Taizé sung prayer creates space for people to learn and practice the prayer of the heart. Many of the desert fathers and mothers, along with thinkers and mystics in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, have described prayer as bringing our thinking down into our heart. In particular, through the rhythmical repetition of words, sung or spoken, it focuses us in our heart—the center of our spiritual lives. As Richard Rohr has accurately described, “chants and repetitive prayers are, in fact, a technology to help you stop thinking!”
I experience this personally and experientially. As I am go about my everyday activities—washing dishes, typing an email, folding laundry, or walking to work—a sung prayer might emerge in my inner being. It happens quite naturally, and yet unknowingly. Suddenly, I am singing, “Give peace to every heart, give peace, give peace…” or “Bless the Lord my soul.” Sung prayer practiced over time, at Taizé, is becoming the prayer of my heart. Prayer is becoming, as Frederica Mathewes-Green says “effortless and spontaneous…that emanates from the core of your being, your heart. You discover that the Holy Spirit has been there, praying, all along. Then heart and soul, body and mind, memory and will, the very breath of life itself, everything that you have, and are, united in gratitude and joy, tuned like a violin string to [God].”
I often hear people say they wished they prayed more. Come to Taizé on Wednesdays, 7 pm, and experience a quiet, unhurried, contemplative, safe space to be still, rest, be refreshed, sing, and pray. And during the week, you just might find prayer bubbling up from within like a dearly loved melody.
—Pastor BJ