One of the best ways to bring people together is through song.   Singing opens our hearts and gets us beyond our minds and our fears, and returns us to our inner faith and knowledge of God.   The Taizé community recognized this and developed a body of music that would be easy for everyone to sing.   Each song is repeated many times to deepen the meditation.   Many of the songs were done in Latin so they would not be biased toward any one language--and also because of the meditative beauty of Latin.

 Today the Taizé community has more than 80 brothers, in the village of Taizé and around the world.   They take monastic vows but still keep their affiliation to their original denomination.   Thousands of people, including many young adults, make a pilgrimage to Taizé each year to sing and pray together.   And thousands of churches hold Taizé prayer services, singing the same songs throughout the world, as St. Andrew's Episcopal Church has.

 Lance and Christina, the co-ordinators for these services at St Andrew's have relocated to North Carolina.  With their departure the Taizé Services have discontinued but we hope that other members of the congregation will decide to take over this worthwhile program of prayer.

This site was designed courtesy of Crystal Cloud Graphics using digital camera images of the historic St. Andrew's Church in Ben Lomond, California and modified using XARA.  This site is navigable for the seeing impaired.  Contact web mistress Kythera Ann with comments or questions.