Sunday, August 3, 2008

Taize Contemplative Worship at Chapel on Thursday

Chapel was a new experience in worship on Thursday. We followed an order of worship that has been developed by the Taize community in southeastern France. Our worship included an opening song ("The Lord is my song, the Lord is my praise"), a setting of the Kyrie that I have not heard before, and a closing song ("Lord God, Son of the Father, grant us peace" - sung in Latin).

Quoting from the worship flier distributed before the chapel service: "The three brief songs were created at the Taize community, founded in 1940 near Cluny in southeastern France and known for [...] its contemplative style of worship, often employing ancient languages."

Although our chapel service did not include a portion of the prayer in which the congregants offer their individual petitions to the Lord in the presence of the congregation, I have been told this variant is used by others who adopt the Taize community's style of worship. This was told me by a classmate who observed this practice at Concordia University - Seward.

I would have liked to reproduce the order of worship here in its entirety for the readers' benefit, but it appears to be copyright protected by the Taize community and licensed through OneLicense.net. So I will simply refer the interested reader to the hyperlink at the top of this post.

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