A WEEK OF HEAVEN--AT TAIZE

Typos...please excuse them for now!

I've just completed a week at Taize in France. WOW. I met people from Denmark, Poland, Germany, France, Spain, Latvia, Brazil, Belguim, England, Canada, USA, Russia, Norway and I'm sure I'm forgetting some of the others. I had compelling conversations within a small group. The group consisted of brilliant students from Princeton and Oxford. We talked a lot about ecumincalism...did I spell that right? We talked about what it means to be human and asked whether or not we can say that that "the spirit of God is in every human being without exception". We didn't always agree and personally I'm still not sure. We did come to the conclusion that if we all lived in a way that treated people that way -as if the spirit of God was in them--that our world could be radically changed. Even thought the conversation was amazing, for me, the best part was the worship. Taize music is wonderful and prayerful. The times of silence were like chocholate. I'm so aware of how much I need that in my life--not to mention a more intentional weekly rhythm. There is so much to write in days to come about what I encountered at Taize. Maybe a better way to explain that was to say, "In coming days I'll have to talk about how I was encountered." The life of God is witnessed in the communal life of the Taize brothers and the sisters of St. Andrews. I've never been in a place where cultures and religious backgrounds can mix freely. The theme of Taize is "pilgramage of trust". There is a lot, as I'm finding, to that.