I got to hear a Taize choir yesterday

Well, actually I got to do more than that; I got to sing with them. They needed me to do the parts of the Mass.

What wonderful contemplative music. One of the things I often have with Church music is that you spend too long trying to catch up with the meaning of a song. You'll be puzzling on a verse when you're already singing the refrain.

The Taize singers repeat a chorus, often in different languages, over and over again, slowly building it to a peak. This allows you to pour over the words and meditate a little on them as you sing them.

Words have many nuances. They mean more than they say so often, and it is often why religious people (of any religion) pour over scriptures they have already read so many times. It is as if they ask, "What else can these same words teach me?"

I feel sometimes like I spend my life in a fog. I will be busy contemplating what I've heard and what people have said, and in the meantime, they have already moved on to discussing something else. It can feel like you are in a time machine, trapped five seconds before the events you are observing.

This Taize singing helped me reach the feeling that what I was contemplating, what I was thinking about was the now. Now is always an instant, as St. Augusine observed. The past is a memory (a long one), and the future an expectation. But now is a fleeting instant.

Their songs help make now last a little longer. :-)