Music and meditation

I've been meaning to leave this here in my moodlings since before Canadian Thanksgiving! Sharing this information isn't just about appreciating music like my usual Music Appreciation Mondays, but about inviting my readers to participate in it and use it for prayer.

I've posted many times about Taizé in these moodlings, as I've been singing and praying the music of the Community since the early 90s or maybe even earlier, but I only managed to visit what I soon recognized as my spiritual home for the first time in 2014. My experience there was an affirmation of the importance of ecumenism in my life, and it's part of my reason for serving with the Community of Emmanuel at Inner City Pastoral Ministry. 

I deeply believe that Christians can and should pray together as much as possible, regardless of theological and dogmatic differences between churches, and the prayer of the Taizé community is a beautiful way to do that. We gather to listen to scripture and let it speak to our hearts without interpretation, we spend time in silence together, opening ourselves to God, we offer the prayers of our hearts, and we sing beautiful harmonies together, uniting our spirits.

Here's the schedule for the rest of the 2024-2025 season, and an invitation to a very special evening's peace prayer the day before Remembrance Day (this Sunday already!) We will gather, as the brothers of Taizé do every Sunday evening, and sit in silence before God for 30 minutes, praying for peace. The remainder of the hour-long prayer will be a simplified version of what happens in Taizé three times a day. 

I hope you can join us. If you would like a printable version of this poster, please contact me @ the email address under "The Moodler -- Maria K." on the right sidebar, and I'll be happy to email you a copy. Or better yet, come to the prayer and you can have a hard copy that I've already printed.

With the wars happening in our world and concerns about the election for our neighbours to the south, we can use all the peace we can pray for!

Livestreamed Ecumenical Prayer for 2021

My prayer life during this pandemic has been different, but good. The only thing I am really missing (besides the people with whom I usually share my faith) is the almost monthly gathering of people for ecumenical meditative prayer with scripture, silence, and the songs of Taizé. But I've found a way around it, sort of.

We can't all gather together to sing and pray in these days of pandemic, but I've figured out how to broadcast prayer from my own home via Facebook. I was a bit worried about infringing on music copyrights, so I contacted the Brothers of the Taizé Community, and they don't mind if I use recordings of their music interspersed with readings and prayers during the pandemic. In fact, Brother Jean-Marc wrote, "We are glad to hear about the ecumenical prayer that you hold, and we would certainly encourage you to keep going even if you can only meet online at present."

So I have set up a schedule of nine Sunday evening prayers throughout 2021, and I invite you to join me online via the Taizé Prayer in Edmonton and Area facebook page, which you can find by clicking here. It's not like singing and praying together in one place, but it's still a good opportunity to lift the needs of our world to God. Our first prayer coincides with the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, and incorporates prayers that will be used in other local prayer services as well as prayers from the Taizé Community. 

It almost goes without saying that unity (my word of the year!) is what our world really needs right now, so feel free to invite others to join us, as united hearts are the only thing that can change our human trajectory...

There's suddenly more time to pray

I had great intentions at the beginning of this Lent to double my meditation time. For the past year or so, I've been doing my best to spend 20 minutes every morning in contemplative prayer. For me, that means sitting, usually with dog close by and a cup of tea, lifting people in my life up to God one by one, and then just resting in God's presence. Of course, my monkey mind runs all over the place, but the point of contemplation is to come to an awareness of my thoughts, and turn them back to God.

Sometimes I sit for twenty minutes and never get back to God more than once or twice! But God knows I'm trying -- at least I've set aside the time.

My hope for this Lent, which began three weeks ago, was to add a 20-minute evening meditation. Which didn't happen -- until this week. Since Monday, I've been lighting a candle and sitting at about 9 pm, and my monkey mind seems to be a little less frenetic later in the day.

Of course, the big motivation for finally meeting my Lenten resolution is our current pandemic, and all the anxiety that the world seems to be feeling right now, come home in my own psyche. If we've ever needed contemplation and calm, now is the time. So I'm suddenly making more time to pray.

And then the Taizé Community ups the ante! This week, the Community closed its doors and sent all pilgrims and volunteers home (and maybe some brothers, too). But always concerned about hospitality, it has invited us all into its evening prayer through online streaming via Facebook. 8:30 pm prayer in France occurs at 1:30 pm here (MST). The first two days, I was doing other things at 1:30, but the prayer was recorded and can be viewed as soon as it concludes.

Still, I love the idea that there are many of us around the world who are able to join with the men in that little room on a hill in the Burgundy region of France. 3.4 thousand of us joined today's evening prayer from all over the globe, and personally, I delighted in singing the alto (for the chants I knew) with the brothers, who supply the melody, tenor and bass lines. It's international ecumenical prayer without any of us having to burn fossil fuels to participate.

Knowing that I am praying with people from Adelaide, Belfast, Istanbul, Jakarta, Modena, Posnan, Seoul, Turku -- the list goes on -- somehow makes the prayer feel deeper, all our voices calling together to God from across the planet.

It feels right. And I don't doubt that God is listening.

If you would like to join us tomorrow at 1:30, or later tonight for a replay, here's a link to the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/taize/.

Ecumenism on Good Friday

It's been a busier Holy Week than I expected, so I may be too late with sharing this moodling of invitation to my readers to join in our family's more recent Good Friday tradition. We like to attend and participate in ecumenical Good Friday commemorations in our city because Good Friday is one thing all Christians hold in common (along with many other things).

If you are looking for a less denominational way to mark the day we remember Christ's self-giving, I'd like to invite you to two special events tomorrow:

The Outdoor Way of the Cross begins at 10 a.m. at Immigration Hall (100 St and 105A Ave). It's an opportunity for Christians of all denominations (and people of any faith who want to join them) to walk with our inner city brothers and sisters, to reflect on social justice issues, and to sing and pray. It's a very meaningful reflection on Christ's presence in our world today. I just hope the forecasted snow doesn't get in the way!

And the second event is the annual Ecumenical Prayer Around the Cross, held at 7 p.m. at Providence Renewal Centre (address on the banner). It features silence, scripture, and the songs of Taizé. The music is gorgeous and easy to learn, a piece of Luke's gospel will be read in as many languages as we can muster, and the prayer is always from the heart of the gathered community. So if you're looking for some gentle meditative and musical prayer, you're most welcome. Bring a friend, and come sing and pray with us.

Here's a little taste of what we will be praying with tomorrow evening... the last words of Jesus:
In Latin: In manus tuas, Pater, commendo spiritum meum.
In English: Into your hands, Father, I commend my spirit.

Ecumenical Prayer in 2017

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope it will be a year of hope and prayer, a year of communion, mercy and peace. I'm starting the year by sharing our annual prayer schedule, and inviting my readers to join us if possible.

When I visited Taizé last fall, I was struck by the humility of the brothers, and the way they live their lives without drawing any attention to themselves or their work. And it dawned on me that they would probably prefer that our prayer simply be called prayer rather than "Taizé Prayer." So our posters look a little different this year. And our prayer will be a little different this year, too, as the brothers don't limit the silence in the prayer to five minutes, but allow for a longer period of quiet so that God has more time to speak to the soul.

We will still pray with the beautiful meditative music of Taizé, incorporate a piece of scripture read in different languages, and offer a time for intercessory prayer, but we have made these small changes to be more in line with the spirit of the Taizé community. I hope that if you live in the Edmonton area, you will have the opportunity to join us for prayer. And if you are a FaceBook user, I would invite you to click here to find our FaceBook page. If you "like" it, you will get updates about our prayer schedule and hopefully a few interesting stories now and then about what's happening in the Taizé community.

A blessed 2017 to all!

Edmonton Taize Prayer 2016

If you’ve been reading these moodlings for a while, you’ll know that yours truly has been involved with Taizé Prayer for quite some time, and that I even had a chance to visit what I call my heart's spiritual home -- the little community in the Burgundy region of France known as Taizé.

I love praying in the style of Taizé because it’s one way that Christians can come together and not worry about theological differences – after all, everyone on the planet is a beloved child of God, and it’s kind of ridiculous that any of us go around thinking ourselves better than anyone else, or that our faith is truer. I also love that there is no preaching at an evening of Taizé prayer – scripture is read (in several languages) and we’re left in silence so that God can speak to our hearts.

If you’re in the Edmonton area and are looking for a beautiful, musical and ecumenical way to pray, come join us, and feel free to bring friends. Also, check out the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/edmontontaizeprayer/.

Praying for Change

This Sunday evening there will be a wonderful prayer vigil in the lead up toward the December climate talks in Paris. There are several Christian communities involved in its organization, and the centre piece will be a special Taizé Prayer for Ecological Justice. I know of quite a few people planning to attend, and I hope that if you're able, you will, too. The building is accessible for people with disabilities, and the music promises to be wonderful. Bring a friend and come to pray and take action in Creating a Climate of Change for the sake of our planet...

The Pope's quiet ecumenism

If you've been following my moodlings for a while, you know that ecumenism -- unity among churches and believers in God -- is a cause very dear to my heart. I am certain that Jesus didn't intend for those who follow him to divide up into groups that all claim to be following his way, picking and choosing different aspects of his life and teachings to emulate and emphasize while ignoring everyone else, and I believe that my own church is one of the worst offenders in this regard. Jesus wanted all human kind to understand that love is the bottom line, and inclusion, forgiveness (as we hear in today's Gospel reading), and unity are essential for love to fill the world. Unfortunately, we're human beings who have come to think that we belong to different clubs, forgetting that we all, ultimately, belong to God.

So when a friend sent me a video Pope Francis made earlier this year, it made me happy. It's a seven-minute piece that was recorded on the iPhone belonging to Evanglical Bishop Tony Palmer when he visited Pope Francis on January 14th. The two are friends, and the Pope asked if he could send greetings to a conference of leaders from Kenneth Copeland Ministries, a Pentecostal mega-church convention where Tony would be speaking. They made the video on the spot, and it seems Vatican staff had no idea about it until it appeared on YouTube last week, with subtitles.

Bishop Tony Palmer also impresses me. He uses the Pope's video in the context of an excellent lesson on ecumenism at the conference, which can be seen if you click here. He says, "...diversity is divine, but division is diabolical." And I love Pope Francis' opening words in his seven-minute portion of the video, how he isn't speaking English or Italian, but the language of the heart... a heart that is feeling joy and longing for communion, unity between believers. His message of reunion and reconciliation as a miracle that God will complete somehow is beautiful, too.

It's stories like this that keep me connected to my church even though I am impatient for change. Enjoy!

2014 Taizé Prayer in Edmonton

Taizé Prayer is, quite simply, a wonderful thing. Christians from different denominations gather to sing beautiful, multi-layered music, hear scripture, meditate in silence, pray the prayers of their hearts, and enjoy a special, ecumenical sense of community in each other’s churches. I’ve been part of it, on and off, for the past 25 years, and have come to really appreciate its simplicity and beauty, as well as my many friendships with Christians from my neighbourhood and the greater Edmonton area with whom I would be unlikely to meet otherwise.

If you’ve never experienced Taizé Prayer, we invite you to come and pray with us any time. No matter what your past church experience may have been, Taizé Prayer is a welcoming place for peaceful reverence. Many thanks to all the participating churches. Please join us.

Taizé Prayer 2014

Ecumenical, musical, meditative prayer 

in the Taizé style from 7 - 8 p.m.

January 12   St. Thomas D’Aquin Catholic Church   8410 89 Street
February 9   Hope Lutheran Church   5104 106 Avenue
March 9   Lenten Prayer St. Luke’s Anglican Church   8424 95 Avenue

April 18   Good Friday Prayer Around the Cross

Providence Renewal Centre   3005 119 Street
May 4   Easter Prayer   St. David’s Anglican Church   7751 85 Street
September 14   Assumption Catholic Church   9040 95 Avenue
October 5   Holyrood Mennonite Church   9505 79 Street
November 9    Peace Prayer    Strathearn United Church   8510 95 Avenue
December 14   Advent Prayer    First Church of God   9224 82 Street

Everyone is welcome!

For more information and/or a printable poster, contact Maria K. 

(under view my complete profile on the side bar); 

see also www.taize.fr

Taizé Prayer is sponsored by these church communities, 

and the Edmonton Taizé musicians/organizing group.

Music copyright permissions are obtained 

through the kindness of the Catholic Archdiocese of Edmonton,

and candles are donated by Universal Church Supplies.

Easter music for a Sunday

The Easter Season lasts until Pentecost, so tonight we'll be having Taizé Easter Prayer at 7 p.m. at St. Luke’s Anglican Church (8424 95 Avenue). All are welcome! It will be our last Taizé prayer until September, and will involve a lot of Easter Alleluias. To whet your appetite, here’s a short video from the Church of Reconciliation in Taizé, of an Easter chant that’s not on tonight’s program, but is still one of my favourites. Happy Sunday!