Accompaniment is our broad theme for Pierless Bridges 2023. In honor of an Earth Day event co-hosted by the Lane Center, let us turn to a briefing from the Laudato Si’ Research Institute housed within Campion Hall, the Jesuit college of the University of Oxford. “Accompaniment,” they write, “requires the formation of a culture of listening and of attentiveness to what happens to the lives of others, and to the lives of creatures and the health of ecosystems.”
The capacious view of accompaniment they highlight arises from within the resources of Catholic Social Thought, exhorting us to widen our circles of belonging so that the margins become the center. Our task is to enact in our communities a “spirituality of listening” that shapes our attentiveness, our space for empathy, and our desire for delight. Perhaps it is most difficult for us today to find ways to allow ourselves to expand our hearts so that we can include other species and ecosystems in our circles of belonging. Yet our call to solidarity extends that far; we have much to learn from listening closely to the One Earth we call our common home.
Whether it is community organizing (Brigham and Stanton), community building (Connor), earth-care (Valery), international collaboration (Olsen), discerning desire (Nguyen), prophetic witness (Dennis), or ethical Artificial Intelligence (Graves), our authors lead us into new ways of approaching accompaniment. As a way of being in relationship, accompaniment involves connection, attention, and commitment. It is a central theme within the Universal Apostolic Preferences guiding the global Jesuit network through 2029. The UAPs invite us to prioritize walking with youth and those who are marginalized, caring for our common home and pursuing the search for God through discernment and the Spiritual Exercises.
Pope Francis tirelessly encourages us to rely upon one another and accompany each other. We are interdependent and vulnerable creatures who require one another. Sharing our lives brings an intermingling of joy and sorrow, but if we are generous and merciful too, then the salve of healing is also available to renew human hearts. Our relationship to Earth needs also to be included. “For a healthy relationship between love of one’s native land and a sound sense of belonging to our larger human family, it is helpful to keep in mind that global society is not the sum total of different countries, but rather the communion that exists among them…. To see things in this way brings the joyful realization that no one people, culture, or individual can achieve everything on its own: to attain fulfillment in life we need others.”
Earth sustains our lives with abundance, beauty, and environments we call home. Ignatius of Loyola enjoyed referring to those around him as companions on the way. To be companionable in the Ignatian tradition involves the kinds of generative accompaniment our authors kindly share.
1. C. Deane-Drummond and S. Deneulin. ‘Accompaniment: Exploring its Meaning and Implications’. LSRI Briefing Note 2 (Oxford: Laudato Si’ Research Institute, Campion Hall, 2021), p. 7
2. The phrase “the margins become the center” originates with bell hooks (Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, 1984) and is commonly used by Fr. Gregory Boyle, S.J. in descriptions of Catholic accompaniment in Los Angeles. See bellhooksbooks.com/product/feminist-theory/
3. See C. Deane-Drummond and S. Deneulin, ibid., and the final synodal report from the special assembly for the Pan-Amazonian region, “The Amazon: New Paths for the Church and for an Integral Ecology,” § 20.
4. Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti, §§149–150. www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20201003_enciclica-fratelli-tutti.html
