Home Taizé

Periodically at someone’s home we’ll have a time of prayer and song in a form called Taizé, which has gathered a growing following around the world. In short, it is a time of prayer and personal reflection enhanced by short songs, a bit of scripture, and both spoken and silent prayers. “Taizé” is the name of an ecumenical community in France founded in 1940 by Roger Schutz, a Protestant who would go on to be called “Brother Roger”. He desired to learn to live according to God’s scriptures and in harmony with those around him (this in a time when the world was embroiled in its Second World War), and so he began something of a non-denominational monastic community. As a practice of prayer, beautiful short musical prayers that are repeated 5 times or so were found to be helpful in personal reflection. These are interspersed by a reading of scripture and periods of spoken and silent prayer.

When we worship and pray in this way, we gather at someone’s home in the early evening. There will be a small number of musical instruments, perhaps an acoustical guitar, a cello, a violin, and a piano on a good night. There will be about a dozen of us, and we’re each given a Taizé songbook and an order of service listing the songs we’ll sing, the times we pray, and a scripture lesson in the order that we do them. We’ll fellowship a little, assign parts for leading prayer or reading scripture, and then begin. It’s quiet, relaxing, centering, peaceful, a very spiritual experience. We fellowship some more when the service is concluded.

Mark and Karin Loewen have really embraced this service, gracing us with their home  in which to host them and their musical talents and instruments to form it’s foundation, to which others have added their instruments and abilities. We announce when we’ll do the next one in church, and we hope that you might choose to join us!