Taize offers new option for prayer
By Mary Kaye Ritz
Advertiser Religion & Ethics Writer
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| A Taize prayer service takes place on a Friday at the University of Hawaii's Newman Center. The service is conducted monthly with prayer, meditation, some readings and soft hymns.
Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser Taize 7 p.m. Saturday, May 10 Christ Church Uniting Disciples and Presbyterians, 1300 Kailua Road 262-6911 |
Often during Lent, many Christian churches resurrect the meditative prayer service introduced in the 1940s by an ecumenical monastery in Burgundy, France.
However, one church in Kailua has gone year-round with the service, which melds repetitive chants and scriptural readings with quiet contemplation.
Paul Belanger organized the first of the monthly Taize (pronounced teyh-zay) services back in December 2001 at Christ Church Uniting Presbyterians and Disciples on the Pali. He initially heard about it when the former Punahou School chaplain, John Heidel, went to the Taize monastery and returned to report on the faith phenomenon that has drawn numerous Catholics and Protestant followers.
Heidel gave a presentation and brought in videos. Belanger, who attended a Franciscan seminary as a young man, was intrigued.
"I was big on meditation, tranquility, finding peace and quiet," he said. "... We searched the island to find an ongoing taize program, see how it was organized."
Since that early beginning, its popularity has increased at the church. The first services drew less than a dozen people — a good half of whom were the musicians playing the hymns — but last month, the number grew to about three dozen, said Belanger, a vocalist.
Brother Dennis Schmitz, a Marianist who is at Chaminade University, remembers when two practitioners of Taize, Sister Suzanne Toolan and Sister Marguerite Buchanan of Burlingame, Calif., came in 1997 to provide instruction on how to worship in that mode.
Why does he continue the worship service at Lent?
"It's prayer around the cross, and so (Easter) seemed like a good time to do it," he said.
The music is very important, Schmitz added, using an antiphon style — or a song with a refrain: "What happens with Taize music, refrain is continual."
His service also uses a Byzantine-style cross, with Jesus painted on it, raised off the floor but set horizontally. After music, quiet pauses, some scripture readings and a "group intercession" (request for prayers for specific reasons), people go up to the cross and press their forehead against it, to make their own personal intercessions.
"That's the way it's done in France," he said.
At Christ Church Uniting, the practice is slightly different: People light candles when doing their personal intercessions.
"I'm sure there's a lot of variety in how it's done," said Schmitz. "I don't think there are hard and fast rules. It's very common, for example, for it to be done totally by candlelight."
What he finds most interesting about Taize is its roots: At the ecumenical monastery, where all monks have taken vows of celibacy, "my understanding is, even the monks don't know who's Protestant and who's Catholic," the brother said.
"Also, there's something very soothing about the prayer, in the repetition, that helps to center to you. It's contemplative and yet group at the same time."
Belanger agreed: "It's really the most restful, relaxing, centering type of experience."
