Br. Roger of Taize - Rest in Peace

When I was young, at a time when Europe was torn apart by so many conflicts, I kept on asking myself: Why all these confrontations?  Why do so many people, even Christians, condemn one another out of hand?  And I wondered:  is there, on this earth, a way of reaching complete understanding of others?  Then came a day - I can still remember the date, and I could describe the place:  the subdued light of a late summer evening, darkness settling over the countryside -- a day when I made a decision.  I said to myself, if this way does exist, begin with yourself and resolve to understand every person fully.  That day, I was certain the vow I had made was for life.  It involved nothing less than returning again and again, my whole life long, to this irrevocable decision:  seek to understand all, rather than to be understood.

Br. Roger of Taize 1915-2005

On August 16, during a prayer service at Taize,

Brother Roger is fatally wounded by a mentally unbalanced assailant.

  He dies at the age of ninety.

Religious Dialogue

No peace among the nations without peace among the religions.
No peace among the religions without dialogue between the religions.
No dialogue between the religions without investigation of the foundation of the religions.
Hans Kung

Like a drop of water

“It may be that in the state of union, as many mystics have testified, the soul no longer experiences a difference between itself and God, but the difference remains. The very purpose of creation was that other beings, both men and angels, and through them the whole creation, should participate each in its own unique way in the one being of God. The state of union is often illustrated by saying that it is like a drop of water merging in the ocean, but it can equally be said that it is like the ocean present in the drop. In the ultimate reality, the whole is present in every part and every part parcipates in the being of the whole.”

Bede Griffiths

Individuality?

“But the soul that enters into this state of bliss (saccidananda) does not lose its individual being. It participates in the state of universal being and consciousness, it enjoys perfect bliss, but that personal being which was conferred on it by creation, that unique mode of participation in the divine being, which constitutes it as a person, is eternal.”

Bede Griffiths

Saccidananda

“There are schools of Hindu thought which consider that when the spirit of man (the Jivatman) is thus united with the spirit of God (the paramatman), the individuality is lost. But this is not necessarily so. It is true that the individual soul ceases to exist as a separate being. It is transfigured by the light and participates in the very being and consciousness of God. This is the state of saccidananda, the state of being (sat) in pure consciousness (cit), in which is found absolute bliss (ananda).”

Bede Griffiths