The meeting a few days ago with Brother Alois, Prior of Taizé, was an opportunity to discover once again how the health crisis, while causing drama, can spark creativity and help us reinvent ourselves.
The Taizé Community, which has just celebrated its 80th anniversary, today brings together about a hundred brothers (from nearly 30 nations). In the words of their founder, Brother Roger, they are determined to live in community with God who is "love and love alone". They "seek to understand and reconcile each other always: a community where kindness and simplicity are at the centre of everything". (Brother Roger, God Can Only Love, p. 40). For them, finding themselves in the essentials of common life means working for ecumenism, not in a theoretical way, but by living reconciliation between different cultures and in mutual hospitality. We know how much their charism appeals to adolescents and young adults; they generally come in their thousands to the hill of Taizé or gather each year in a large capital.
What grounds the brothers’ life together, spiritually and materially, are the bonds that keep them alive. In the midst of the pandemic, this is a challenge and a call. How can we respond to it when many countries are subject to lockdown measures and the arrival of young visitors to Taizé is made impossible?
To nourish this spiritual bond, Taizé offers every day the possibility of following the midday and evening prayers online, live, in audio or video.
But how can we continue to live materially? Traditionally, to earn a living, the brothers of the community produce pottery and copper enamels, and publish books and Taizé music. However, in these times of pandemic, there is no financial income from the reception or the shop which has closed its doors.
While this question was being asked in the middle of the lockdown period, in the spring of 2020, an intuition took hold in the Taizé community and a new project was born: producing biscuits, "the Taizé squares" (the Taizé squares). Thanks to the advice of several biscuit factories, brothers were trained and learned the different stages of biscuit making.
Local artisans supply the ingredients needed for the entire biscuit industry, flour, honey, etc. Right up to the making of the magnificent boxes made by a company in the neighboring village. Thus, this production is part of the ecological logic of short circuits.
This is how the “Carrés de Taizé” were born. They are now sold at the local market, which has become a real meeting place for the brothers, and orders can also be placed online.
But beware! Anticipate your purchase to taste or offer these little wonders! Because the demand is such that there may be a shortage of stock, ... and yet the brothers work without counting the cost.
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