Taking the Pulpit for Taize
About a week ago I was asked to take the place of the sermon at church and speak a bit about my experience at Taize. This church has Taize prayers once a month, so they know about Taize. So I was asked to talk about not Taize so much as my experience at Taize and how it affected my spiritual life. It is an Anglican church, so nice short sermons, and I had to share the pulpit with my chap, who was in Taize with me, so what I have to say is rather concise, rather simplified, but still, perhaps it is another small step in trying to explain what I lived in Taize...
About 2 weeks ago I arrived back in Australia after having spent a year overseas. I went overseas primarily to go to Taize.
I decided to go to Taize because I didn't really see the point to the life I was living anymore. I had a job where I worked at a computer for 8 hours a day; I commuted to and from work, one hour each way; and I would go home to an empty house, perhaps watch tv and eat some toast before going to bed.
So I chose Taize because I had visited it 4 years earlier just for one week, and I remembered leaving that week feeling like I had encountered God somehow.
So, I left my job, sold my car, moved out of my home and went to Taize. I thought that in Taize I could spend so much time in prayer that I would achieve a kind of closeness to God that would make the emptiness of life irrelevant, or at least bearable.
I was hoping to become unattached from the world, unaffected by it, and to live a life focused on God instead. And at the beginning my prayers were an attempt to leave everything behind and just focus on God.
But while I was in Taize, I spent 125 hours sitting in silent prayer. Not all at once, but over the 8 months that I was there. Every day there is morning, midday and evening prayer, and in each of these prayers there is 10 minutes of silence. So that's half an hour a day to tell God what's on your mind, to notice how you’re are feeling, to reflect on what's happening in your life, to remember there is someone who wants to listen, and to simply share your thoughts and feelings with God.
In order to have a relationship with someone it is important to spend time with them and to talk with them, and it's the same with God. Having this silent prayer, every day, three times a day, meant that my relationship with God developed. I started looking forward to having this time, and looking forward to giving my thoughts and my feelings to God.
And it took me four months to realise how significant that is. It wasn't until I hit a desperate moment that I had a big revelation in my prayer life, and that was that I could be absolutely honest with God. I could admit the ways I had failed or was failing, or the things I was disappointed or angry at myself for. I could admit the ways I felt hurt or resentful and why, and bring to God all the ways in which I was certainly not holy. And in being completely honest with God, I could also at last be completely honest with myself.
By being so honest with God, ignoring protocol and just praying what I truly felt and truly thought, I discovered that I felt supported and upheld, and I was overwhelmed to feel that God stayed with me, still let me come to him in prayer, still received me, and still loved me.
And, in my 125 or so hours of silent prayer, occasionally, just occasionally, God answered. And it didn't come from outside of me, but from a place so deep within me that I didn't know such depths existed. I don't know if how to explain it really, but perhaps Mary Poppins’ carpet bag might give an idea - it has apparent limits if you look at it, Mary Poppins pulls out lamps and things that are much too big to possibly fit inside it, yet they clearly come from within it. It has a depth that is deeper than itself, and that's how it felt.
But I say occasionally God answered. That's not to say that I now have any answers. In fact, what my experiences in Taize did really was to take away my answers. I learnt that I don't need to have answers. It is my questions that I need to listen to; they are what will lead me. If I have to keep asking, then I have to keep listening, and if I don't know, then I have to pracitse trusting.
So, I am still on my pilgrimage to God, still following without knowing the way, but at least now I can follow, since Taize taught me about the silence that leaves space for God. But I have definitely realised that I cannot find my meaning in God and in doing so make the emptiness of life irrelevant, since God and life go together. To live with God as the meaning in my life, I have had to let my life turn around, take another direction entirely - one I hadn't foreseen. I cannot possibly articulate how my life has changed, and how I have changed, but I can assure you, everything has changed.
About 2 weeks ago I arrived back in Australia after having spent a year overseas. I went overseas primarily to go to Taize.
I decided to go to Taize because I didn't really see the point to the life I was living anymore. I had a job where I worked at a computer for 8 hours a day; I commuted to and from work, one hour each way; and I would go home to an empty house, perhaps watch tv and eat some toast before going to bed.
So I chose Taize because I had visited it 4 years earlier just for one week, and I remembered leaving that week feeling like I had encountered God somehow.
So, I left my job, sold my car, moved out of my home and went to Taize. I thought that in Taize I could spend so much time in prayer that I would achieve a kind of closeness to God that would make the emptiness of life irrelevant, or at least bearable.
I was hoping to become unattached from the world, unaffected by it, and to live a life focused on God instead. And at the beginning my prayers were an attempt to leave everything behind and just focus on God.
But while I was in Taize, I spent 125 hours sitting in silent prayer. Not all at once, but over the 8 months that I was there. Every day there is morning, midday and evening prayer, and in each of these prayers there is 10 minutes of silence. So that's half an hour a day to tell God what's on your mind, to notice how you’re are feeling, to reflect on what's happening in your life, to remember there is someone who wants to listen, and to simply share your thoughts and feelings with God.
In order to have a relationship with someone it is important to spend time with them and to talk with them, and it's the same with God. Having this silent prayer, every day, three times a day, meant that my relationship with God developed. I started looking forward to having this time, and looking forward to giving my thoughts and my feelings to God.
And it took me four months to realise how significant that is. It wasn't until I hit a desperate moment that I had a big revelation in my prayer life, and that was that I could be absolutely honest with God. I could admit the ways I had failed or was failing, or the things I was disappointed or angry at myself for. I could admit the ways I felt hurt or resentful and why, and bring to God all the ways in which I was certainly not holy. And in being completely honest with God, I could also at last be completely honest with myself.
By being so honest with God, ignoring protocol and just praying what I truly felt and truly thought, I discovered that I felt supported and upheld, and I was overwhelmed to feel that God stayed with me, still let me come to him in prayer, still received me, and still loved me.
And, in my 125 or so hours of silent prayer, occasionally, just occasionally, God answered. And it didn't come from outside of me, but from a place so deep within me that I didn't know such depths existed. I don't know if how to explain it really, but perhaps Mary Poppins’ carpet bag might give an idea - it has apparent limits if you look at it, Mary Poppins pulls out lamps and things that are much too big to possibly fit inside it, yet they clearly come from within it. It has a depth that is deeper than itself, and that's how it felt.
But I say occasionally God answered. That's not to say that I now have any answers. In fact, what my experiences in Taize did really was to take away my answers. I learnt that I don't need to have answers. It is my questions that I need to listen to; they are what will lead me. If I have to keep asking, then I have to keep listening, and if I don't know, then I have to pracitse trusting.
So, I am still on my pilgrimage to God, still following without knowing the way, but at least now I can follow, since Taize taught me about the silence that leaves space for God. But I have definitely realised that I cannot find my meaning in God and in doing so make the emptiness of life irrelevant, since God and life go together. To live with God as the meaning in my life, I have had to let my life turn around, take another direction entirely - one I hadn't foreseen. I cannot possibly articulate how my life has changed, and how I have changed, but I can assure you, everything has changed.