CapeConversation

Letter to Brother Emile of Taize

Dear Emile and Kombo

Thank you so much for your giving of yourselves while in Cape Town. Everyone in our community was blessed by what you had to share.

Sunday morning in Gugulethu was a challenge, but you handled the “paradigm clash” with grace and skill. It was I think a lesson in how the Church needs the liberation from programs and structures which make it difficult to cultivate the priesthood of all believers. However I did see a willingness in the congregants to embrace the different and the new, especially in their wholehearted participation in their physical closeness to the cross.

Of course, Friday evening at Erin Hall really gave us a taste of the Taize Spirit, and it is for me a sustainable response to many of the questions left behind by the evangelical church and its consumerist, celebritist, elitist, technocentric, individualist modes of worship. What came to me was models of community: Bounded set, and Centred Set, to which we can now add “Donut shaped” (apophatically “empty” in the centre), in response to that space.

We in the vocal collective voxi all learned a lot about space, song, liturgy and service, which we will carry forward with us.

Here’s hoping we can meet again before too long.

Nic

For a fuller report of the vist, see the Taize website.