CHAPTER 4: MONASTIC VOCATION WITH ECUMENICAL IMPLICATIONS 125 so it was this, the commitment to… to…worldwide, sort of friendship, communion… commitment to justice. It was this, there were many Latin Americans in Taizé at that time um, and in the text, there was some kind of letter of Taizé already, it was news from… from… Latin America, Brother Roger went to India, to Calcutta, so it was all these questions of um, of church and society, which was maybe more important… um… and then, what was also more important than ecumenism as such was, was uh… the prayer, prayer and… Bible reading and silence, and….296 They recall how an initial trip with others inspired them to go back by themselves for days, weeks, or months in order to get to know the respective community better. TC’s story is a little different, mainly due to his Canadian background. He first met two brothers from Taizé who visited Canada and the United States, after which he travelled to Europe in order to contemplate the sense of vocation that he experienced. TC sought and found in Taizé a place to overthink his options and to discover the nature of this vocation. At that point, he did not consider becoming a brother in Taizé itself: he merely found refuge in the prayer life of the community. The ecumenical vision and ministry of the communities does not seem to play a vital role in the choice to join them. The monastic life, a life of common prayer, is far more prominent in the life stories of the interviewees. Brother BE states explicitly: “my first goal, for me at least, was really to… to try to live this monastic life, more than the ecumenical… uh… experience.”297 In retrospect, he acknowledges that already during his studies and early career at a regional newspaper, he preferred a sober lifestyle, leading his friends to joke that his apartment resembled a monastic cell. For the Protestant interviewees, the ecumenical nature of Taizé and Bose was, however, significant in the sense that it provided a place where they could live out the monastic life they craved. BE explains that he did not want to become Roman Catholic in order to be able to join a monastery. In Bose, he found a place where he could preserve his Reformed identity and combine it with monastic life.298 He had visited Taizé (as well as several Roman Catholic monasteries) and considered becoming a brother there but, in the end, he preferred the liturgical style of Bose.299 This is a theme I will discuss separately 296 TB-1,4c. 297 BE-2,18. 298 BE-2,22. 299 BE-1,24.
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