This morning I attended online meeting for worship sponsored by Pendle Hill for the second time and the second day in a row. I do not know if this will be a sustained practice — likely not. But I’m glad it is available to me.
[i]
My mind a chattering squirrel in a maple.
Return. Quiet.
From the next room
the long slow creak of the door.
The one I love loving me;
the noise of her trying to be soundless for me.
Return. Quiet.
Birds cry from 100 miles away.
Return. Quiet.
Then we are done.
[ii]
There are a number of online meeting for worship events popping up on the inter-web. Pendle Hill just happens to be the one where the time and the time zone fits me best. It runs from 8:30 AM to 9:10 AM in the Eastern Time Zone. If you’re interested click here.
[iii]
I am not familiar with Zoom (the platform Pendle Hill is using for its particular M4W experiment). So my first thoughts are that I am too engaged with the fiddly bits. I scroll through the participants lists looking for names and faces that are familiar. Perhaps a handful from online and one person I’ve met face-to-face.
It does not feel like Meeting for Worship. But not sure what it feels like. And again this may just me needing to get familiar with the process and the folkways. The closest thing I can compare it to is using a meditation app. The one I’m most familiar with is insight timer (it’s very good, but I’m not very good at using it) and it really doesn’t feel like mindfulness meditation using an app either. It’s a strange creature halfway between face-to-face worship in solitary meditation augmented by technology.
[iv]
One pattern I’m noticing (over only two meetings) the tendency for vocal ministry to draw heavily or even be exclusively the words of someone else. People are singing hymns. People are reading other people’s poems. That seems comfortable here in a way that would seem strange in a face-to-face meeting for worship.
Here I put on my philosopher of language hat. This is what some language theorists would call “appropriated discourse”: taking the words of another, repeating them, and thereby making them your own. It has always been a part of Quaker ministry but my experience has been that it is usually a smaller part.
Appropriated discourse is interesting because the same words in a new setting and in situations where the speaker is quite open about appropriating the others language sometimes shifts the sense or adds poignancy. A him from a more traditional church setting was sung but with some of the words changed to make them more Quaker-friendly for example (“Lord” becomes “God” and “I” becomes “we”).
Why is this I wonder? Perhaps we are less strict on the folkways when we are worshiping from our own space. Maybe we hunger for connection and connecting with others’ words helps us make that connection.
At the rise of worship we were asked to share prayers, blessings and reflections. It is clear the social isolation caused by COVID-19 ways on people’s thoughts. It is equally clear that carrying that through worship makes us mindful of those who bear the greater burden of this crisis: health care workers, front-line workers, and the people who are vulnerable to hunger, poverty and economic risk as a result of this pandemic.
May we each and all find ways of connecting with people in this time of social-distancing and may we also remember those who carry the greater burden of this crisis.
Friendly Quakersaurus 