November 20, 2010

  • TaizĂ© makes the world a small place :)

    I've gone on about the place enough for all of you to know by now that the place closest to my heart is Taizé, in France. I'm not alone in this, and as I have mentioned several times before, it is fantastic to have found people who share the Taizé love, in each of the cities I have spent time in in Italy. 

    Some of you may remember that when I had only recently arrived in Brescia, I got in touch with the Taizé group there and the first meeting I went to was one that happened to be being attended by a group of young people from Poznan who were touring Italy to publicize the European Meeting which was going to be held in Poznan that year (and which I had already booked to go to).

    Me with some of the young Poles in a village just outside Brescia, October 2009

    Well, out of 35,000 people who travelled to Poznan, I managed to bump into one of the girls I met in Brescia (the one in the far left of the above photo). Then, I met her again in Taizé at Easter. Then, I met her again at Taizé in August. Already quite amazing. Then.... guess what....

     

    Yup, she was there at the preparation for Rotterdam meeting tonight, which was in Caneva di Tolmezzo, about 50km north of Udine! What a small world it is when it comes to Taizé :) And how absolutely beautiful it is to sing Taizé chants far away from Taizé, but in the company of so many people who have been there and experienced the real deal! Amazing though...she's Polish, I'm English, and we have met in Italy twice, once in Poland and twice in France at Taizé, all in the space of little over a year!! Incredible!

    The evening was absolutely wonderful though...SOOOOOOOOOOOOO glad I was able to go, and it was really lovely to spend some more time with Francesco, Francesco and Emanuele :D (pictured here below)

     
    I am really very happy this evening :)  But, it's 1am now and I have to be up at a normal time tomorrow as we have a choir practice at 10.30am, before mass...which means getting the bus at 10am or something. Eek! Better go to sleep now or I'll be tirrrrrrrrred Charis tomorrow :P