Visits and meetings in Britain

October 2010

My 10-day journey in England began at Canterbury Christ Church University. The university was originally built as a Church teacher-training college, and the chapel is one of the central buildings. When I arrived, the chaplain and a few students and staff were there, in the middle of daily morning prayer.

In 2010 more than 21,000 eighteen year olds in England took the Religious Studies A-level (school-leaving exam) – a 50% increase over 5 years. At the meeting with students who are training to become teachers of the subject, we spoke first about the common misconception is that to “be religious” is like climbing into a box which filters your experience of the world, as if you are not really open to life because you have accepted a set of pre-defined answers with which to respond to the situations you encounter.

When we realise that life is not something we can observe from outside as if we were disembodied, but rather that we are part of something much greater, then a religious outlook becomes possible. From that moment a kind of receptivity becomes basic in our outlook. For the Bible, we could even say that this is the fundamental world-view: God takes the initiative, we are responding beings before we are initiators.

Prayer in Manchester Cathedral

After a presentation of the young adult meetings at Taizé, we were invited to gather for a midday prayer in the chapel. To our surprise more than 60 came to this quite long lunchtime prayer.

The meeting in Canterbury proved to be a good preparation for the following weekend when I participated in a conference for Religious Studies teachers. The organisers had asked for workshops about the international youth meetings at Taizé to be included in the programme. Teachers of Religious Studies in schools may be Christians, or of other faiths or not profess any faith, but for the subject it is important for religion not to be thought of as a system of ready-made answers. The subject is partly a study of different faith communities, their practice and history, but it also encourages students to consider the “big questions” of life – a phrase that I heard several times.

A week later in Manchester there was a gathering for students organised jointly with the Student Christian Movement. Brother Alois’ question in the Letter from China, “What are you doing with your freedom?” set the theme for the whole weekend and similar questions arose again: recently, in Westminster Cathedral, pope Benedict said, “One of the greatest challenges facing us today is how to speak convincingly of the wisdom and liberating power of God’s word to a world which all too often sees the Gospel as a constriction of human freedom (...)” This challenge is perhaps not just about how we tell others, it is also often difficult for us to sense that faith gives us freedom. As we face our inner questioning, and the choices we need to make, the thought may sometimes cross our mind: If only I didn’t have all these questions, hesitations – wouldn’t my life be less complicated, wouldn’t I be happier? But let us never regret the questioning and searching we have! It is a gift, not a problem. It may mean that life is difficult, but it is only with that searching inside that life can ever become beautiful and meaningful.

The candles with the light of the resurrection, Manchester Cathedral

In Bristol it was fascinating to see the way in which chaplains in the multi-faith university chaplaincy cooperate. Soon after the daily 5 pm Christian prayer, the same room was being used for a meeting of Hindu students. In Bath, Keele and Durham there were also evening prayers with students. In Keele, the 10 pm night prayer was part of a week organised by the chaplains to invite students to use the university chapel, which stands right in the middle of the campus. The whole week was possible because of the unusual degree of friendship and cooperation which has been built between the various Christian groups in the university. In Durham the idea was to hold a mini-retreat involving not only an evening prayer, but a talk on the disciples’ request to Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray”, and then a prayer followed by breakfast the next day. Everyone was surprised, I think, when a good number of students were in the church for the 8 am morning prayer!

The high point of the Manchester weekend was the Saturday evening prayer in Manchester Cathedral, where the staff welcomed us warmly and let us search everywhere in the building to collect kneelers, cushions, rugs, and prayer stools. They were all used! Around 250 people participated in the prayer. One of the university chaplains gave a bible meditation on the words of St Paul to Timothy: “I remind you to rekindle the gift of God (...) for God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-control.” This short reading was read in a dozen languages by the students participating in the weekend.

Afternoon workshop, Manchester

On the Sunday morning there was a short “forum” time when Grace from Ghana, Nebojša from Serbia and Ramail from Pakistan, now all students in England, shared experiences and thought from their countries. Then Anna, a young artist from London, who had led the creative workshop the day before on the theme “the responsibility to enjoy the world” introduced us to some questions linking faith and art. Later that morning the Sunday morning eucharist was celebrated in Mandarin and English in St Peter’s Chaplaincy.

May 2009

My visits in England this time were mostly to church communities accustomed to a very different kind of community prayer to the one we have in Taizé. In these churches, when you look towards the front you do not see an altar, but a drum kit.

From St Bride’s Church in Manchester and from Soul Survivor in Watford some individual vistors have come to Taizé in recent months. And by being with them now in their own churches on Sunday, I realised what a new experience the prayer in the church at Taizé must have been for them. It was that, above all, that they wanted to talk about. In Watford I was asked to speak about “Going deeper in prayer”, and in Manchester the young American who has been working in an “Eden Project” with local children and teenagers for the past two years had prepared a prayer with silence and Taizé songs at which the children themselves did everything.

In both places there is a longterm commitment to reaching out to local people who would normally have no contact with the the Church. In Old Trafford, Manchester, I was very surprised at the end of the service to see three Muslim women with full headscarves coming into the church: they had been invited to participate in the meal of celebration after the dedication service of a young child in the church. In Watford, on the Sunday evening, several hundred teenagers and young adults — the generation missing from so many churches — were there for worship and a talk on the ten commandments.

In St. Paul’s, Hammersmith, we were to have an evening prayer with the “Life groups” — about 80 young adults in their twenties and early thirties. And as the parish pastoral assistant and I prepared for it, he remarked: “I am so looking forward to this. It will be so good to have a time of prayer and silence. Just that would almost be enough for this evening.” And the evening prayer, facing the drum kit, but with a cross and some candles as well, was indeed peaceful and dense.

Brother Roger used to say, “Prayer does not make us less involved in the world. Nothing is more responsible than to pray.” These days of visits gave a glimpse of how love for our neighbour and a thirst for prayer stimulate each other.

November 2008

Brother Alois wrote in the Letter from Cochabamba: “Diversity, instead of leading inevitably to divisions or rivalries, bears within it the promise of mutual enrichment and joy.” In England the situation of the Church is probably the most fragmented of any country in Western Europe. During this series of visits by one of the brothers of the community, there were prayers and meetings in churches of many denominations, Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, and meetings with young people in Soul Survivor cell groups.

The Church in England is very divided, and yet that “promise of mutual enrichment and joy” can already be discerned, first of all perhaps in the ease of contact and friendship across church boundaries. When a Catholic bishop arrived for the evening prayer in an Anglican Cathedral it was the most normal thing in the world, just as it was when a Church of England bishop came to the evening prayer in a Catholic parish near his home.

In several places, those who had prepared the evening meetings wanted supper to be included. Anthony from Nigeria produced a chicken curry for 100 young adults in North London, and in Portsmouth a similar number of teenagers sat down to a traditional bangers and mash. The meals there, and in Bath, Bristol, Dewsbury, Lancaster, Oxford and Peterborough underlined the desire for the church to be a place where we can belong. In the vastness of Peterborough Cathedral we moved around as if each part of it it had become a room in our home. A film and small-group meetings were held in one transept, we crossed to the opposite transept to eat supper and then gathered in the centre of the cathedral to pray. Nothing was said by the clergy responsible for the cathedral to make the young people feel limited in their use of the huge church. In fact, in every place the clergy and the lay people of the churches where the meetings were held welcomed us as if to their own home.

There is a very large number of young people from Central and Eastern Europe in Britain. Lithuanians, Czechs, Slovaks and Poles were present as significant minorities at several of the meetings. The young priest who conducted the music practice in Dewsbury Minster had the task of combining local 6th-formers with the youth choir from Huddersfield Polish Church into a group which would lead the singing for the evening prayer.

At the parish in Kentish Town, North London, most of those who came to the meeting were in their twenties. Many are staying in London temporarily, for a year, or two or three... So many countries were represented that it seemed that almost each person was from another place on the earth. Among those who sang solo descants to the songs during the evening prayer were young women from Indonesia and Japan.

So the question of belonging was a very natural one to take for the small groups. We read a part of “A call for the reconciliation of Christians” which brother Alois wrote last year: “In Christ we belong to one another. When Christians are separated, the message of the Gospel becomes inaudible. (...) How can we communicate Christ’s peace to all if we remain separated?” And we also read the parable of the vine in chapter 15 of St John’s Gospel: “Remain in me, as I in you.” Will we discover that belonging more deeply, as that passage of the gospel invites us to, is what will open the way towards reconciliation between us, and in the Church?

A new element in this series of visits were some daytime meetings with groups of school chaplains, youth workers and Religious Education teachers. Three of these meetings were held, during the working day, in the dioceses of Arundel and Brighton, Birmingham, and Oxford for people pastorally involved with young adults. In each place there was the time – two or three hours – not only to speak about the practicalities of bringing groups to Taizé, but also to pray together and to reflect on how to accompany young people in their spiritual searching. We hope it will be possible to continue with similar gatherings in other dioceses.