Category Archives: Accompaniment

(This is a longer one, but it’s worth it.)

For a little over a year, our older son and I rode the train into Washington DC to the nearest public library story time.

We did this twice a week, no matter the weather, because the librarian, Philip, and the story time he orchestrated was that good.

I have thought often about why these 25 minute chunks of time were so consistently valuable to us. Here is what I’ve come up with.

Philip’s thoughtful preparation of the gathering was always evident.  Each story time was similarly structured but never was it stale.  It balanced predictability and variety in a way that oriented and delighted us.  Each session had a taste of music, typically accompanied by an instrument he would play, as well as a book or song in a language other than English.  His book selection represented excellent range and subtle humor as well as a general protection against the insipid volumes that too often characterize children’s literature.  

And his execution of each session was similarly full of care.  When leading the alphabet song, he would slow down around “L, M, N, O, P,” so that the children, for whom the letters were new, could distinguish them individually.  He would always read the name of the author and the illustrator so that we could find these or similar books later in the library.  He would often show up early to tune his violin or ukelele, and afterwards, show it to any child that might be around. His demeanor during the story time was gentle, friendly, and engaging, no small feat since the room was filled to capacity with 100 or so children and adults, carrying themselves with varying levels of courtesy. 

It occurred to me often that he could not have always felt like doing this.  But he did.  He did show up each time with remarkably consistent emotional endurance.  This consistency poured the love of language and music into our son. 

How was Philip able to show up as he did, with tender endurance, and so constantly?

I think it was his formation, in college and graduate school, as a musician and conductor.  For years, he dedicated himself to works of beauty and imagination within the musical form, and then shared that beauty in (perhaps imperfect, and so daringly vulnerable) performance for the enrichment of an audience.  We were seeing, 25 minutes at a time in that room at the back of the library, the fruit of his immersion in musical excellence.  He also has worked for years as a youth orchestral conductor and so, I must imagine, is primed to believe that young people are capable of a richer interior life than we often perceive or acknowledge.  Perhaps he looked at us, from his little plastic chair at the front of the room, as an orchestra of sorts in which artful language would grow richly and play out over a lifetime. 

The fruit that Philip’s talented endurance has borne in the life of our son is remarkable to consider and difficult to quantify.

From the time he was barely verbal, our son would hold story time in our living room, bracketing the session with Philip’s “hello” and “goodbye” songs, and lovingly displaying for me each page of each book he had chosen.  (There were usually about 30.)  He continued to do this months after we moved from Greater DC, and he knew more of the books’ words each time.

He often sorted his books into “Mr. Philip books” and “Non-Mr. Philip Books” and the familiarity with these titles and authors helped him navigate the shelves of any library.  (I even came into his room last week, now almost two years after our last story time, and he had selected a stack of “Mr. Philip” books and was paging through them.)

I was not in the least surprised, then, when my son and I both cried after we said goodbye to Philip following our last story time, days before we moved.

So.  Let us never underestimate the value of showing up to our work consistently with tender endurance. Indeed, it may be one of the most important decisions we will ever make and will certainly bear more fruit than we know.

I have a friend who actively seeks out media that communicates a worldview that he does not encounter very often or necessarily share. This is a unique and, I think, indispensable virtue for our times.

If we were in an ethics class, what would we call this virtue? Generosity of mind, perhaps? Self-interrogation? Active open-mindedness?

He is a principled person, certainly, and not swayed by every argument. Indeed, the utility of his virtue would be much diminished if he believed everything, or worse, nothing that he heard.

This generosity of mind makes him into a person capable of expansive relationships. This expansiveness represents a tremendous asset to our culture and helps him build a more just world.

If I swipe right on my iPhone, I can see the “Screen Time” widget, an itemized graph that shows me exactly how I spend time on my phone.

If we could access a similar report for our minds, what would it show? Chunks of time in the flow of generous creation? Obsessive analysis? Active listening? Beholding nature? Beholding a child? Learning something new? Prayer? What else?

Attending to how our mind attends to the world is occasionally frightening but certainly an enlightening and worthy endeavor.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I walked into a concert venue that had been converted into a COVID vaccine clinic. The volume of vaccines that this place could and has administered is enormous. All of this work was done one shot at a time.

In a world where so much happens so fast, we do well to remember that a great deal of the important things happen slowly, even tediously. Administering vaccines. Teaching a young person to read. Learning to articulate oneself in spiritual direction. Offering time in prayer.

Since this is the case, the way to make a difference, then, is to show up each day and attend to each interaction. One by one.

The first class I ever taught, in rural Uganda, had about sixty students.  My most recent class, some years ago in Chicago, had fourteen.  

Even in the class of fourteen, it was a challenge to shepherd each of their individual journeys toward growth.  

Now think about the challenge of teaching as a Catholic parish.  Maybe there are 3 full-time equivalent positions dedicated to formation and education.  And, say, that there are 1,000 parishioners.  That is a tough ratio for the educators.  How could the staff possibly know what you, individually, need?

To my mind, in this situation the best way for a parishioner to ensure their solid formation is to first develop the capacity to know what they need and then to seek it out.  

What can we do to make this easier?  That is how can we build structures that invite engagement as a kitchen and not a restaurant?  

PS – This is a different point, but here are some brilliant folks working on a development that would be a sea change for how we teach with integrity. Check them out!