Hearts in Search of God collaborator Eddie Gilmore describes a recent pilgrimage to Taizé in France with his wife Yim Soon.

One of many great encounters in our recent week at Taizé was with a German couple, Andy (Andreas) and Uli (Ulrike). I met Andy for the first time during breakfast in the Adult’s field. We were sitting there with our brown, plastic trays upon which was our red, plastic bowl of hot chocolate or lemon tea and next to it a bread roll with two chocolate sticks and a little sachet of butter and I asked him how his week was going. “I declare it to be five stars,” he said, and added, “Bread and chocolate, what more do you need?” I agreed and told him about another German man, Olaf that I’d met there. Olaf explained to me that he’d had the choice between an ‘All-inclusive trip to Turkey,’ or a week at Taizé. I pointed out to Andy that Taizé was truly the all-inclusive experience! And I said to Olaf later in the week, “If you’d gone to Turkey, you’d have paid much more money, had much less enjoyment, and not met all of these amazing people!” He agreed.

It was about my eighth time in that wonderful place, perched on a hillside amidst the beautiful Burgundy countryside and home to an interdenominational and international community of around eighty brothers, so too some sisters. One of my previous visits had been exactly thirty years before with my wife, Yim Soon when she had been pregnant with our first child and it was special to be back there together. Mind you, I was happy on this occasion that we didn’t have to sleep in a tent! Over the years, I’ve also been there with friends, with groups from L’Arche, with our children, and I’ve three times spent a week in the men’s silence house!

The brothers use the term ‘Pilgrimage of trust on earth’ to depict something of the Taizé experience, and as with places of pilgrimage the world over, the very stones on the ground seem to have been sanctified by the footsteps upon them of group after group of people who come with their unique stories and with their joys and their hopes and their burdens. I always do a lot of walking when I’m at Taizé. I was excited on one of my morning walks this time to spot on a signpost the symbol of a scallop shell and a yellow arrow. I was on a Camino path! And on a signpost a bit further on there was the cross of St Francis, which meant that I was also on a bit of the Via Francigena! It was especially poignant for me as Yim Soon and I would in the coming months be walking on both ancient pilgrimage routes.

Also in common with pilgrimage everywhere, there is a satisfying simplicity about the life at Taizé (as Andy had pointed out with regard to the breakfast), and there is deep encounter. We’re all out of our comfort zones and we might be seeing one another in our vulnerable moments, for example first thing in the morning or if we’re having a bad day, or just going in and out of the communal toilets and showers! A sort of stripping away can take place, and there emerges a profound sharing of personal stories. It’s also a place of incredible levity and laughter. One day, when we were sitting with our plastic trays eating our supper in the field with Andy and Uli, I asked them about their first ever visits to Taizé (for Uli it had been 1984, and for Andy in 1985, the year before my first visit) and then I asked how they met. Significantly, it had been on a night train taking young people from Germany to the Taizé European meeting in Paris in 1988, and we all roared with laughter at their lovely story. And the following evening, when Yim Soon and I told the story of how we got together, we all hooted with laughter again.

I didn’t spend all of my time eating, sharing stories, laughing, and walking, important as those activities are. I also loved the prayer. Taizé is a monastic community and the daily life revolves around the three times of common prayer in the cavernous church, which has been extended over the years to accommodate the growing numbers of people who were coming. I love that church. Again there’s a simplicity to it and an egalitarianism too. There are no benches or chairs in the main body of the church so that everyone is sitting or kneeling together on the floor. There are lots of candles and icons. And, of course, there are the famous Taizé chants. They are short texts, perhaps from a passage of scripture, in various languages, and usually in four parts. And they are sung over and over again. They never fail to bring tears to my eyes, or to touch fond past memories of when I’ve sat or knelt in that holy place. And they are testament to the saying commonly attributed to St Augustine that to sing is to pray twice. Also, as someone wrote on the noticeboard next to where there is served the 5 p.m. lemon tea and snack (another fine Taizé tradition!), “Where else do you get to sing in Malagasi?”

The week flies by, as usual. We say our sad goodbyes and we go our separate ways. I’d pointed out one day to those I was eating with that we probably wouldn’t see each other ever again once the week was finished. But how we touch one another’s hearts for that precious little moment in time.