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by Betsey Norgard
In October,
Augsburg participated in the month-long visit to Minnesota of two brothers from
the Taize community in France—an international, ecumenical community that
invites young people from around the world to share in experiences of living
together and serving in community. To prepare for this visit, Pastor Dave Wold and two Augsburg sophomores, Carolina Chiesa and Maja Lisa FritzHuspen spent a week in August at the Taize community. Students from other Minnesota colleges had also visited Taize. The Taize experience is one of simplicity and meditation. Each week of the summer, some 3,000-6,000 young people visit Taize for a week of daily prayers (three times a day), discussion sessions, and communal activities—serving food, cleaning, and daily tasks. The power of the Taize experience is in worship—"a meditative common prayer with, as its high point, singing that never ends and that continues in the silence of one's heart when one is alone again," as the Web site describes it. Worship consists only of singing, scripture readings, and the Lord's Prayer. During daily prayers, the church is filled with young people sitting on the floor, holding candles, and singing the plaintive songs of worship. The rosy light that filters through stained glass windows, and the illumination of the candles lend a soothing, calming, and healing presence, worshipers attest. It is this atmosphere the Augsburg students sought to replicate for Augsburg's Taize visit. "The difficulty was the sun coming in, it was too bright," explained Chiesa, thinking of worship planned for Hoversten Chapel. So, they came up with a way to replicate the special light in the Taize church. They returned home with postcards of the stained glass windows and scanned them on computer. The scans were then copied to transparencies. With an overhead projector displaying the images onto paper taped to a door, the students traced the lines of the stained glass and then painted them after the postcard images‹some taking as many as 15 hours to complete. The painted "windows" were mounted in the center of lightweight frames, with pink and orange fabrics on either side, constructed by Jim Usselman. When fitted into the arched windows of Hoversten Chapel, indeed a rosy, warm, dim light transformed the space.
"It was cool to see the outcome," said sophomore Mary Jo Zamora, "and then realize that you couldn't have done it alone." "Like beautiful icons, the work seems done through God, instead of just our own hands," Cheisa added. Visitors to Augsburg's worship who had been at Taize were also visibly moved. "It took me back to Taize; I felt as if I were there," one of the participants said. The student project has made an impact. The idea of creating a stained glass look without the real thing was noticed by a number of people who would like to try something similar in their own churches. For these students, however, the essence of Taize came to Augsburg through its art and song—"Ubi Caritas, where charity and love are, there is God also."
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Augsburg College all rights reserved. |
The
students were delighted with the results.