For The Moments I Feel Faint

The Community of Taizé: Experiencing God

This summer, I discovered joy.  
Joy in the realization of the what it really means to believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  
Joy in the realization of the infinite dimensions of God’s love and mercy.  
Joy in reconciliation and fellowship with all children of God.  
Joy in prayer.

For the first time, I truly understood the truth behind the lyrics of the well-known hymn “What a Friend we have in Jesus”

What a Friend we have in Jesus, 
all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry 
everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit, 
O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry 
everything to God in prayer. 

I learned this at the Community of Taizé, an ecumenical community of brothers who live together in the spirit of monasticism and accept thousands of youth annually to discuss the bible, and pray together three times a day.

I don’t have the words to do it justice in a blog post, but I really wanted to share a little snippet of my experience.

-May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all now and always. Amen-

Back to Church

I went to the church on the corner yesterday for the first time since last year, and it felt really good.  The service was at ten and I woke up on time, but really tired, as I had gone to bed around four in the morning.  I had intended to go back to sleep thinking “Well, I tried…next week I’ll just not stay up late and go on time.”  Then, I heard one of my quadmates in the shower and assumed that it was the one who said he’d come with me, so I got up.  

It turned out that it wasn’t him, but I went to the service 20 minutes late anyway.  Afterward, I started thinking about why I didn’t want to go to church. It clearly wasn’t that I was too tired, or busy.  For some reason I felt apprehensive.  As I thought about it more I started to think, that maybe the reason I didn’t want to go was that I felt embarrassed.  As though somehow it would come to light how much I’ve been slacking off spiritually, and somehow staying in bed would hide that reality.  But it’s futile to hide from God.  And as I write this, I’m reminded of a part of the Bible passage the associate pastor shared with the children yesterday,

Psalm 139:7-12

7Where can I go from your Spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

8If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

9If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

if I settle on the far side of the sea,

10even there your hand will guide me,

your right hand will hold me fast.

11If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me

and the light become night around me,”

12even the darkness will not be dark to you;

the night will shine like the day,

for darkness is as light to you.

The beauty of all this is that even knowing what was in my heart, as I stood in the last pew of that church surrounded by kind strangers, I felt that familiar warmth of the Holy Spirit.  It was as though God had welcomed me with no regard for what had happened in the past.  I was where I was supposed to be.  God reminded me yesterday what it means to truly forgive and to love unconditionally as well as how it all feels.