224 PART TWO: AN EMPIRICAL ACCOUNT not primarily through concrete and direct communion with the bishop or even the presiding priest, but in Eucharistic sharing with his brothers and sisters. Secondly, the notion of ‘incomplete communion’ is important in BE’s interpretation. For BE, a proper basis for Eucharistic sharing is not only full unity but also partly realized communion. Eucharistic sharing, then, is both an expression of this incomplete communion and a means to allow it to grow towards more complete unity. For BE, in the end, full visible unity remains the goal of ecumenism. Analogous to BE’s question of what communion is, Brother TB asks what it means to be a community. The idea of growth has been explored already in depth in section 5.3. He explicitly connects the practice of Eucharistic sharing to the organic growth that takes place within the monastic community of Taizé: No, again, now, what does it mean to be a community? We speak about our community, no? There are communities of course, where you can live together from different churches... praying together, and then... ... taking part in the Eucharist in different forms, according to circumstances. Again, this is, this not model character, I, I... because, this exists, this exists, so... um... ... but in that form of community Brother Roger um, started here, it was clear for him that this would not be possible... (…) Um... it's not just.... made up, by some ideas... it's something more organic... um... and I think that was so important also for Brother Roger and the brothers, that the community would grow like a family, or like an organism, or like um... microcosm~ there are different words in the history of the~ but not something that you could put together, pieces... fitting, it's not mechanics, it's not Meccano {laughs}, but it's gardening, it's growing, it's... ... and I think, for this, this is probably one of the reasons why for him it was very important to say, we, we... we need to be one.498 TB indicates that for the kind of community that Taizé is and the way in which it believes its ecumenical progress to occur, it is essential to be intimately one, especially in celebrating the one Eucharist together. The current practice of the community, in which one form of Eucharistic liturgy is the norm, responds to this conviction. At the same time, TB, as well as others, regard the communities to be signs for the churches, as we have seen in section 6.4. Therefore, the dynamics within the communities can be signs for the dynamics between churches when it comes to communion. 498 TB-1,56.
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