From the Rev Liz Dawes September 2025

Rev Liz Dawes
Curate, Great Yarmouth Parish

I’ve recently returned from an amazing trip to a very special place in France called Taizé. It’s a religious community of monks, set up originally by Brother Roger, which welcomes thousands of young people from around Europe to camp there for a week and join in with the worship and activities. If you are familiar with Taizé, then you will most likely know the very distinctive and beautiful musical chants they use in their worship. I was invited by the Bishop of Norwich to go along as a chaplain with a group of young adults from around the Diocese
 
It’s a long journey by coach and ferry, loaded up with all our camping stuff, which takes about 17 hours so we arrived early on the Sunday morning and set up our camp. We then headed off for breakfast which is a bread roll, two sticks of chocolate and a bowl of hot chocolate. Meals are very basic but they are catering for several thousand people! The day consists of morning prayer in the chapel every morning, followed by breakfast. Then Bible Study with one of the brothers followed by small group study, then midday prayer and lunch. In the afternoons everyone has jobs to do, cleaning, cooking or running the bar etc and then there’s church again in the evening. It’s a full-on day but you get time to meet other people and have some free time as well
 
[Text Box:] We joined up with people from Bath and Wells Diocese, as well as Portsmouth, Bristol and York Dioceses with their Bishops. I was very pleased indeed to meet the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cotterell, who led a communion service for us in the village church and gave a really fantastic workshop on the Lord’s Prayer. We also had a trip to the local farm shop for ice creams and an afternoon in Cluny, the nearest town, which was lovely. Taizé is an amazing place, and the worship is really something you have to experience for yourself. The music and the ten minutes of silence at each service are really powerful. A great trip which I would recommend to any young person exploring faith

Revd Liz

photo courtesy of Great Yarmouth Parish
 

Rev Liz Dawes is the Curate for Great Yarmouth Team Ministry. Liz trained as a Reader in 2014 and has also worked with the CYF team at the Diocese of Norwich.  She was ordained as curate in 2023

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