Experiencing Taizé in France (July 2nd-July 9th)

Having heard a lot about the community of Taizé www.taize.fr I decided while in France it was time for me to go and visit it so I took the train from Caen to Macon and then a bus to the town. I went to spend a week with the brothers and about 2000 other young people from all around the world. Each day we were invited to join in the morning, midday and evening prayers and small bible study groups. We slept in cabins or barracks, lined up at meal time for a tray on which our food was placed and helped with a small task. Most of the time we sat on the ground and spoke in English to try and communicate through the many languages that were spoken.

It took me a while to adjust to the new community life having arrived a day late and being on my own. On my first morning I was with the 10:00am cleaning team and after a motivational song of ' Let me clean' adapted to tune of ' Let it be' I was off to change garbage bags with a group of Swedish boys. They spoke a bit of English, but their gagging noises said a lot. The week was quite rainy and it wasn't until Thursday that I learned there were about 30 other Canadians there when we had a Q&A session with Brother Emil.

My favourite part were the forums in the late afternoon and for the last two days of my stay I chose to be in silence to focus more on prayer. I was not very good at staying silent, but let's just say I was silent most of the time. On the Sunday night a few friends from Spain arrived and it was a nice reunion.