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

Advent waiting

A brother brings into my room a reproduction of one of the most ancient pictures in the catacombs:  a man praying with both hands raised.  This gesture comes down to us from the dawn of time, from humankind's first beginnings.  A symbol of expectant waiting.  Looking at it, I tell myself:  like every Christian, you are first and foremost a man who waits expectantly, and prayer is one of the clearest symbols of this.

Br. Roger of Taize

Leo Tolstoy (8-28-1828 to 11-20-1910)

I admit that I am guilty, and vile, and worthy of contempt for failing to carry out Christ's teaching.  At the same time, not to justify myself, but simply to explain my lack of consistency, I say:  "Look at my life now and compare it to my former life.  You will see that I am trying to live out the truth I proclaim.  True, I have not fulfilled a fraction of Christ's will, and I am ashamed of this, but I have failed to fulfill his Word not because I do not wish to, but because I have been unable to.  Teach me how to escape from the net of temptations that surrounds me, help me, and I will fulfill Christ's teachings.  Even without help I wish and hope to fulfill them.  Attack me, I do this myself, but attach me rather than the path I follow, which I point out to anyone who asks me where I think it lies.  If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way simply because I am staggering side to side?


"If it is not the right way, then show me another way.  But if I stagger and lose the way, you must help me and keep me on the true path, just as I am ready to support you.  Do not mislead me, do not be glad that I have gotten lost, do not gleefully shout, 'Look at him!  He said he was going home, but there he is crawling into a bog!'  No, do not gloat, but give me your help and support.  For you are not devils in the swamp, but people like me who are seeking the way home.  For I am alone and it cannot be that I wish to go into the swamp.  Help me, my heart is breaking in despair that we have all lost our way."


So this is my attitude to Christ's teaching.  I try to fulfill it with all I've got.  I not only repent for each failure, but also beg for help in fulfilling it.  And I joyfully welcome anyone who, like me, is looking for the path; and I listen to him.

Part of teh Big Deal

You are in on the deal, and yes, the really big deal.  You are all a very small part of a very Big Thing!

Richard Rohr

Living Water

Christ shows us the way to life, and those who embark on this way are like a fountain of living water bubbling forth from the earth, which steadily moves in all directions in spite of the obstacles blocking it.  One who follows Christ's way can just as little ask what he must positively do as the spring of water flowing from the earth can ask such a question.  It flows, refreshing the soil, the earth, the trees, the birds, the animals, and people.  The same is true for the one who genuinely believes in Christ.

Leo Tolstoy

The Human Brain

The human brain starts working the moment you are born and never stops until you stand up to speak in public. 

George Jessel

Br. Roger's Prayer

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

Br. Roger of Taize

The Witness of Prayer

Very often a man or a woman who dared to pray alone in a church has been, by their perseverance, a living appeal to others.  It only takes one for many to be drawn along in the end.

Br. Roger of Taize

Look Outside

Anyone who looks only at themselves will inevitably sink into melancholy.  Open your eyes to creation all around you, and the shadows already begin to disperse.

Br. Roger of Taize

Autumn harvest

Gather everything that happens, trivialities included, without reservation, regret, or nostalgia, in inexhaustible wonder.  Step out, forward, one step at a time, from doubt toward faith, not worrying about the impossible ahead.  Light fire, even with the thorns that tear you.

Br. Roger of Taize

Great Souls

The best and most nourishing souls are made of a few great and radiant acts of goodness and a thousand tiny obscure miseries which feed their goodness, like the wheat that lives from the decomposition of the soil.

Marie Noel, 20th c. French Poet

Young and Old

Every scribe who becomes a disciple of the kingdom of Heaven is like a householder who brings out from his storeroom new things as well as old. (Mt. 13:52)

I was brought up in the old traditions, but listening to younger people and sharing in their private struggles rids me of certain reflexes of fear. Without these thousands of young people here on the hill, where would I be now, in spite of my desire to be open.

Br. Roger of Taize

The Scientific Mind

Engineers taking a refresher course in information processing share our supper.  An atheist among them vigorously contests all that Christians believe.  His scientific mind gauges everything by what he can know.  At the end of the evening I tell him:  "The questions you have been asking are questions that a man living by the certainty of God also dares to keep asking himself during his life.  This kind of questioning, part of our basic doubt, does not prevent us from constantly setting out from doubt to belief."

Brother, who, for you, is Christ?

For me, Christ is he by whom I live, but also the one for whom I, with you, am searching.

Br. Roger of Taize

Writing as Fundamental Indendence

It is good to write each day and if necessary oblige myself to do so.  It is my handwork, as someone else pounds dough and makes bread.  It is the means of a fundamental independence.

Br. Roger of Taize

Endurance

Be steadfast of heart, and keep going forward!

Sirach 2:2

Hope for the Future

God has plans for a future of peace for you, not of misfortune; God wants to give you a future and a hope.

Jeremiah 29:11

Trust as the Basis of Discipleship

Following Christ with a steadfast heart does not mean lighting fireworks that flare up brightly and then go out.  It means setting out, and then remaining, on a road of trust that can last our whole life long.

Br. Roger of Taize

Mothers and Grandmothers

Mothers or grandmothers can rejoice.  Their acts of faithfulness sometimes leave traces whose total results will never be seen in their lifetimes.

Br. Roger of Taize

Forgiveness

You forgive not in order to change the other person, but simply to follow Christ.

Br. Roger of Taize

True Evangelization

Communicating Christ never means trying to impose oneself.  The Gospel is not a vise that clamps down upon another person's conscience and entraps that person.  A believer from Bangladesh, speaking about those around him who do not know Christ, said, "When you are near a fire, you are warmed.  When the fire of God's love is in us, does it not shine on those who are close to us, even if we do not realize it?"

Love is an Action

Love, and say it by your life.

St. Augustine

A Child's Prayer

 "...lead us not to temptation, and deliver me an email." We've got some work to do!

this was a friend's Facebook status as she described her child's recitation of the Our Father.  Too good not to share!

Polemical Parables - The Kingdom of God is not What We Expect

The Kingdom of God, says the Jew, will come suddenly and sensationally with the visible triumph of God's people:  no, says the parable of the mustard seed, it will grow from small beginnings, spread gradually through the nations:  no, says the parable of the leaven, it will work silently and secretly, before the world is aware that it is at work.  In the kingdom there will be nothing evil or unclean:  no, say the parables, there will be tares among the wheat, useless dog-fish caught in the net.  Solomon's Temple and Levi's priesthood will be at the centre of a regenerate world:  no, says the parable of the good Samaritan, the priest and the Levite have lost their chance, they passed by on the other side.  But at least the kingdom will be for the Jews?  No, say the parables, the invited guests have excused themselves and the table has to be filled with strangers brought in from the highways and hedges; the wicked husbandmen have defrauded their employer and killed his servants, and the vineyard will be given to others.  But even if the gentiles are admitted, surely it will be the chosen people, fortified by so many promises, tested by so many tribulations, that will be the chief inheritors?  No, say the parables, those who come to work at the eleventh hour will receive the same reward as those who bore the burden of the day and the heat; indeed, there will be more rejoicing in heaven over the prodigal son who has found his way back to God than over the elder brother who never departed from his service.  But, anyhow, when once the kingdom is established, the Jews will flock into it?  No, says the parable of Dives and Lazarus; they have Moses and the Prophets to guide them; they will be given no second chance of repentance.  We shall find, I think, that the meaning of the parables becomes far clearer if we keep that background of polemic in view.

Ronald Knox, "Parable"

Using, not serving, money

Jesus makes it abundantly clear that we must never serve money; yet, at the very same time he urges us to "make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon" (Matt. 6:24, Luke 16:9). How are we to break the horns of this strange dilemma? We do so by first conquering the spiritual power money has over us, and once we have conquered it we are free to use it for kingdom purposes. We are never to serve money; but having conquered it we are then able to use money for the common good. Never serving. Ever using.

Richard Foster

Healing

I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections.

And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly, that I am ill.

I am ill because of wounds to the soul, to the deep emotional self,

And wounds to the soul take a long, long time,

Only time can help,

And patience, and a certain difficult repentance,

Long, difficult repentance, realization of life's mistake,

And the freeing oneself from the endless repetition of the mistake

Which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify.

"Healing" by D.H. Lawrence

"A Good Day" With Brother David Steindl-Rast

“Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one's life does not consist of possessions.” (Lk. 12:15)

This is a great video to move your heart to gratefulness, the antidote to greed.

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

Simple Prayer

When the mystery of God become tangible through the simple beauty of symbols, when it is not smothered by too many words, then prayer with others... awakens us to heaven's joy on earth.

Br. Roger of Taize

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.

Gift of Tears

A relative of Ryokan asked the monk to speak to his wayward son.  Ryokan came to visit the family home but did not say a word of admonition to the boy.  He stayed the night and prepared to leave the following morning.  As the wayward boy was helping tie Ryokan's straw sandals, he felt the warm drop of water on his shoulder.  Glancing up, the boy saw Ryokan, eyes full of tears, looking down on him.  Ryokan departed silently, and the boy soon mended his ways.

Mary Lou Kownacki, Between Two Souls

Transfiguration and suffering

What allows us to discover [an inner] transfiguration?  With our thorns themselves, God lights a fire that never goes out.

Brother Roger of Taize

Switch

The bigger the change you're suggesting, the more it will sap people's self-control.  And when people exhaust their self-control, what they are exhausting are the mental muscles needed to think creatively, to focus, to inhibit their impulses, and to persist in the face of frustration or failure.  In other words, they're exhausting precisely the mental muscles needed to make a big change.  So when you hear people say that change is hard because people are lazy or resistant, that's just flat wrong.  In fact, the opposite is true:  Change is hard because people wear themselves out....  What looks like laziness is often exhaustion.

from Switch by Chip and Dan Heath

Brother Roger on Forgiveness

By forgiving us, God buries our past in the heart of Christ and brings relief to the secret wounds of our being.
Br. Roger of Taize