Taizé

Leo writes:
I love the songs of Taizé, although I am not church-going Christian. I first came across these hauntingly beautiful chants in the Findhorn Community, an eclectic spiritual community in northern Scotland open to all sorts of spiritual paths. Finding them in such a context allowed me to experiment. What does it feel like to sing songs to Jesus, after all?

What I discovered is that singing Taizé songs enabled me to “own” the symbolism of Christianity. Although I was not raised with any religion, growing up in Britain in the late 20th century meant that I nonetheless absorbed a lot of Christian symbolism and culture.

The spiritual path is universal in it’s essential experience, and singing Taizé songs has enabled me to include my Christian heritage in the way that I pray.

This beautiful text is from the Taizé website:

“Singing is one of the most essential elements of worship. Short songs, repeated again and again, give it a meditative character. Using just a few words they express a basic reality of faith, quickly grasped by the mind. As the words are sung over many times, this reality gradually penetrates the whole being. Meditative singing thus becomes a way of listening to God. It allows everyone to take part in a time of prayer together and to remain together in attentive waiting on God, without having to fix the length of time too exactly.

To open the gates of trust in God, nothing can replace the beauty of human voices united in song. This beauty can give us a glimpse of “heaven’s joy on earth,” as Eastern Christians put it. And an inner life begins to blossom within us.”

For upcoming Taize events, see our events page.