I went to church twice last weekend, for the first time in years. I don’t mean that it’s been years since I had a multiple liturgy weekend, although that’s also true and used to be normative for me, but honestly, I haven’t attended church other than my own more than 4 or 5 times in the last 3 or 4 years. My mother and stepfather’s funerals in 2018. Easter Vigil 2019 at a friend’s church. A few guest preaching gigs in 2019, one at the church I visited Saturday. I’ve officiated a wedding and a funeral, but they were both outside. I haven’t been inside a church space for its usual worship service at all since Covid shut us down 2 years ago. So two different congregations, Saturday and Sunday apiece, was a slice of an old life.
It was surreal.
I and a handful of others remained masked at one church, and it felt fine. I haven’t received any of the backlash against my mask-wearing that others report. None at all. Some stares in Grand Junction, CO, but it could have been how I was dressed or my many tattoos as well. Everyone was masked throughout the entirety of the Sunday visit.
For the first time since my own church last met in 2021, I had conversations with small groups of people, one of my favorite activities of all time. That they were strangers to me was even better, because it meant that I might hear completely new things.
Interestingly, I heard many of the same messages and phrases I’ve been musing over myself, and that my small community has noted. This has been a time of learning to breathe, of learning to value slowing down when it is possible, of finding new patterns and shedding old burdens, of re-sorting priorities and making different choices, of drawing new boundaries around what is acceptable.
I know it has been very different for people who have children, but even in that difficult and messy situation, I’m hearing reports that the increased family time is something to keep as a priority. I expect that several folks I know who have young children will scale back their ‘career path’ momentum and maybe find different races to run.
Three times over the weekend, people told me that being able to get out and see friends or family has been healing. It strikes me that many of these social interactions that used to perfunctory -expected attendance at church or participation in a book club or being a regular at a bar or in a coffee shop community- many of these must now be intentional to happen at all.
I think this may be a very good thing, a good thing indeed.
I do miss the spontaneous interaction, the random conversation struck up with a stranger. Those time will return, I am sure. They are starting to in small ways now. Especially for my extrovert self, those conversations feed me and lead me into new connections. But it is these other points of connection I want to focus on right now.
It is the small connections that anchor us not only to each other, but to our own lives and selves. I’m a fan of the four-way stop as a traffic intervention because it forces interaction between drivers. But all the small exchanges matter. Nodding to the stranger we pass on the street, or the neighbor. Taking the extra minute for the next question. It’s more than giving up a parking place. I’m not advocating for random kind acts (although these are great and should be done) but rather for an increase in the connective tissue of community. Just maybe not in the ways we’ve done it before…
I’ve been to many a large meeting that was simply too big to manage. Too many people to have authentic exchange, too cavernous a room to hear conversation, too many issues for real depth. For many years, I have been disturbed by our grasping for numbers instead of action and change. 10,000 people at your rally is useless if you can’t plug them into your movement. Churches measure all thresholds of health and viability by how many members attend and how much money they give, rather than metrics that matter like suffering relieved or Creation protected, ways in which the gospel is manifest or people set free from that which binds them.
Covid forced us into pods and households, shut down our ability to even host many of these things. All of my regular meetings are still being held virtually, and zoom-exhaustion is a real thing, for sure. But I have had deep and fruitful relationships online for many, many years. One of the truths of this time is that those relationships have become normative enough that the virtual connection world has some use.
There have been several benefits of a Zoom-run world, a world in which attendance at an event or gathering is dependent on your internet access. Obviously the digital divide, that gap between those well resourced in the digital sphere and those who do not have that access, is a problem. And yet, the increased access for those who are rarely able to attend in-person gatherings regardless of Covid is immense. Many people have been barred as a matter of course due to mobility, health vulnerability, or other requirements.
For me, it’s been a chance to build an online community that specifically isn’t local. It can be hard to gather people to come to a bible study if one doesn’t have a traditional congregation, where at least a few people will come just to be polite. Spirituality Collective hosts a weekly bible study on Zoom, and only one other person who comes lives in my city.
It also occurs to me how useful the digital experience might be for the introvert, or the person who isn’t quite sure he wants to be a part of a new group, but wants to see what it’s like. Being able to drop into a lecture or a campaign meeting, an online discussion of a favorite book or a local community group, without having to come in person means that it is easy to back out if the vibe is bad, easy to engage more fully if you wish, and easy to return -or not. If said introvert finds something interesting and it is within her region, it’s an opportunity to build an in-person community, maybe make new friends.
Many of us have that ring of friends and acquaintances we wish we saw more, or we enjoy time around but rarely make the space for more. Or people we’ve liked when encountered but with whom we’ve never pursued a friendship. And there are the close relationships that have languished because we simply have not been able to gather safely as we used to -the people we would see daily, but without the regular stops or shifts, we don’t.
No one is going to be good at this right away. We can push the past onto our current realities, and that can feel good for a while. We can try and re-create a life we used to have. But were those late night bar conversations really as great as we remember? Maybe a few of those people over for home-popped popcorn and several bottles of better wine would yield even more laughter and real talk. The online gaming group can start a new campaign, smaller and face to face. The Mutual-Aid organizers whom I’ve encountered would be unstoppable forces if given a weekend intensive strategy session or three.
We are all connected even in our isolation, and we must find ways to feed this, ways to build new communities, ways to deepen our relationships. We need small connective actions that move us outward. I cannot over-emphasize the importance of these intentional actions being small to start. It is easy to be overwhelmed by sensory input, or by new-old-new social expectations that are our defaults. Every journey begins with a single step, it is said, and that step is but a fraction of the journey itself. But it is a crucial one, and it’s not a leap.
Next week, I’ll turn back inward to the Connection Actions Within. They aren’t really separate, of course. We are both solitary individuals with our own connections to the Universe and part of larger communities that need each other to survive -as it should be.