Learning a New Dance
Growing accustomed to life in this new place can be like joining a new dance company. The music, costumes, steps, and routine are all different from your usual dance of life. You may trip or feel shy. You stick out like a sore thumb. You bump into others. You just can’t get the beat.

Then you take a look in the mirror on the dance studio wall. You observe the company. You listen to the music. You watch the people move with each other. You begin to imitate a step. You take note of the movements. Someone throws a scarf around you. Another person catches you by the arm. Soon you are moving along in this new dance. You are learning the way of accompaniment.

Accompaniment is joining another people in their walk or dance through life. You are quite familiar with the ways in which you move through life. You know how work, play, celebration, mourning, worship happen in your culture. Now you discover the colors and rhythms and movements of another culture. You are introduced to new ways of being and doing. There are families, schools, town councils, churches, civic groups all functioning in ways that are both familiar and foreign to you. Accompaniment is entering into the way of life of the people you visit. You do not have to adopt it as your way, but you walk along and join in as you are able.

New Ways Take Work
You may find accompaniment to be unsettling or energizing...or both. You may feel lost in all this newness. You may long for the familiar. You may become fascinated by aspects of the life in the place you visit. Or, things may disturb you. You may fall in step as if this were the most familiar place in world to you. Or you may wonder if you will ever relate to this journey at all.
Accompaniment requires discipline. It requires self-control to prevent you from trying to fix things which seem broken to you. Check yourself in that studio mirror to make sure you have not tried to put yourself on the front line and take the lead. And check that you are not falling behind or doing your own dance on the edge.

Those you visit may talk to you of their hopes. They may talk of change that needs to happen. They may invite you to be part of a process to bring about change. Being invited to work for change is different from trying to change things to suit your vision of what is needed.

Same Church, Different Church
When you journey as a person of faith, the church may be the place where this reality of same yet different touches you most deeply. A church which bears the same name as your church at home could bear little resemblance to it. This, too, could be refreshing or disconcerting. You are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. Allow them to pull you into their dance so you understand their story. Listen for the story of God from their perspective.

You might sense immediately that the gospel is being shared with you in new and exciting ways. Or, you might experience expressions of the faith or church structures with which you are ill at ease. Accompaniment might lead you to share some of the worship experiences with your church at home. Or, it might keep you from judging harshly a ritual or tradition which confuses you.

Taking the Dance Home
When you return home, you will be the one with a little different step. You may still be wearing that scarf that was thrown around you. You might yearn for the marketplace the next time you are at the mall. You may try to dance your old dance with a bit of the new beat. As others notice, those steps will give you ways to tell the story of the dance of the others, even as you dance at home.