A few times I noticed you referring to Taize, how did that community get your attention?
My last full day in London was a Sunday a couple of weeks before Christmas. Shortly after dark in Trafalgar Square in front of the 30' tree that the city of Oslo gives to London every year a choir sung a nice version of Oh Holy Night and wrapped up their performance and headed across the street to St Martin Of The Fields. I followed and because I have an interest in religion went into the church thinking I would be attending an Anglican service.
When one of the assistants came around handing out leaflets I mentioned not being Anglican and asked him if that would be a cause for heartburn. He responded that it was a Taize service and all are welcome. The service was not about condemning non believers to hell or purgatory or any other such shit. The premise of Taize is that god is love and wants people to be kind to one another.
After the service when I got home I looked up more about Taize and found that it had been founded by a Protestant named Frere Roget in 1940. In 1940 he rode a bicycle from Geneva to a town called Taize in the nominally free Vichy Republic where he set up shop and hid jewish and other refugees from the fascist government for two years before the French Gestapo issued a warrant for his arrest. At that point he went back to Switzerland for the duration of the war as his effectiveness had been destroyed and he would have only been a hindrance to the underground.
In 1944 he returned to newly liberated France to again set up the community (
the community, not
his community, he did not want a cult of personality). The thrust of Taize teachings was and is focused on love and trying to get along. On August 16th 2005 Brother Roget was stabbed to death by a mentally ill Romanian woman. Brother Roger was a man of strong conviction with the balls to risk his own life to help others.
I am not inclined to believe in invisible friends in the sky. If I was I hope I would be part of Taize.
http://www.taize.fr/en That turned into a long ramble.