The monks had to be up at some ungodly hour for their morning prayers, but no one woke us pilgrims. We had breakfast brought to us around eight, after which Mathieu and Camille headed off to Guernica.
I decided I would stay for the church service, and Helmut and Helga had the same plan. We had a relaxed morning, since the service didn't start until noon. Helmut was a retired deacon of the Catholic Church, and this interested me. He explained which sacraments he was allowed to administer and what the role of a deacon was and how it resembled that of a priest with fewer rights but more freedoms (like the freedom to get married) and how that itself caused tensions in some churches. We spoke of the Church in Austria and of ecumenical movements.
I asked him about partaking of the Eucharist without being Roman Catholic. One of the unique features of the monastery at Taize is that the Catholic and Protestant monks celebrate their communion services together without anyone being excommunicated. I have never understood how this works, because Roman Catholics are allowed neither to invite outsiders to the Eucharist, nor to partake of other churches' Eucharist services. I once hitched a ride with a Protestant in Bavaria, who told me he went to the Catholic school and was given the Eucharist just like all the other boys, even though the priests and monks at the school knew that he was Protestant. When the monk I talked to last night told me that he would be administering the Eucharist, I asked him if I could participate even though I was Anglican, and he said he saw no problem with it.
Helmut made a good-natured dismissing gesture. "If the Catholic church really enforced all these dogmas that it holds, we'd be in a lot of trouble," he said, which I couldn't help thinking was a curious thing for a deacon to say. But I couldn't really consider his view hypocritical either. He seemed to believe in a very organic relationship between the dogmas and the way they are lived out in practice, but this belief was coupled with a strong love and faith in his church.
The bells started ringing. As we walked towards the main entrance to the church building, I told them how much the monastic life fascinates me. "I often wonder if I'll end up as a monk myself," I said. "Even as a child, I was telling people that that's what I wanted to be."
"That could be a strong indication that this is your calling," said Helga.
In a way, this was exactly the sort of comment that I had long been hoping to hear. But even though I had not even been fishing for it exactly, it struck me with all the dissatisfying falseness of hearing someone say something you've tricked them into saying. Her comment had been sincere enough -- it even had that off-the-cuff sincerity -- but she had inadvertently touched a nerve. I became a little sullen.
"One would hope so," I murmured.
When I went on a pilgrimage through Spain in 2007, I repeatedly thought that I could write a book about everything that was happening in and around me. A few weeks after finishing the pilgrimage I started this blog instead. It may be the rough draft of an upcoming book -- who knows -- but it is my surrender to the urge to try to put into words what might better be left cloaked under a vow of silence.
