Most of the visitors arrived on Sunday and had been placed in small groups for the entire week. Ours was a ragtag group who had showed up midweek; a fine group, I thought, no doubt a gathering of independent spirits who didn’t feel constricted by the suggested arrival day. One of them was a man in a wheelchair with what I imagined was cerebral palsy; it was so severe that he had involuntary spasms of his arms and bent hands, drooled frequently, and spoke in a sound that was incomprehensible both for its guttural nature and its Danish origin. He was accompanied by a young man with the most beautiful Scandinavian face I’d ever seen and to be in the company of the two of them together was like a hard and perpetual blessing.
“Shall we go outside,” I suggested, a comment that would somehow establish me as the group leader.
There was a salt-and-pepper pair of Brits who spent their time in service work around the globe, had been to the monastery at Ione in Scotland, quoted Celtic theologians, and spoke wistfully of the time they felt most alive in their church when they had committed wholeheartedly to the well-being of a group of Vietnamese immigrants. Another couple was from Malaysia, although I had come to learn at lunch that they were Chinese; their daughter had gone to Stanford, was now a professor of nanophysics at the University of Paris— they had all met up in Taize for a family reunion. The group was rounded out by my aunt and a handsome, middle-aged European man who seemed more uncomfortable than most to find himself in this particular group. He, I couldn’t get a handle on.
“Jenny,” I said, turning to the English woman beside me. “Shall we start by reading the text aloud?” She began to read softly from Taize’s Letter from Chile, a treatise on joy, compassion and forgiveness that is used as a basis for small group study. We had missed the part about Joy, were starting right in on how it related to Compassion. “Opting for joy does not mean running away from life’s problems. Instead, it enables us to face reality, and even suffering. Opting for joy is inseparable from a concern for other human beings…Tasting God’s joy, however fleetingly, turns us into women and men of communion. Individualism as a road to happiness is an illusion.”
I heard a groaning sound and turned to the man in the wheelchair. Embarrassed, I said, “I’m sorry, I forgot to have us introduce ourselves. What is your name?” The young Danish man beside him said, “Michael. His name is Michael.” I asked Michael to share his thoughts but I can’t for the life of me remember what they were: I only knew that they were so profound and elemental that anything else would be superfluous. Mainly I just looked at the young man, at the way he looked at Michael straining to get the words out, sputtering and stalling and flinching, and all the while this bright and glowing boy just come of age sat calmly listening, waiting, taking it all in so he could translate. I began to think of the two of them together as an icon on patience, one I could pray before my whole life and still never learn to listen with such tender and attentive care. “And what is your name?” I asked his helper.
“Rasmus,” he answered shyly.
“And are you a member of Michael’s church?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “I don’t belong to a church. I’m a drummer. I have my own band,” he said, suddenly blushing and directing our eye to his t-shirt which read in bold letters THE TESTOSTERONES.
I burst out laughing and thought about what Br. John had said in the morning session. God was definitely not boring…. (to be continued)
Heather Choate Davis 