[CS-FSLUG] NI: Taizé: Where unity is lived

[Fred A. Miller]

"As Taizé faces the challenge of life without its legendary prior, who died 
Aug. 16 at the age of 90 in a knife attack by a deranged 36-year-old Romanian 
woman, it's a good moment to take stock of the improbable rise of this band 
of brothers -- who, many ecumenical observers believe, are a living 
embodiment of what the push for Christian unity is all about.
To the first-time visitor, Taizé looks anything but a massive worldwide 
success story.

Perched on an isolated hillside, Taizé is about one hour outside Lyon in 
southern France. The heart of the complex is the Church of Reconciliation, 
where Protestants, Catholics, Anglicans and Orthodox come together three 
times a day for prayer, led by an ecumenical community of some 100 brothers 
(both Protestants and Catholics) in simple white habits. What goes on inside 
may stoke the imagination of millions of believers, but from the outside it 
looks like little more than a mess hall at a Boy Scout jamboree. The rooms 
where Taizé's brothers offer Bible study and catechesis are exceedingly 
Spartan. There's a small welcome center and a gift shop, an area with tables 
and benches for meals, and beyond that, the rest of the grounds are basically 
filled with tents.

From a visual point of view, there simply isn't much "there" there.
The contrast with the magnificence of nearby Cluny is, in many ways, precisely 
the point. The pride and temporal ambitions of institutional Christianity 
helped to fuel its ruptures over the ages, between East and West in 1054, 
between Protestants and Catholics in 1517, and so on. The simplicity of Taizé 
is thus of a piece with its spiritual message -- humility rather than vanity, 
contentment rather than competition.

There is still debate about Taizé, but Schutz and the community he founded are 
nevertheless seen by millions of Christians as prophets of the ecumenical 
dream, already living the full, visible unity that official structures 
struggle to realize.""

http://ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2005d/101405/101405a.php

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