Accompaniment is a mode, not a method.

It is not a particular set of spiritual gifts. It is not memorizing a script. It is not a breadth of knowledge. It is simply the presence of love. It is active listening and seeking to know the person in front of you as if in that moment, they are the only one who exists. It is a call to be fully yourself in the presence of another, because it is in your unbarred presence that you embody your image bearer so beautifully. And when someone sees an image of God, they cannot resist revealing themselves back in the safety of love.

The main objective is to love well. 

The Holy Spirit is always at work in the lives of God’s children – long before we meet someone and long after. Each person that we interact with are at different spots in the harvest and we get the opportunity to partner with the Spirit, to come into relationship with people to help harvest. Our role as guides is to harvest the seeds that are already there.

Accompaniment is witnessing and reflection.

‍As guides we have the privilege of being able to witness the sacredness of the life in front of us and witness how this unique and unrepeatable person has journeyed through this world. This is a privilege that can never be taken for granted. Yet, it is also not a requirement to bring understanding or insight into this space, although with God’s grace those things are welcomed as they emerge. What is essential for us guides is that we offer our “widows mite” to God knowing that he accepts our offering as whole in our attempts to reflect the life we are witnessing back to the person in the presence of God despite our skill level, gifting, or personality. 

Accompaniment is being non-judgemental.

There was a story by one of our guides. He sat with a stranger in his living room, surrounded by their mutual families. He noticed several tattoos on the man across the table from him that looked really interesting to him. They were very intricate and unique art pieces. Tattoos were not something this man had every really been drawn to — in fact, he admitted that he might have even judged someone by this. But in that moment he actively decided to put away his visceral judgement and be curious. “Hey, I’d love to hear the story about your tattoos. I really like the detail of the art.” The man with tattoos and his wife smiled, and he said, “Oh, my wife designed them.”  The table seemed to be drawn into curiosity. From there, the conversation launched into him telling his stories of his life. The guide continued to ask questions, be curious. To wonder. And it was at the end of the conversation that the man with tattoos told, with tears in his eyes, the moment in his story where he really became his own person. The room was palpable as it all witnessed the heart of this man. 

It’s easy to fall into habits or patterns of thinking that actually don’t align with how we want to see the world. We know we are called not to judge, and yet, it easily sneaks into our minds when someone is loud and unruly in a public space, or cuts in line at the grocery store, or chooses a lifestyle so far from your own. 

But what if we pushed down those initial movements within ourselves to ask the Spirit to help us see the person the way God sees them? 

Accompaniment is Presence 

“The Lord bless you and keep you. May his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord show you his favour and give you his peace”(Numbers 6:24-26)

Aaron speaks this famous blessing over the people of Israel. It is in this blessing that he communicates the nature of God by revealing God's desire for his people. It is this desire that defines God's character as one who wills the good of the other, to be in a communing relationship, and to experience a life of peace. Aaron is present to the people of Israel in such a way that he makes the heart of God available to His people which is always experienced as blessing

This is the presence we bring to another. That’s what being an image bearer of the God who is love looks like.  And by being this presence, we invite an experience of God in a different way. As you reflect the character and the interests of God to another through witnessing their life, caring, and compassionate curiosity of the person in front of you, the grace of God will be revealed in this ministry of presence.

This kind of presence to another is immediate and available to all of us in the Spirit. This gift is latent in all of us, ready to emerge. And it’s this that you must know and remind yourself often in this journey: It’s less about the skill involved, and more deeply about the intention of love towards another.. 

C.S. Lewis once wrote,

“It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself is truly hidden.” 

If this is our motive, then the skills will emerge. We are all made to love. It’s that simple. And this already-built-in-you ability is your greatest gift, including operating in it fully as yourself.

And so if the main objective is to love well, here are some tools to hold onto in service of love: 

• Let love & curiosity guide you. - Listen to their heart and pursue the heart of their story. The goal is that they experince love.
• Be unhurried - Relationships take time and are not looking for an end goal. Avoid being in problem solving mode – we are not trying to solve someone or get them from A to B.
• Seek to understand - Get out of your own lens of how you see the world. Take the time to understand someone else, without any kind of assumption of how you see the world.
• Trust the Spirit is already moving, and is the agent of change. - We are not the ones who transform someone; the Spirit does. You are never alone in guiding.