Zoom

Shortly before the era of zoom, I attended a meeting with quakers, and after the meeting started, no one said a word for 30 minutes. It was 20 people together in a room not talking.

It felt radically spiritually ancient. Unprogrammed quaker meetings are like improvisational theater for mystics, in body and spirit. The mystics don’t lead or follow. We gather with no script, no prayers, and we wait to see who or what shows up. It’s boring and thrilling, unknown, organic, stimulating, and empty. 

Now I zoom with quakers. 
We pop into the meeting.
We click mute until we are ready to speak.

Zooming shows a different side of people. More intimate, less guarded, more natural. Maybe it’s because my vantage point is from a lap, couch, kitchen table, home office, or studio. From different angles, I see different sides of people.

I don’t want to switch to zoom over sharing space, but I like noticing this in the midst of isolation. 

Sometimes social media is a place to put a personally upsetting event, air it out. Friends are often supportive. Or they might say: this never happened to me; I don’t know what you’re talking about; are you sure? Have you thought of it this way? Do you want to know how I feel? 

When people voice their experience, it doesn’t matter if it never happened to us or anyone we know. It happened to them. That’s enough. I’m not saying we have to agree or claim it as our own. I am suggesting we practice saying, I heard that happened to you.

The power of neutrality! Validation!

I do believe in fact checking and quality sources of information. However, people’s feelings are their feelings, their experiences are their own.

We zoom in and learn new things from this new experience. Take breaks as needed. 

Pandemics show clearly our values and natural hair color. Truth grows from pandemics; it can’t stay hidden.

Through repeated experiences, I realize I have no control over the opinions of others. For many, those were set a long time ago. I practice releasing other people’s baggage. I don’t want to add it to what I already carry. Sifting through baggage during the pandemic and dropping it in bulk likely boosts our immune system.

If I am elected president in 2020, I will mandate soothe patrols in red and blue states. It was nearly ready to roll-out and then the pandemic hit.

A few details about the patrols. It’s a slow social medicine, and by slow, I mean patient and time consuming. Emergency medicine isn’t working that well for chronic problems. It will provide a lot of jobs. Massage therapists and good listeners will be in the highest demand. Soothe patrols will spring forth throughout neighborhoods in an effort to reduce some of the angst/anger/violence before the police have to show up.

We are going to bring back the practice of agreement. It will start small, like kindergarten lessons, with say, a picture of a cupcake. We can start agreeing together what a cupcake is. It’s a little cake with frosting.

In the meantime, practice soothe patrols in your own space. Take it with you when you go out.

The other day, four of us quakers got together, at a distance, in the nearby wooded forest, and walked, then stood still. We gave thought to a couple of queries. We stood in a circle, under tall trees while wind swirled around us and through them. It felt like we were connecting to the ground, sky, trees, wind, each other. And the spirit in all of that.

It was a pause in the day that stood out as soothing and substantial, lighter, and more hopeful.