Discovering Taize, August 20, 1940

Human beings only create by drawing on their poverty.  I am well placed to assert that today:  it is exactly thirty years ago that I discovered Taize.

Br. Roger of Taize, from his Journal August 20, 1970

Finding Oneself

In the Gospel, to be oneself means searching deeply until the irreplaceable gift given to each one of us is revealed.  Through that special gift, unlike anyone else's, each person is brought to fulfillment in God.

Br. Roger of Taize

Br. Roger's Prayer

In all things peace of heart, joy, simplicity, and mercy.

Br. Roger of Taize

Love is an Action

Love, and say it by your life.

St. Augustine

Original Sin

Original sin is our sharing int he common pain of being human.  It does not need hatred.  It needs healing.  It does not deserve punishment.  It deserves tears.  It is not worked through so much as washed away by situating one's life in a much bigger picture.

Richard Rohr, OFM, Adam's Return

Solitude Beyond Community

In each person there is a portion of solitude which no human intimacy can ever fill.

Br. Roger of Taize

The Beauty of Listening

More often than ever before young people ask me, "What is the most beautiful thing in your life?"  Without hesitating I reply:

•  first of all the common prayer, and in it, the long periods of silence.

Then, immediately after that, the most beautiful thing in my life is this:

• when I am talking with someone alone, to perceive the whole human being, marked by a tragedy or by being torn apart within, and at the same time by the irreplaceable gifts through which the life of God in that person is able to bring everything to fulfillment.

It is essential to try to comprehend the whole person... It is not enough simply to share what assaults a person within.  It is even more vital to search for that special gift of God, the pivot of their whole existence.  Once this gift (or gifts) has been brought to light, roads forward lie open.

Heart

“[The heart is] the place where intellect and emotion and spirit will converge in the human self.”

• • • • Parker Palmer

The measuer of a person

"The ultimate measure of a person is not where they stand in moments of comfort and convenience, but where they stand at times of challenge and controversy."

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Messy Spirituality

You and I are incomplete. I'm unfinished. I'm unfixed. And the reality is that's where God meets me is in the mess of my life, in the unfixedness, in the brokenness. I thought he did the opposite, he got rid of all that stuff. But if you read the Bible, if you look at it at all, constantly he was showing up in people's lives at the worst possible time of their life.

- Mike Yaconelli

Seeking the Star

“We hunger for truth, we thirst to drink beauty, we yearn to celebrate, we seek to delight, we stretch out to love and to be loved. That is why anything less than everything is not enough.”

Thomas Dubay, S.M.

Consequences of the Gospel of Life

[The Gospel of Life] also involves making clear all the consequences of this Gospel. These can be summed up as follows: human life, as a gift of God, is sacred and inviolable. For this reason procured abortion and euthanasia are absolutely unacceptable. Not only must human life not be taken, but it must be protected with loving concern. The meaning of life is found in giving and receiving love, and in this light human sexuality and procreation reach their true and full significance. Love also gives meaning to suffering and death; despite the mystery which surrounds them, they can become saving events. Respect for life requires that science and technology should always be at the service of man and his integral development. Society as a whole must respect, defend and promote the dignity of every human person, at every moment and in every condition of that person's life.
Pope John Paul II

Culture of Life

It is therefore a service of love which we are all committed to ensure to our neighbor, that his or her life may be always defended and promoted, especially when it is weak or threatened. It is not only a personal but a social concern which we must all foster: a concern to make unconditional respect for human life the foundation of a renewed society.
We are asked to love and honour the life of every man and woman and to work with perseverance and courage so that our time, marked by all too many signs of death, may at last witness the establishment of a new culture of life, the fruit of the culture of truth and of love.
Pope John Paul II

Guidance

God’s purpose in guidance is not to get us to perform the right actions. His purpose is to help us become the right kind of people.
John Ortberg

The Human Search

I think we can state the message like this: The search of all people in every age has been a search for some ultimate meaning perceptible among all the complexities and paradoxes of life. It is also a search for some ultimate authority in whom and on whom we can place complete reliance and certainty without losing our human self-respect or integrity. Idolatry and mere religiosity have only ever provided temporary satisfaction for this search. Our particular message which we have received by the manifold disclosure of God’s self-revelation that culminates in the person of Jesus is that these ultimate goals of meaning and authority are to be found within the depths of the human soul – within the mystery of our own personhood. It is the treasure buried in the field of our own hearts.
John Main, O.S.B.

Perfection

“To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often. “
John Henry Cardinal Newman

Virtue of War?

War necessarily brings with it some virtues, and great and heroic virtues too… What horrid creatures we men are, that we cannot be virtuous without murdering one another.”
John Adams

Self-knowledge

“[Living with disabled persons] I discovered something which I had never confronted before, that there were immense forces of darkness and hatred within my own heart. At particular moments of fatigue or stress, I saw forces of hate rising up inside me, and the capacity to hurt someone who was weak and was provoking me! That, I think, was what caused me the most pain: to discover who I really am, and to realize that maybe I did not want to know who I really was. I did not want to admit all the garbage inside me. And then I had to decide whether I would just continue to pretend that I was okay and throw myself into hyperactivity, projects where I could forget all the garbage and prove to others how good I was.”
Jean Vanier

Humanity

“When we proclaim that someone is subhuman, we not only remove for them the possibility of change and repentance, we also remove from them moral responsibility.”
Desmond Tutu

Human Beings

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.

C.S. Lewis