Andrey Borzenko. Taizé. Just Taizé

Fresh. Just fresh
Andrey Borzenko

Date of publication: September 12, 2000

I was too lazy to go there. The hassle at the embassy, ​​documents, fees, tickets, travel... A month away from home, TV and PC. Like any difficult person, I measured it seven times before cutting off all escape routes and deciding: I’m going. And I went.

I went to Taizé. Hardly many people know what it is, and I knew very little. I knew that there was such a place in the southeast of France, not far from Lyon. That there is a Christian ecumenical community there, that pilgrims, mostly young people, from all over the world come there. I heard it's good there.

At the same time, I was preparing myself for a more or less harsh monastic life, strict rules, and so on. The first impression upon arrival: a huge pioneer camp, “Artek” on a global scale. Lots of young people who don't look much like pilgrims. At first it even became somewhat unpleasant: does everyone really come here just to hang out? Fortunately, there is such a possibility: illusions about the severity of monastic life dissipated quite soon. While there are, of course, certain rules and restrictions, no one is going to force thousands of young people into constant peace, prayer and contemplation. Every evening at OYAK, a local cafe, there are huge queues for beer and wine. International celebrations with songs and dances again suggest that many people were brought here only by the desire to have a good rest and find a girl from Haiti or a guy from Italy. But then, the next day, these same people come to common prayers in the huge Church of Reconciliation in the center of Taizé. They come - including non-believers, including people whom you would least expect to see in church when you meet them on the street. But here the victims of extreme piercings and bearers of radical Iroquois look completely organic. Just as Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox rituals, symbols and prayers in different languages ​​are organically combined.

For a long time I could not understand how this happened. No one forces me or other young people to go to prayers, participate in the analysis of biblical texts, or help with work. Now I understand what it is: the Taizé community is based on trust and freedom. No one forces anyone to pray or work, no one imposes anything on anyone. A person is free to do what he wants. But he is invited to go to prayer or to work - and, as a rule, he goes. They just trust him and ask him to help and not let him down.

Taizé is based on this. During World War II, Brother Roger, now the 86-year-old rector of the community, received refugees, including Jews, in his home in the village of Taizé. Here several brothers joined him, and a monastic community gradually formed, which now includes about a hundred brothers, Catholics and Protestants from twenty countries of the world. Every year their number grows: some young people come to Taizé and stay there for a long time, while others stay there forever. Most pilgrims come for a week, from Sunday to Sunday. There are also so-called “working groups” or “reception groups”. Participants in these groups usually come for 4-6 weeks and work. The job can be anything. For example, I was a translator, garbage man, loader, office rat and kitchen coordinator (helping organize lunch for hundreds of hungry pilgrims).

By the way, about lunch. A logical question arises: how to feed and accommodate all those who come, how to organize a reception? Here we come to a surprising fact: the Taizé community lives entirely at its own expense. Neither donations, nor gifts, nor even inheritances left to any member of the community are accepted. Ceramics, icons, stained glass, paintings and other products of the brothers themselves, books about Taizé, souvenirs and much more are sold. The community exists mainly on these funds; there is not much money, but it is enough to receive tens of thousands of pilgrims and help new people come to Taizé. For example, for many people from not particularly rich countries, the community pays part or all of their travel to Taizé and back. All the work of organizing life in the community, reception, order, food, and so on is done by the brothers themselves and members of the working groups. It is clear that this requires some systematization and a semblance of a bureaucratic apparatus. But this whole system is not based on money, fear of management or pride. Everyone is connected, sometimes one week one person works under the leadership of another, and the next week it’s the other way around. Or someone works in the kitchen and knows that if he cheats, then his friends will be left without food. The community is a single circle, and within it there is something like mutual responsibility. This is impossible without an atmosphere of mutual trust, and the brothers and pilgrims manage to maintain this atmosphere year after year. In Taizé, many people say that their attitude towards others has completely changed: they are not afraid to open up to people from other countries whom they have known for a couple of days or hours, and they are not afraid to listen to them.

People come to Taizé from all over the world, from Peru to the Philippines and from Australia to Norway, but there are no problems with communication. And there are no language barriers, and political events and racial prejudices are forgotten. At first you feel shocked by so many people, often from countries whose representatives you never expected to see alive, and a little later you become sad that you will soon have to say goodbye to your best friends from Cote d'Ivoire and the Republic of Chad. Of course, such a multinational party creates a mess in your head, et quand je l'ecris, it's really difficult for me... Scusi... Jokes aside, but the language confusion is really very strong. At some point, I found myself talking to myself in a mixture of French and English interspersed with Italian and Polish, and began to speak Russian with a noticeable accent. Here, “alien” languages ​​and cultures no longer seem alien.

In addition to choral singing in "OYAK", Tezeshniks use various opportunities to get acquainted with other cultures or present their own. So, every Saturday (most leave on Sunday) a Forum is held, at which everyone represents their countries on stage and performs national songs and dances in every possible way. Of course, the greatest success is enjoyed by Africans who, among other things, persistently sing church hymns in their own way, in reggae or rap. Honestly, it was a big surprise to hear some kind of rap on the street and discern the words of the prayer “Virgin Mother of God, rejoice...”.

There are also so-called workshops - thematic meetings at which various topics are discussed and something like lectures are given. Meetings with some new country regularly take place there. There is one funny, typical incident related to this. A short African man comes up to me with a sheet of Whatman paper and asks if I can draw. I honestly answer that no, in no way and never, but I point to Kostya, an artist from Novosibirsk, standing next to him, and say that he can do it. It turns out that the guy is from Zambia and he urgently needs a map of his homeland for tomorrow's story at a thematic meeting. Kostya agreed to help, and I went with him as a translator. And watching how he carefully transferred the image of this very Zambia from a tiny map in an atlas onto a sheet of Whatman paper, I thought about the ordinary madness of the situation and realized that this was the real Taizé . A guy from Novosibirsk draws a map of Zambia in a remote French village. And that's okay.

You may have noticed that there are a lot of first person singular pronouns in this article. But it is very difficult to write about Taizé in a different way, because in Taizé, when talking about it, you always want to share something of your own, believing that it will be interesting to someone. This is what different people shared with me, and in order to convey a little of the polyphony of the community, I will give here a few of their phrases about Taizé.

Luca from Italy: “Here I realized that, it turns out, all people are actually brothers.”

Ahmad from the Republic of Chad: “I never thought that I would meet a Russian. Besides, here you can forget about everything in the world: no TV, nothing.”

Georges from Lebanon: “Here you feel the freshness of the soul.”

A Polish woman whose name I forgot: “Taizé is like a pure spring from which everyone can draw water and take it home.”

Matheus from Germany: “All stereotypes about nations are destroyed here” (A very apt remark; I myself, for example, before my visit to Taizé, I would never have thought that I would find perhaps the largest number of people on the same wavelength as me among the Germans. And one of my friends from Italy admitted that before Taizé, his main association with the word “Russia” was the idea that all Russians snore in their sleep. - A.B.)

Kostya from Novosibirsk: “This is an unreal place. One can only dream of such peace between faiths.”

Brother Pietro and Brother Dominican, Franciscan friars from Italy, who hitchhiked to Taizé and left in the same way: “A place of friendship, brotherhood and faith.”

Brother Leo from Taizé: "Joy. Joy and happiness."

On my own behalf, I can also add that I knew many of the things that were discussed in Taizé. About the importance of trust, faith, hope, love, forgiveness. I knew the key words. But the visit to Taizé became for me something like university practice after a theoretical course, practice that is probably necessary for everyone.

Taizé web address: www.taize.fr