by Emily Murtagh
“For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free” – W.B.
11 pm. The church, built to hold 3,000, is empty but for ten people singing. Their voices are perfect. The nearest sits less than a foot from me, their voices rise, filling me, filling space. Heaven in my ear, heaven in my ear. Here, I am in love with those who see goodness not as a scarce resource. They see that maybe the garden is blooming, and that maybe there is fruit to be picked.
We are at Taizé, a community in France, run by brothers from Catholic and Protestant backgrounds, founded by a man named Brother Roger in the 1940s. Each week of the year hundreds, sometimes thousands, of young people gather from all over the world, from all faiths and none. Roger, a youngest brother of seven sisters, believed that true community could be a sign that God is love alone, and set his life’s path to proving it. In the 1950s, German and French young people came together here, to ask what do we do, now? In light of, everything? By the 1960s they had to knock down a portion of the church, when numbers rose to 6,000 a week.
There is a wildness here, still, that we adapt to far too quickly. We drink from bowls, eat without knives and forks, wash in rushed lukewarm showers, abandon hairbrushes, eat more ice cream than is considered sensible. We queue for 20 minutes in the sun for food, without much complaint, eat chocolate dipped in chocolate for breakfast. We offer our leftovers at dinner to anyone who will take them and they return the favour, swapping butter biscuits for bread rolls and peaches. We find here some connection between wildness and gentleness, an easier communion when freed of the barriers to both made by busy screens and streets.
We spend mornings in the Garden of Silence, an expanse of sky, green and water, a bridge to sit on, trees to sit under, birds to listen to, and no other sound at all. The young people learn to understand and love this simplicity quicker than I do.
“I could be happy just to watch the water.”
“I could be happy just to sit.”
Forty five minutes is a long time to lie in quiet and my body falls into the deepest sleep in protest. Gunther leads these sessions. He is a chaplain in a school in Hamburg. He has been coming to Taize since 1973; back when they used to lie on the grass and drink cheap wine. Back in the land of noise, together we train our mouths to form the words for joy and freedom in every language represented in our small group. Around the circle goes –
Gioia,
Glädje,
Freude,
Sonas,
Saoirse,
Libertà,
Freiheit,
Frihet.
On the last day Gunther takes a large roll of blue duct tape from his backpack. He rips off a piece for each of us.
this is a piece of heaven, to help you remember
Gunther says
the thing about love is that you can only offer it
Amen Gunther.
The theme this year is inexhaustible joy. Joy that does not tire. After months characterized by exhaustion, this sounds nice.
The study booklet that was handed to us on the first day says that joy is “not an inflated feeling, nor an individualistic happiness which would cut us off from others, but the serene assurance that life has meaning”. A serene assurance that life has meaning. It hums with an energy like we’d like it to be true, like it might be true.
Bei dir ist Freude, Freude in Fülle.
Here I get to wear the clothes I want; loose sunshine dresses, sensible shorts, jumpsuits, have the conversations I love, walk and walk and walk and be warm. I sit on steps and girls plonk down beside me and tell me their secrets, unbidden. I do not know them, really. We hold our own sisterhood confessional, on the steps by the church, the songs are still being sung, these are our backing track. Inside, the brothers man the four corners of the church. People tell them their secrets too. The girls tell me what has been heavy and why the burdens feel a little lighter. Grief flows, I try to listen, listen harder. And I thank God I’m breathing. Maybe what I need to do is, less, just sit on steps; just this.
The weather is glorious, then torturous, the rooms simple. We are kept awake each night by two snorers who manage to exist in a perfect alternate rhythm. We watch France’s hottest day in recorded history. We apply sun cream just to watch it sweat off. Sleeping bags brought out for sunbathing melt into tarmac, into bizarre pools. A forgotten meal ticket means a 20 minute walk from dinner queue to dorm to dinner queue. It is an organic meditation – the day must be filled somehow. When it gets too much, we take turns to crash on the bunk beds, stealing ten minute breaks, eating Lays crisps between sleep and waking, made silly by the sun. For a few minutes a day we could be on any package holiday, except the floors are concrete, there are no windows and we share a room with 12 strangers, and our time is not quite ours.
In the evenings, when cool arrives, the oyak, a bar of sorts, fills and rises. There’s a circle outside with 30 teenagers in a rhythm, led by a ringleader who knows how to make the people dance.
The ice creams are 25c, every day the socially acceptable level of consumption increases.
El Alma que anda en amor, ni cansa ni se cansa
The whole week is geared towards experiencing a sense of rhythm, a sense of normality in simplicity, kindness and trust. There are no “spiritual highs” or orchestrated climaxes, it is a flow you are invited to go with, an invitation you do not have to respond to in the affirmative. Everything happens at the same time each day, marked by bells. I love the rebels too, who ignore the bells; the kids who refuse to go, drink energy drinks in their room instead, try to make a break for the local lake, stay up way too late over overcrowded screens watching Love Island, not planning to make it to morning prayer. Freedom looks like something like this, we came to be free.
In the church, three times a day we sing. Singing and silence are the chiaroscuro of Taizé and we practice being comfortable in them. I dislike both but I’m trying. We switch from one language to another, and our brains try to keep up.
Songs kick at weird parts of us, wake nostalgic muscles that are too well trained, honed for quick responses. There is something powerful in this music that is empty of memories, free to be new. The songs are simple lines repeated. I do not know the words, I do not speak the languages mostly, I cannot sing. I am slowed by my ignorance, slowed by the unknown. I am brought closer to what the words might mean, as I sift through translations as they are sung. I sing real quiet, so my flatness doesn’t encroach upon my neighbours’ peace.
I pass the silence at each prayer time either close to sleep, or thinking about things on par with average bus journey mind wanderings. The girls time the silences. Sometimes it is 8, sometimes 11 minutes. Sitting on the floor for that long is difficult, so we shift from one position to another. There is a group of Swedish boys playing Clash of Clans on their phones, silently. God never looked like this before, I’m not sure if I find it a spiritual experience, not in the day to day, though the day to day seems to accumulate to make a week that is shot through with wonder.
On Thursday we are invited to meet with one of the brothers. Jean Marie has been with the community for over 30 years. We pile into a small room, all in matching t-shirts and second degree burns. It is so hot that the teenagers are fanning themselves with their flip-flops. It is iconoclastic.
What would you be if you weren’t a brother?
What time do you get up at? What time do you go to bed at?
Can you have Netflix? Do you have Facebook?
Then his turn:
what has struck you this week?
You have to be vulnerable.
A lad from Kerry answers.
I hope every lad from Kerry and everywhere knows vulnerable like that, can be vulnerable like that.
The weekend comes quicker than expected, and the death and resurrection of Jesus is remembered; the most extreme of dualisms. On Friday, we remember the crucifixion. The adoration of the cross is performed, something I have never experienced before. The teenagers who wage water wars all day, pan out on concrete in the hope of turning golden, play volleyball in the campsite, learning about snuz, weep now, crisp shoulders now covered in the burlap cloths offered at the door, as they place their forehead for just a second, at the feet of Jesus. I hold back.
Crucem tuam adoramus Domine,
resurrectionem tuam laudamus Domine.
Laudamus et glorificamus.
Resurrectionem tuam laudamus Domine
On Saturday we remember that the saviour of the world has seen the darkness of the cave, the moment where the lights go out, where everything is nothing, and yet even that darkness did not last.
Ne laisse pas mes ténèbres me parler
Don’t let my darkness speak to me
(Don’t let my darkness speak for me)
Three children take light from a large candle, and share it. Light moves in every direction, until there are 1,000 candles, held by 1,000 people. I turn the candle slow as the next song is sung, watching light, orange, blue and black spin, over repeated words.
Light like the trust between us,
the memory of goodness,
the hope of glory.
In you there is no darkness at all
Light like the calm assurance
that all this has meaning
don’t let my darkness speak to me
in You there is no darkness at all
A baby coos, gentle, the only sound in this silence. She is about two months old, in her grandmother’s arms, then her sister’s arms, then her mother’s arms. Every silence should hold a baby, this is the perfect silence.
“Nada te turbe, nada te espante
quien a Dios tiene nada le falta
Nada te turbe, nada te espante solo Dios, basta”
By Day 7 we are singing like we were once the girls who spent their lunch times at school at choir practice, with uniform lipstick, low ponytails, tights not socks for competitions, who chose to study German and French.
“Behüte mich, Gott, ich vertraue dir,
du zeigst mir den Weg zum Leben.
Bei dir ist Freude, Freude in Fülle.”
All the songs speed up in my mind, become our dance remixes, created on bus journeys, mash ups are created with Dua Lipa and Amhrán na bhFiann, praise without beginning or end. We move. We were made to. The teenagers have their first experience of being indignant over Swiss airport prices. This is life too, it piles on life. The airport tower in Dublin welcomes us, it says that God is love. Love is everywhere. Love alone. Wonderful things take so much work, the most wonderful things take no work at all. I hold to that.
don’t let my darkness speak to me
don’t let the darkness speak
in this light was love alone
::
Emily Murtagh is an Irish writer based in Dublin. Her poems have been published in The Round Tower Review, The Kilkenny Broadsheet and featured in the CS Lewis themed curation of the Poetry Jukebox in Belfast. She is a previous winner of the Irish Writers Centre Marian Keyes Young Writer Award.
Image: Mike Labrum
Image description: many small, lit candles on a round platform.
Psaltery & Lyre 