You may be aware of the musical tradition of Taiz??simple contemplative songs sung in community. Brother Roger was the founder of this community in Taiz?, France.?Here is an?extended entry from his writings:
In each person there is a portion of solitude which no human intimacy can ever fill.
Yet you are never alone. Let yourself be plumbed to the depths (Romans 8:27) and you will see that, in your heart of hearts, in the place where no two people are alike, Christ is waiting for you. And what you never dared hope for springs to life.
Christ came ?not to abolish but to fulfil? (Mt. 5:17). When you listen, in the silence of your heart, you realize that, far from humiliating human beings, he comes to transfigure even what is most disturbing in you.
Does discovering who you are awaken a kind of inner unrest? But who is going to condemn you when Jesus is praying for you? (Rom. 8:34). If you started accusing yourself of all that is in you, would your nights and days be long enough?
When trials arise within you or misunderstandings arrive from without, never forget that in the same wound where the pangs of anxiety are seething, creative forces are also being born. And a way opens up that leads from doubt toward trusting, from dryness to a creation.
(From The Sources of Taiz? #11 in Brother Roger of Taiz?. Essential Writings. Selected by Marcello Fidanzio. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2006, 50).
REFLECTION
- Do you feel a disappointment with people--a hollow that only God can truly fill?
- How do you want to offer this place of holy emptiness to Him?
- In what ways might you be harder on yourself than God is?
- Are you condemning yourself when God isn?t?
- How is God expressing His accepting love and mercy to you?
