French Monk’s Breakfast
In early August, I took a trip to France to spend a week at an ecumenical monastery in rural Taizé, Burgundy. With a group of 12 high schoolers. As a chaperone.
Whew.
In truth, it wasn’t nearly as overwhelming as it sounds. For one thing, I traveled with three other mentors, one of whom handled the lion’s share of the organization and logistics for the trip. And, most importantly, the high schoolers in question are just fantastic people, and it was a joy to travel with them. But it was by no means an easy trip. After a quick 24 hours in Paris (during which I ate ALL the cheese I could get my hands on), we were in considerably more rustic environs, sleeping on camp bunk beds, sharing extremely basic bathroom accommodations with hundreds of other people, and enduring temperatures in the upper 90s. There were very few creature comforts to be found—as one would rightly expect at a rural monastery.
Of course, this isn’t to say that there was no pleasure to be had in Taizé. Just to the north of our home base was another little commune called Ameugny, with beautiful cottages and vineyards, an old village church, and knockout views of the neighboring countryside. To the south was a winding country road lined with cow pastures, and starved for the company of my dog, I made it a point to walk down to the pastures to say hello to the cows nearly every day.
Without a doubt, though, the aspect of life in Taizé that I came to value more than any other was breakfast. (To quote Jack Donaghy: “How surprising—your worldview is food-based!”) While there was a truly upsetting shortage of coffee in Taizé (available in tiny plastic cups from a vending machine, if and only if the vending machine happened to be in service), breakfast still managed to be incredibly satisfying: each morning, after an early prayer service, each person got a tiny baguette, a mini packet of good butter, a couple batons of dark chocolate, and a big cup of hot chocolate (tea was also available, but I didn’t take them up on that even once). One of my favorite things was watching people vary their use of these components as the week went on. On my first morning, I accidentally dropped my chocolate baton into my hot chocolate, only to discover that I’d landed on a pretty popular method of consumption—once the hot chocolate was drained, there was melty chocolate to scoop up with the heel of the baguette. On other days, I’d stuff the chocolate baton into the baguette, sort of pain au chocolat style. Robby and Mary, my fellow chaperones, experimented with stirring powdered coffee (which Mary was smart enough to bring from home) into their hot chocolate, and Robby melted his butter in the drink once or twice. I don’t think we ever found a bad approach.
But breakfast wasn’t just about the food. It became important to me as a time to connect with Robby and Mary before the day took us on our separate adventures, a time to enjoy the only reliably comfortable weather we could count on all day, and a time to get myself mentally prepped for the day’s responsibilities (among other things, I was assigned to be a small group leader/camp counselor for a group of teens with primary languages other than English– also not as daunting as it could have been, thanks to all the kids in my group having hearts of gold). I almost always walked away from breakfast feeling that, whatever was coming, I could handle it.
The downside of trips like the one we took, which are intended to foster reflection and mindfulness, is that it’s really hard to keep the good vibes going once you get back home. Real life has a way of creeping back up on you really quickly, and before you know it, your meditative headspace is out the window. But something about the Taizé breakfast routine has stuck with me. I’ve found myself getting out of bed just a little earlier, taking just a little more time over my morning coffee (I learned in France that I could live without it, but I still strongly prefer not to), and taking a few moments each morning to reflect on the day before and ponder the day ahead. Maybe it helps that I now pour my morning coffee into a big mug handmade by one of the resident monks. Maybe it’s that I’m now less shy about incorporating chocolate into my morning meal. But whatever it is, I’ll take it.
