Remembering Brother Roger

A big thanks to Fr Mike Ryan at St. James Cathedral for putting together Friday night’s Taize service in memory of Brother Roger Schutz.  It’s a sad truth that we often don’t know someone until they’re gone, and that’s the case with Brother Roger.  Here are a few things I didn’t know until Friday:

1. Brother Roger was Protestant
2. Brother Roger had been at the work at Taize since 1940
3. Brother Roger and his colleagues had protected Jews during WWII
4. Brother Roger had started a community, and that Taize is more than a kind of music, it is a place, a community, a movement.
   

When I was in France in 2001, I drove right past the Taize sign on the tollway through Burgundy.  Never again!  How many other riches are there in the world that we never know about, because we don’t dig beneath the surface?