Tales to Tell: Taizé and New Year's Eve of 1974

On New Year's Eve of 1974, I was lying on a cot in a make-shift infirmary at the remarkable monastery of Taizé in France. I was so sick with the flu that I could not lift an arm. It is just about the sickest I have ever been in my life. I was surrounded by dozens of other young people, who had come to Taizé from all over the world to celebrate Christmas. But I am getting ahead of myself. My story demands a little background, and I ask you to bear with me.

I had arrived at Taizé in November of 1974. My visit was inspired by an article in Time about the monastery and an International Council of Youth it was holding in the summer of 1974. One hundred thousand young people from all over the world attended that council for youth. I read that a monk, affectionately called Brother Roger, had founded the inter-denominational monastery during World War II and that among the monks' first acts was to help Jews to safety from Nazi persecution. The mission of Taizé was the social gospel, but the social gospel grounded in deep faith, prayer and meditation. Religion as a tool for spiritual and social liberation. Think Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. It was all right up my alley, and the story of Taizé fascinated me.

At the time, I had already decided to become an Episcopalian priest, and, as a "Child of the Sixties," what those monks were doing at Taizé was exactly what I wanted to do in my ministry. But I didn't just want to be a social activist. I had always been intrigued by things unseen. In college, I became fascinated by parapsychology and the paranormal. It seemed to add "fact to faith," the formula that the iconoclast, Bishop Pike, used to explain how his investigation of psychic phenomena had led him back to the fundamentals of his faith. I was deeply committed to infusing the mystical and political in my own ministry. Yes, I made up my mind even while I was still reading the article that I would visit Taizé and see for myself just how its experiment with Christian socialism worked in the real world.

Taizé lies on a hilltop amidst the rolling hills of Burgandy. I arrived there in the early evening. I looked around me and thought, "If it weren't for these phone poles, I could be in the Middle Ages." I looked up at the hill, thought of Hans Castorp in "The Magic Mountain" and, with some trepidation of the unknown adventure that awaited me, I walked on up the hill, backpack and suitcase in hand. Some hippie I was! I carried both a pack on my back and a "bourgeois" suitcase in hand.

I saw a reception sign above a little house, and I walked in. A pleasant young woman welcomed me in French. I looked around and noticed young people in various small groups. Some were sitting by a fireplace discussing religion and politics. Others were listening to a guitarist playing Dylan songs. Still others were playing ping pong or cards. The place was a real Tower of Babel. I immediately felt right at home!

There were only about twenty young people there when I arrived toward mid- November. The monks stayed in simple housing. The young people stayed in a huge tent donated by the French army. We slept in bunk beds and took cold showers. We ate in a spartan dining hall and did our own cooking, serving, setting and clearing the table, and washing the dishes afterward. The first night I was there, somebody got up after dinner and yelled out in three languages, "Who wants to do the dishes tonight?" That was often how things got done.

Among my peers was a young man from the Philippines, who was seeking spiritual respite from his struggle against Marcos. There were young dissidents from South Africa and various and sundry dictatorships in South America. There was a conscientious objector from the Basque region of France who introduced himself as Basque-French. Finally, in one of those interesting coincidences that many travelers report, there was only one other American, a guy studying for the ministry, who came from Charlotte, North Carolina, the city where one of my closest friends from college, Betty Moore, grew up. I wish I could make the coincidence even more interesting by saying that Betty and he had gone to the same high school, but they had not.

While still in the United States, I had wondered just how Taizé was able to run what had become such a huge organization by volunteers alone. I quickly found out. Without the volunteers, Taizé could not function. Our work in mid-November was to prepare the community for the expected arrival of some ten thousand young people from all over the world for Christmas. We did whatever was needed. For parts of several days, we walked around a table collating hundreds of liturgy booklets while bantering back and forth and singing Christmas carols in several different languages. We put up enormous army tents. We painted and spackled and fixed and built things. On run after endless run into the nearest town, Concord, we filled up trucks with enough supplies to feed the enormous crowd that was expected. We formed chains and got it all down to a science in no time. Sometimes, we literally whistled while we worked. It seemed that we were always singing!

The work was not all physical. By 1974, Taizé had become known throughout much of the world. The monastery published a newsletter and sent out other information in some twenty languages. Certain brothers were responsible for running a printing press, which was always a hub of activity. I loved to run errands there, hang out a while, and watch the brothers at work. A little office, run by a very sweet Belgian nun, Sister Brigitte, ensured that all this material was mailed out and that hundreds of letters were answered. I spent considerable time volunteering in that office. Filing cabinets lined two walls. Since the office was staffed by volunteers, who came and went, it wasn't very efficient. Every day, we got huge piles of mail returned "deceased," or "address unknown." I would go to the filing cabinets and pull their addresses. While rooting through the cabinets, I saw names and home addresses for people like Coretta Scott King, Paul Newman, and Ted Kennedy. Sister Brigitte never lost her cool, and she never lost her temper. I don't think I have ever known an adult with such a kind disposition. She wasn't as sachrine as Melanie in "Gone With the Wind," but her kindness and compassion reminded me of that character.

All our work was framed by a morning, an afternoon, and an evening church service, which we were expected to attend. Although we often worked with the monks and would spontaneously encounter them every day, we only saw Brother Roger during worship services. I have often said that Brother Roger was every bit as remarkable a spiritual person as Mother Theresa but that she got better press. During the service, prayers were offered in scores of languages for politically oppressed people all over the world. Inspired by my friend, Thad Moore, who was working on their behalf, I offered up a prayer for the textile workers of North Carolina suffering from "brown" and "black" lung disease. I knew we weren't just praying for them. Like Thad, there were many people down in the trenches working for forgotten and/or oppressed people and various liberation movements. Some had been inspired by Taizé. Others, like Thad, could not look around them and tolerate injustice. Brother Roger would sometimes come out into the congregation to wish us the Peace of Christ with an embrace. Once I was lucky enough to receive his embrace. I'll never forget it. He radiated a profound spirituality that I could feel.

The crowds began to arrive a week before Christmas. I don't remember how many people there were but their number was legion. Thousands. In letters, that are most likely buried in trunks somewhere in the closets and attics of friends and family, I must have reported the official estimate. Communication back home in those long ago times was difficult. On Christmas Eve Day, I remember waiting in a long line for hours to make a phone call home. The service on Christmas Day made up for the sadness of separation from family and friends. Somehow with all those young people from all over the world worshiping together in the "The Church of the Reconciliation," I was overcome by this profound sense that peace on earth and good will toward men was really possible. Reconciliation through the birth of Christ and hope for humankind, two central tenets of Christianity, seemed more real to me on that day than they had ever seemed before or since.

Soon after Christmas Day, most of the crowds had returned home and life reverted to normal until an outbreak of the flu. Sure enough, I came down with it just a couple of days before New Year's. By New Year's Eve, I was as sick as I had ever been in my life. Shortly before midnight on New Year's Eve of 1974, Sister Brigitte came into the infirmary with a candle and sat down next to my cot. She had come to see the New Year in with me. I was so sick that I barely had enough strength to speak. I just remember her smiling at me and our whispering back and forth to each other as she tried to comfort me with gentle strokes on my forehead. I will never forget her generosity of spirit and act of compassion. My mother could not be there, but Sister Brigitte was.

I have had many memorable New Year's Eves since 1974. With much fanfare I have greeted the New Year in Moscow, in San Francisco, in Boston, and, in 1999, with friends in London. The last few years I have enjoyed the company of my close friend, Debi English, and her wonderful family in Philadelphia. Debi's annual party and our walk down to Penns Landing to see the fireworks is something I now look forward to for weeks before the end of the year. Still, lying on a cot sick as can be on New Years Eve of 1974 ranks among my most memorable. With a smile, a candle, and a simple act of kindness, Sister Brigitte saw to it that I was not alone at midnight on January 31, 1974.

Brother Thomas's letter informing me that I would be welcome to visit Taize.