A Teacher's Book

Accompanying the Child
mm

I have used this painting as a background to my workshops over the past year, realising that it articulates exactly what I am trying to say about the task of parenting, or the task of teaching (or indeed the task of consulting).

To accompany a child requires such attentiveness, but to accomplish this requires a ‘living field’ to be opened up between the parameters of shelter and challenge. Getting it right — this activity of parenting, of teaching — is an art. Many years ago I read one of the most important books for my life: Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving. He asks, what are the necessary steps in learning any art? And he suggests there are two aspects: ‘one, the mastery of the theory; the other, the mastery of the practice’. Now, often today we shrink from the word ‘theory’; too much in this domain seems academic, abstract, mind-jarring. But the word derives from the Greek word theōrein = to behold, to contemplate. This is the activity I seek to develop in my work - a way of seeing things. Then, to establish intelligent praxis - a way of doing things…

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I want to tell you a story — one you can find in both the Catholic and the Orthodox Old Testaments (the Protestant Church having declared it apocryphal). Tobit is blinded, and his son Tobias undertakes a journey to Media, to collect a sum of money his father had deposited some time earlier. Azariah, a relative who offers to accompany the youth on his journey, is in fact the Archangel Raphael, sent to protect and guide him.

Over in Media, a young woman Sarah prays for death. She despairs because each of her seven newly-wed husbands has died on his wedding night. This would trouble anybody. Raphael’s mission from God is to heal Tobit and free Sarah from the demonic curse afflicting her.

En route to Media to collect the money, Tobias is attacked by a giant fish which he kills, and then removes its heart, liver and gall. In Media he meets Sarah, entreats her family to be allowed to marry her, and is instructed by Raphael to first burn the fish’s heart and liver on their wedding night to drive away the demon. And yes, it works.

Then, collecting the money and returning to his father, Tobias uses the fish’s gall to cure his blindness. Raphael reveals his true identity and departs.

You can recognise this story in the painting to the right by Francesco Botticini, ‘Youth with Archangels’, which departs however from the original Biblical narrative in two aspects. Tobias carries the actual fish, not its organs — perhaps because in a visual depiction, organs would be a rather obscure reference to say the least. And there are now three Archangels — Michael, Raphael, Gabriel — accompanying Tobias across an apparent wilderness area with a typical north Italian landscape in the background.

Michael strides ahead, wearing armour and carrying his sword at the ready; in his left hand he holds a golden orb which might represent the Sun (with which he traditionally is associated), and the way towards the future. In other paintings, Michael is more typically depicted spearing the dragon — like his earthly counterpart St George. But one feature is in common — he gazes sharply out of the pictorial space at the viewer, as if saying, ‘I have my mission, and I know what I’m doing — what about you?’

To the right, and slightly nearer the viewer, rosy-winged Gabriel, Archangel of the Annunciation, walks bare-footed across the terrain and holds a lily in one hand. This lily and the white robe evoke traditional associations with the Moon, the past, and the forces of generation and birth. But it is the look that Gabriel casts back over his shoulder that attracts attention — an anxious gaze that seems to say, ‘Why did we ever leave the Garden of Eden? And where’s the big bad wolf?’

I need to explain this a little. Gabriel is the sheltering guardian of conception, childbirth and early childhood, who inspires both nurture and protection. The world is a problem, full of danger, and the loss of primal innocence. The wish to remain in Paradise is implicit in this mood. And it is in contrast to the challenging gesture and gaze of Michael. I want to suggest that these two gestures — of shelter and of challenge — are complementary gestures that represent the range of the parent or the teacher. ‘Come here,’ we say gently, offering comfort and care. ‘Wake up!’ we say, confronting the emerging Self of the child. When the child is young, we tend the developing soul with the protective, dreamier gesture — then, as they grow older, it is important that the child experiences the other, sharper injunction…

These two gestures establish the parameters — the human boundaries as it were — for the real work of accompanying the child. For together they form an ‘in-between’ space, a dynamic place where we find Raphael tending the youth. Now, we know a few things about Raphael. He is the Judeo-Christian equivalent of Mercury, messenger of the gods, the great communicator, and also the healer — he bears in his right hand a small casket or jar such as might hold a potion or remedy. His robe’s silvery-grey colour suggests this connection with the metal quicksilver (mercury). Just look at this activity of attentiveness! Such a focussed look of intent devotion, and the trust illustrated in the remarkable way that Tobias’s hand rests in the cupped fingertips of his companion… As though saying, ‘I am with you — let’s go along this way together.’

And the first two gestures — indeed, those beings — make this communion-presence of the third possible.

[Adapted from A Teacher’s Book – Immortal Books 2008 ISBN 978-0-9750553-6-6]