 
Just before we left, a chicken and her chicks had arrived in the stall along with a dog, but as predicted Jesus was not there yet. We zipped up the hill yesterday to check out what had been going on and he had arrived and, all wrapped in swaddling clothes, there he lay in the manger. Some more angels had also made it and were hanging from the rafters. The shepherds had not got to the Nativity Scene yet and the wise men are also on their way, so there is still more to look forward to.
Things will be very quiet for the next few days as almost everyone will be in Rotterdam for the European meeting. It is a strange feeling that Taizé has gone to the place I lived in for so long. I wonder how many of the European kids will be staying in my village, perhaps not that
many as although the village is a very religious one - at least 5 churches and almost everyone goes to one of them – most of them are staunch Calvinists and Taizé’s open and ecumenical approach to Christianity might be a step too far for them. I always used to think that they were a bit like the Amish with their black clothes and black hats on Sundays, blanking anyone not dressed like them. They don’t have television and they refuse to have their children vaccinated, they follow Calvin’s words literally when he said that God has predestined their fate and have sadly been touched by the polio outbreaks in 1956, 1978 and 1992.
In any case between 25 and 30 thousand youngsters arrived in Rotterdam on the 29th December for 5 days of communal prayer along with the majority of the monks who live in Taizé and a large number of the permanents who will have been working their socks off along with local church groups to get things to go right. They are using the Ahoy which at 30,000 mˆ2 is 6 ½ times as big as the Church of Reconciliation, this is some event to organise.
When they come back to Taizé, the action will restart on the Nativity Scene culminating with the Wise men arriving I assume on the 5th. Even though I missed the action at Christmas itself, my trip home did clear up one or two problems I had in my mind about Nativity Scenes.
At the end of the carol service on Christmas Eve, I saw the Nativity Scene in St Giles, my childhood church, and there it was including the premature baby Jesus. Whilst looking, I overheard one of the church wardens talking about the scene to someone else and to my relief this is (relatively) recent addition to the Christmas celebrations it is only for the last 25 years that they have had a crib in the church, so I am not going senile after all, there wasn’t one when I was a kid, so there was nothing for me to remember about it after all!
La Tuilerie Website
Just before we left, a chicken and her chicks had arrived in the stall along with a dog, but as predicted Jesus was not there yet. We zipped up the hill yesterday to check out what had been going on and he had arrived and, all wrapped in swaddling clothes, there he lay in the manger. Some more angels had also made it and were hanging from the rafters. The shepherds had not got to the Nativity Scene yet and the wise men are also on their way, so there is still more to look forward to.Things will be very quiet for the next few days as almost everyone will be in Rotterdam for the European meeting. It is a strange feeling that Taizé has gone to the place I lived in for so long. I wonder how many of the European kids will be staying in my village, perhaps not that
many as although the village is a very religious one - at least 5 churches and almost everyone goes to one of them – most of them are staunch Calvinists and Taizé’s open and ecumenical approach to Christianity might be a step too far for them. I always used to think that they were a bit like the Amish with their black clothes and black hats on Sundays, blanking anyone not dressed like them. They don’t have television and they refuse to have their children vaccinated, they follow Calvin’s words literally when he said that God has predestined their fate and have sadly been touched by the polio outbreaks in 1956, 1978 and 1992.In any case between 25 and 30 thousand youngsters arrived in Rotterdam on the 29th December for 5 days of communal prayer along with the majority of the monks who live in Taizé and a large number of the permanents who will have been working their socks off along with local church groups to get things to go right. They are using the Ahoy which at 30,000 mˆ2 is 6 ½ times as big as the Church of Reconciliation, this is some event to organise.
When they come back to Taizé, the action will restart on the Nativity Scene culminating with the Wise men arriving I assume on the 5th. Even though I missed the action at Christmas itself, my trip home did clear up one or two problems I had in my mind about Nativity Scenes.
At the end of the carol service on Christmas Eve, I saw the Nativity Scene in St Giles, my childhood church, and there it was including the premature baby Jesus. Whilst looking, I overheard one of the church wardens talking about the scene to someone else and to my relief this is (relatively) recent addition to the Christmas celebrations it is only for the last 25 years that they have had a crib in the church, so I am not going senile after all, there wasn’t one when I was a kid, so there was nothing for me to remember about it after all!
La Tuilerie Website
Monday, 20 December 2010
Crib Update
Things have been moving very fast up at Taizé. It is just over a week since my last visit and so much has happened while I was not paying attention (blame it on the snow I say!).
Mary and Joseph have arrived in Bethlehem and are settling into the stable, the shepherds are in their field looking after their sheep and the wise men now are heading in this direction.
Above the stall are the words of Zachariah’s prophecy just after the birth of his own son John (the Baptist) “The dawn from on high has come to visit us, to give light to those who sit in darkness, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
We popped up on Sunday morning and we saw that an angel had arrived and the shepherds had turned and were walking towards Bethlehem. There was even a real donkey in a pen outside the church which everyone enjoyed petting, but I think he was just there for the day
There is real building of expectation in the scene and even though we all know what will happen, I have to keep going back just to make sure. Bravo to the lads and lasses who thought this idea up !
La Tuilerie Website
Mary and Joseph have arrived in Bethlehem and are settling into the stable, the shepherds are in their field looking after their sheep and the wise men now are heading in this direction.
Above the stall are the words of Zachariah’s prophecy just after the birth of his own son John (the Baptist) “The dawn from on high has come to visit us, to give light to those who sit in darkness, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
We popped up on Sunday morning and we saw that an angel had arrived and the shepherds had turned and were walking towards Bethlehem. There was even a real donkey in a pen outside the church which everyone enjoyed petting, but I think he was just there for the dayThere is real building of expectation in the scene and even though we all know what will happen, I have to keep going back just to make sure. Bravo to the lads and lasses who thought this idea up !
La Tuilerie Website
Saturday, 4 December 2010
Nativity Scene
For the first time ever The Taizé Community has built a Nativity Scene. The whole thing is at the road end of the Church of Reconciliation. 
The stable fits neatly under the roof but when I saw it, I was rather disappointed to see the stable empty. Quite unusual for a Nativity Scene - no nativity…. I stood looking for a few minutes and then I spotted them, Joseph with staff in hand leading a donkey with a very pregnant Mary on top. Logical really, Jesus isn’t due for a few weeks yet. I have never found it odd that the baby Jesus was in the stable for the whole of advent, but obviously the builders of this Nativity Scene had found it odd and had put some thought into their rendition of a Nativity Scene.
To quote from Taizé’s website “It is a sign of the Season of Advent, into which Christians have just entered.
The liturgy also underlines this time of waiting.. ” and this novel approach to what is usually seen as just a bit of extra festive “tinsel”, makes us think about the whole story and about the waiting. The quotation from Luke 2 on the wall reads “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. And everyone went to his own town to register.” Reading that and seeing Mary on her donkey did get me thinking.
The distance between Nazareth and Bethlehem is about 130 km as the crow flies, how long would that journey have taken them? Cees and I have been know to do quite a bit of walking and when in form we can clock up to a maximum of 25 km a day so if we were fit and in tip-top condition it would take us about 6 days on the flat.
But we are talking about desert here and we are talking about an old man who is leading a donkey with his heavily pregnant wife on it. We should also not forget that to get to Bethlehem, they would have had to travel across Samaria which was hostile bandit country in those days. Some people even suggest that they would not have taken the shortest route but a longer safer route via modern day Jordan. So whilst the bible gives no figures (as far as I can see) it would have been a very long journey more than a couple of weeks, which might explain why they arrived so late in Bethlehem and missed out on all the available rooms.
In any case I will be following events as they unfurl between “Nazareth” and “Bethlehem” and let you know.
Our gites are not very near Bethlehem, but they are near Taizé and they have availability! La Tuilerie Website
The stable fits neatly under the roof but when I saw it, I was rather disappointed to see the stable empty. Quite unusual for a Nativity Scene - no nativity…. I stood looking for a few minutes and then I spotted them, Joseph with staff in hand leading a donkey with a very pregnant Mary on top. Logical really, Jesus isn’t due for a few weeks yet. I have never found it odd that the baby Jesus was in the stable for the whole of advent, but obviously the builders of this Nativity Scene had found it odd and had put some thought into their rendition of a Nativity Scene.To quote from Taizé’s website “It is a sign of the Season of Advent, into which Christians have just entered.
The liturgy also underlines this time of waiting.. ” and this novel approach to what is usually seen as just a bit of extra festive “tinsel”, makes us think about the whole story and about the waiting. The quotation from Luke 2 on the wall reads “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. And everyone went to his own town to register.” Reading that and seeing Mary on her donkey did get me thinking.The distance between Nazareth and Bethlehem is about 130 km as the crow flies, how long would that journey have taken them? Cees and I have been know to do quite a bit of walking and when in form we can clock up to a maximum of 25 km a day so if we were fit and in tip-top condition it would take us about 6 days on the flat.
But we are talking about desert here and we are talking about an old man who is leading a donkey with his heavily pregnant wife on it. We should also not forget that to get to Bethlehem, they would have had to travel across Samaria which was hostile bandit country in those days. Some people even suggest that they would not have taken the shortest route but a longer safer route via modern day Jordan. So whilst the bible gives no figures (as far as I can see) it would have been a very long journey more than a couple of weeks, which might explain why they arrived so late in Bethlehem and missed out on all the available rooms.In any case I will be following events as they unfurl between “Nazareth” and “Bethlehem” and let you know.
Our gites are not very near Bethlehem, but they are near Taizé and they have availability! La Tuilerie Website
Monday, 4 October 2010
A missed Opportunity
Sitting at my desk yesterday afternoon, I heard the bells of Taizé ringing. Nothing new, I hear them three times a day every day except Sundays when it is only twice. But it was quarter past four in the afternoon! Any Taizé goer knows that Nothing happens at that time on a Sunday, 
in fact Sunday is dedicated to welcoming new guests and saying farewell to the guests from the previous week. A quick check on the Taizé website revealed nothing exciting, so what was going on? A mystery.
Last week when we visited a client’s home to check on the house, collect their newly issued house number (worthy of a blog in its own right!) and to empty the letter box, we found a magazine called “Le Lien entre Grosne et Guye” . Obviously some local publication (as the next layer up from our commune is the Communauté de Communes entre Grosne et Guye) and we put the magazine on one side eventually to be read or thrown away. A quick flick through revealed an article about Taizé that I wanted to read at my leisure, so the magazine went on to the “to be dealt with” pile. The date at the top of the page of this article must have stuck deep into my subconscious as in the middle of the night, last night, I suddenly thought that this article might give me some insight into the unusual bell ringing.
When he reads this blog, Cees will happily say “you should have read the article when you spotted it!” and on this occasion I will say, “OK you are right” because the little article actually gave details of an open day at Taizé for all the congregations between the river Grosne and the river Guye,
culminating with a Catholic Eucharist at four thirty. Four thirty must be the time they allocate to visiting groups as it was mid one Thursday afternoon last summer when the Archbishop of Canterbury was visiting that the Anglicans were allowed to hold their Eucharist.
Yesterday the day in Taizé was themed “hospitality”. Hospitality is one of the key elements of the monastic tradition, chapter 53 in Saint Benedict’s Rule concentrates how the role hospitality plays a key part in the Benedictine order and as anyone who has seen anything of the Taizé order will know, the brothers there are no strangers to hospitality themselves, housing and feeding hundreds of thousands a year.
After the morning service up until lunch was taken up to the study of St Luke chapter 10 which contains amongst other things the parable of the Good Samaritan, but in its totality it concentrates on the meaning of hospitality and the reciprocity of that hospitality. Having now read the article, I am very sorry indeed that I missed the day and the next time this magazine falls into my hands, I will read it from cover to cover to make sure I don’t miss anything like this again. Another lesson learnt!
La Tuilerie Website
in fact Sunday is dedicated to welcoming new guests and saying farewell to the guests from the previous week. A quick check on the Taizé website revealed nothing exciting, so what was going on? A mystery.Last week when we visited a client’s home to check on the house, collect their newly issued house number (worthy of a blog in its own right!) and to empty the letter box, we found a magazine called “Le Lien entre Grosne et Guye” . Obviously some local publication (as the next layer up from our commune is the Communauté de Communes entre Grosne et Guye) and we put the magazine on one side eventually to be read or thrown away. A quick flick through revealed an article about Taizé that I wanted to read at my leisure, so the magazine went on to the “to be dealt with” pile. The date at the top of the page of this article must have stuck deep into my subconscious as in the middle of the night, last night, I suddenly thought that this article might give me some insight into the unusual bell ringing.
When he reads this blog, Cees will happily say “you should have read the article when you spotted it!” and on this occasion I will say, “OK you are right” because the little article actually gave details of an open day at Taizé for all the congregations between the river Grosne and the river Guye,
culminating with a Catholic Eucharist at four thirty. Four thirty must be the time they allocate to visiting groups as it was mid one Thursday afternoon last summer when the Archbishop of Canterbury was visiting that the Anglicans were allowed to hold their Eucharist.Yesterday the day in Taizé was themed “hospitality”. Hospitality is one of the key elements of the monastic tradition, chapter 53 in Saint Benedict’s Rule concentrates how the role hospitality plays a key part in the Benedictine order and as anyone who has seen anything of the Taizé order will know, the brothers there are no strangers to hospitality themselves, housing and feeding hundreds of thousands a year.
After the morning service up until lunch was taken up to the study of St Luke chapter 10 which contains amongst other things the parable of the Good Samaritan, but in its totality it concentrates on the meaning of hospitality and the reciprocity of that hospitality. Having now read the article, I am very sorry indeed that I missed the day and the next time this magazine falls into my hands, I will read it from cover to cover to make sure I don’t miss anything like this again. Another lesson learnt!
La Tuilerie Website
Sunday, 19 September 2010
Ecumenicalism
My father was a Congregationalist and my mother is a Welsh Baptist and I was brought up going to church in our local parish church which is affiliated to the Church of England, so to me Christianity is one broad group of people each worshiping in their own different way, but ultimately the same. I have never thought about it at all, ecumenicalism is how it is and how it should be, but not everyone thinks the same and times were not always so.
When Frère Roger first came to Taizé he worshipped alone in a room that he had dedicated for that purpose. When there were other Christians present they would join him in prayer, but as many of the people he was helping were in fact Jewish, he felt that it was totally inappropriate to make the prayer times communal. When he returned with some friends (later the first brothers) after the war with the purpose of setting up a community, they worshipped together in the original room but as the numbers of brothers and Christian visitors increased so did their need for a larger space. What is more logical than to use the small Romanesque church in Taizé, a holy place that had not been used for services for many years. But the Catholic church had other ideas about that. Despite not actually owning the building (all churches were seized during the Revolution and are now state owned) the Catholic church objected to having Protestants worshiping in their, albeit unused, church. An initial local agreement was swiftly rescinded and the request to use the church then went up through the bishop of Autun all the way to Paris where it ended up with Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli who was at that time the papal nuncio. He was a forward thinking man, he had also helped many Jews and other refugees during the war and maybe it was that common ground that helped convince him or maybe not, but he was the man who gave permission in 1948 for the brothers to have permanent non-rescindable use of the church for their daily prayers.
Allowing Protestants to use the church was one thing, but allowing Catholics to join them was another. Despite securing an audience with Pope Pius XII, Frère Roger did not manage to get agreement for ecumenical worship out of him. A big step for a pope to take of course. Ten years passed and the pope died and a new one, Pope John XXIII, was elected. This new pope turned out to be none other than the Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli who had granted permission to use the church in Taizé and despite being old in years, he was still very young and forward thinking in his ways and it was he who supported the community of Taizé and led the way forward for allowing Catholics to take part in ecumenical worship. Maybe it was their common experiences during the war that drew these two men together, who knows, but whatever it was, he paved the way for the close links between the Vatican and the brotherhood that still exist today and it led to real reconciliation between differing Christian groups.
So it saddens me when I read about the bitter row going on in the Anglican movement at the moment. Maybe they should “go back to core business” to quote something from my corporate past, maybe they should concentrate on the business of being Christians. What I find so refreshing about the community in Taizé is that they welcome all, they welcome the differences but more importantly they concentrate on the commonality. It all seems so normal to me, but of course this is not the way everyone sees the world. Just maybe one day all Christians in their churches can look and learn and get back to concentrating on what holds them together and not concentrating on the arguments that are splitting them apart.
La Tuilerie Website
When Frère Roger first came to Taizé he worshipped alone in a room that he had dedicated for that purpose. When there were other Christians present they would join him in prayer, but as many of the people he was helping were in fact Jewish, he felt that it was totally inappropriate to make the prayer times communal. When he returned with some friends (later the first brothers) after the war with the purpose of setting up a community, they worshipped together in the original room but as the numbers of brothers and Christian visitors increased so did their need for a larger space. What is more logical than to use the small Romanesque church in Taizé, a holy place that had not been used for services for many years. But the Catholic church had other ideas about that. Despite not actually owning the building (all churches were seized during the Revolution and are now state owned) the Catholic church objected to having Protestants worshiping in their, albeit unused, church. An initial local agreement was swiftly rescinded and the request to use the church then went up through the bishop of Autun all the way to Paris where it ended up with Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli who was at that time the papal nuncio. He was a forward thinking man, he had also helped many Jews and other refugees during the war and maybe it was that common ground that helped convince him or maybe not, but he was the man who gave permission in 1948 for the brothers to have permanent non-rescindable use of the church for their daily prayers.Allowing Protestants to use the church was one thing, but allowing Catholics to join them was another. Despite securing an audience with Pope Pius XII, Frère Roger did not manage to get agreement for ecumenical worship out of him. A big step for a pope to take of course. Ten years passed and the pope died and a new one, Pope John XXIII, was elected. This new pope turned out to be none other than the Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli who had granted permission to use the church in Taizé and despite being old in years, he was still very young and forward thinking in his ways and it was he who supported the community of Taizé and led the way forward for allowing Catholics to take part in ecumenical worship. Maybe it was their common experiences during the war that drew these two men together, who knows, but whatever it was, he paved the way for the close links between the Vatican and the brotherhood that still exist today and it led to real reconciliation between differing Christian groups.So it saddens me when I read about the bitter row going on in the Anglican movement at the moment. Maybe they should “go back to core business” to quote something from my corporate past, maybe they should concentrate on the business of being Christians. What I find so refreshing about the community in Taizé is that they welcome all, they welcome the differences but more importantly they concentrate on the commonality. It all seems so normal to me, but of course this is not the way everyone sees the world. Just maybe one day all Christians in their churches can look and learn and get back to concentrating on what holds them together and not concentrating on the arguments that are splitting them apart.
La Tuilerie Website
Monday, 16 August 2010
Celebration of an Arrival and a Departure
On 20th August 1940 a young Swiss man arrived in Burgundy on his bike. He came to help those persecuted by the Nazis and he chose a little village near the demarcation line, just inside “Free” France with its puppet regime in Vichy. The village was Taizé and the man Roger Schutz. Not such an amazing event at the time, but it was the start of something very big. 
Roger stayed helping Jews and Resistance fighters until the Nazis collapsed the Vichy government and occupied the whole of France. Roger then became a target himself and he was advised to leave. He returned after the war with some friends to set up a community dedicated to help those who had suffered during the war, particularly the young people. His sister joined him, to run the children’s house. Roger was a deeply religious young man as were his friends and their vision was to create an monastic order outside of any church. This order was founded officially on Easter day 1949.
The Taizé community was born. Frère Roger led the community from its beginnings of a small group of seven brothers to over 100 brothers, until he was murdered in the Church of Reconciliation itself on 16th August 2005.
Saturday evening there was a celebration of the 70 years since Frère Roger first arrived on the hill and a commemoration of 5 years since his death.
The service was held in the open in a meadow on the edge of Taizé with the buildings belonging to the community and the Romanesque church hung with icons. An area similar to the “garden” inside the community’s church was created for the monks to be together and the service began at a quarter to 8 by singing “The Lord is my Shepherd” in Filipino, courtesy of the Jesuit Music Ministry there. The service followed the usual lines of songs and silence but with Frère Alois also addressing the congregation of about 5,000 and telling them of Frère Roger, his life, his work and the influence he had had on the Christian movement throughout the world.
A special service for a special man.
Our website La Tuilerie.
Roger stayed helping Jews and Resistance fighters until the Nazis collapsed the Vichy government and occupied the whole of France. Roger then became a target himself and he was advised to leave. He returned after the war with some friends to set up a community dedicated to help those who had suffered during the war, particularly the young people. His sister joined him, to run the children’s house. Roger was a deeply religious young man as were his friends and their vision was to create an monastic order outside of any church. This order was founded officially on Easter day 1949.The Taizé community was born. Frère Roger led the community from its beginnings of a small group of seven brothers to over 100 brothers, until he was murdered in the Church of Reconciliation itself on 16th August 2005.
Saturday evening there was a celebration of the 70 years since Frère Roger first arrived on the hill and a commemoration of 5 years since his death.
The service was held in the open in a meadow on the edge of Taizé with the buildings belonging to the community and the Romanesque church hung with icons. An area similar to the “garden” inside the community’s church was created for the monks to be together and the service began at a quarter to 8 by singing “The Lord is my Shepherd” in Filipino, courtesy of the Jesuit Music Ministry there. The service followed the usual lines of songs and silence but with Frère Alois also addressing the congregation of about 5,000 and telling them of Frère Roger, his life, his work and the influence he had had on the Christian movement throughout the world.A special service for a special man.
Our website La Tuilerie.
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