Today’s Word: Community

Last week while in Sedona, we attended a Taizé prayer service at the simple yet majestic Chapel of the Holy Cross, built into the side of a mountain just outside of Sedona in the mid-1950s. [For more information on the chapel and its designer — a woman architect who was a student of Frank Lloyd Wright — see an article I wrote when we visited two years ago.] Like the chapel itself, Taizé services are simple in their elegance and designed to draw all Christians into communion with each other and God, regardless of denominational lines. Founded in the aftermath of World War II in Taizé, France, the Taizé community was founded as a “parable of community that wants its life to be a sign of reconciliation between divided Christians and between separated peoples.” The services are simple and employ both silent meditation and simple mantra-style chants that are easily sung regardless of language barriers.

That Monday evening outside Sedona, both locals and visitors filled the small chapel, singing with the guitar-led choir, listening to scripture (Philippians 1:1-7) and, one by one, placing our prayers as small votive candles around a crucifix lying on the floor near the altar. In the presence of these connected strangers, I found that our simplest actions of devotion and prayer can seem the most meaningful. No thundering music or pulpit-pounding preacher this night, but rather uncommon acts of faith and quiet prayer drew and held us together, like a small chapel clinging to the side of an impossibly beautiful landscape, beckoning us to forgive ourselves and one another and bind ourselves to a God who knows us despite our creeds and places of birth. Amen, I whispered, the simplest of words that reminds me to simply believe.

Ask yourself in silence: Where do I find community? Where have I found community in the most unlikely place?

For more information on Taizé, visit their multi-lingual website.