Taizé Community

So again, I guess I tend to connect a lot of, with the Bible through our hymns or songs and, you know, suddenly when you're reading the Bible and think, "Oh, yeah, [laughs] I know that.

It's from that s- it's from that song or that, that hymn." And I'm a, a great, uh, lover of Taizé music, uh, as well, and the- those sort of, that chanting and that actually meditative sort of approach to, to worship and prayer.

And again, there's, there's one of the Taizé songs where it has the lyric, "I believe we shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

Yes, we shall see the goodness of the Lord.

Hold firm, trust in the Lord." So I kind of love that.

who is beyond tradition and in a way even beyond scripture.

Yeah, it's significant, I think, to that point, David, that, and I'd love your insights about, I'd love to hear your insights about this, that in this little book, de Lubac begins by referring to the Taizé community in France, which is many listeners and viewers will know what they are, but for those who don't, I mean, they still exist today.

They're an ecumenical community.

I mean, there are some Catholics, there are some Protestants.

What is the significance of de Lubac talking about the Taizé community and particularly their appreciation of Dave Verbum and kind of this, like, where do we go from here kind of mentality with regard to like ecumenism and Protestant Catholic relations when we're talking about these questions of revelation?

Well, Brother Roger and a colleague had already written a commentary on Dave Urban, and de Lubac riffs off that for the start of his book.

So they were interested in it and were already making it better known in the French church.

Some will know the story.

They were both artists.

And we wanted to try to create a contemplative service that kind of reflected our love of the Taizé service, of the whole Christian Celtic writing music that we had already kind of explored and fallen in love with, and then our kind of artistic sensibilities, but also incorporated music traditional hymns, as well as new modern instrumental things that I was writing.

And so that's how CELA was really born.

And we started doing that at this church called Faith Fellowship, which was a small American Baptist church down in Mill Creek.

So the only reason...

Uh, it was a Taizé retreat, and it w- the only thing, uh, I could think of to recapture that experience was go to another Taizé retreat, which I did.

We, uh, I got a, a bunch of students together to go from Chicago to this, um, monastery in Elmira, New York.

All right? Uh, um, and it was a Taizé retreat, and th- they were talking about a, um, uh, a gathering in Taizé, France, of the, of a c- the Council of Youth.

All right? And this would be the first American contingent to go on the Council of Youth.

And so, and there were scholarships for it, so I, uh, applied for the scholarship and, you know, went into this transformative experience of being with thousands of, uh, Christians, you know, who actually would die for their, for their, um, lives basically, and I knew nothing about that sort of Christianity.