The Most Beautiful Thing I’ve Read Today
Brother Roger, who founded the Taizé community in France, was stabbed and killed during a prayer service earlier this week. I’m ashamed to say that I knew very little about this man or his community before his death.
But Meg at Bridget Jones Goes to Seminary did, for she spent time at Taizé only two months ago. Today, Meg finally wrote about Brother Roger’s death, in a post that is as confessional as it is beautiful.
Ultimately, Brother Roger’s gruesome death at the hands of this woman has been difficult for me to face head-on. I kept hoping a tidy, little theodicy would pop into being and make sense of it all. How does a man committed to God and exemplifying godly peace to the world, die at the hands of human violence? How will a community committed to reconciliation respond when the wrong is so gross and so intimate? How do I go through life in this sin-soaked world knowing that a moment and space I had trusted to be an oasis of peace has been marred by the raw evil I can acknowledge anywhere but there?
Let us be under no illusions, the entire cosmos groans with longing and expectation. Sin permeates every molecule of this world, even our most sacred spaces. Not to put too fine a theological point on it: life sucks. There are no garunteed happy endings, not even (or especially) for followers of Christ, who is the Crucified One.
And yet...
And yet.
I love those two words. Meg does, too.