“It’s special. It’s the worship of the future, and the worship of the past. You’ll love it.” Everyone said that to me, as I prepared to go. But WHAT makes it special? I don’t think you can really understand it until you’ve been there–I did a lot of research on it before I went, and the first service was still completely different from what I had envisioned.

BUT, I’ll do my best to explain, and I am planning a service in that style, so you all have to come! It will be very different from regular worship, and hopefully it’ll capture some of the spirit of Taize.

For one thing, there is no sermon. This is nice. Rather, there is a period of about 10 minutes in the middle of the service where there’s total silence. 3000 people, even the babies and the obnoxious teenagers, were COMPLETELY TOTALLY silent for ten whole minutes. Which doesn’t sound like that much, I know, but on Sunday night it felt like forever, and by Sunday morning you wanted it to last longer.

Everyone faces in the same direction, although the brothers were separated from us by a tacky hedge-thing.

The whole deal focuses mostly on Gregorian-style chanting, in all different languages. On your way in you picked up a songbook with the music and the words, and below the song it had translations so you knew what you were saying. I prefer the non-English chants, personally, especially the Latin.  Music was a big part of my Taize experience.

The bells rang for several minutes before the service began, which I plan to do and if you want to help ring let me know. They were real bells too, not electronic ones.

There was a bible lesson, first in English and then in french. The psalms were sung in French, beautifully, by one of the brothers. All of the ones who sang had absolutely gorgeous voices. Then the Sunday after I got back our congregation tried to sing a psalm and it was awful and all I could think was, “In Taize they’re singing this beautifully in French”.

And then I came to my senses and remembered the time difference and instead thought, “In Taize they’re singing Country Roads Take Me Home for the 28th time.”.

This is a short clip of a Taize chant, actually recorded at the European meeting someplace in Germany rather than at Taize itself, but still nice. For more just search youtube for Taize.

 

Olivia’s Taize Style Service: Saturday, September 13th, at 6pm in the sanctuary. Everyone is welcome. Everyone. Old friends, new lovers…and the disabled! Especially if you have a nice voice and can read sheet music.

Open hearts, open minds, open doors. (at least, they will be open when Pastor Dave finds the key. Until then the doors are closed. We apologize for the inconvenience.)