Season 1, episode 5. In this episode of Quakers Today we ask, What are your thoughts and feelings about virtual online worship communities? 

• Writer Linda Seger talks about the essential work of centering into quiet as part of her regular writing process. In her QuakerSpeak interview, “Quakerism, Creativity, and the Artistic Process,” Linda shares about her approach to creativity and spirituality and how it is shaped by her Quaker faith.
  • “Being able to center allows you to go to the computer to start that process without being in a frenetic desperate state.”
  • Linda also wrote the article “Nothing Can Separate Us from the Light” for the March issue of Friends Journal, in which she asks the question, “How isolated are we?”
• Ann Jerome shares with us the success of creating and maintaining a sacred online gathering. She wrote the Friends Journal article, “We Listen as God Listens: Cultivating Sacred Space Online.”
  • “The format is similar to worship sharing. What distinguishes it as unique is a handful of elements. One is the nature of the queries, which are written to be especially deeply searching and broadly welcoming.” Ann agreed to share some of the queries with us.
    • What is silence, in addition to the absence of sound?
    • When have you experienced rebirth?
    • How do you know when you’ve entered sacred space, or when sacred space has entered you?
    • How has God surprised you lately?
  • Click here to listen to Ann Jerome read her entire article.

• And Anita Bushell talks about the many ways she believes Zoom fails to provide the connections Quakers need. You can read her article, Zoom Spells Doom and Gloom: The False Promise of Virtual Meetings.
  • “When we are present, fully 100% present with each other in person, we are not doing anything else. I think that social skills and social interactions always excite me.”

You will find a complete transcript of this episode below after the show notes.

After the episode concludes we share voicemails from listeners who answered the question, What are your thoughts and feelings about virtual online worship communities?

 

Question for next month

In the April issue of Friends Journal we will consider revival and personal spiritual growth. 

What about you? What is a daily practice that clears your head and steadies you for the day?

Leave a voice memo with your name and the town where you live. The number to call is 317-QUAKERS, that’s 317-782-5377. +1 if calling from outside the USA.

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Transcript for Quakers and Virtual Communities

SPEAKERS

Peterson Toscano, Ann Jerome, Anita Bushell, Linda Seger

Peterson Toscano  00:00

In this episode of Quakers Today, we ask, “What are your thoughts and feelings about virtual online worship communities? Writer Linda Seger talks about the essential work of centering into quiet as part of her regular writing process.

Linda Seger  00:14

Being able to center allows you to go to the computer to start that process without being in a frenetic desperate state.

Peterson Toscano  00:23

Ann Jerome shares with us the success of creating and maintaining a secret online gathering.

Ann Jerome  00:30

We’ve been astonished to discover that this profound practice works not despite but because of its online framework.

Peterson Toscano  00:38

And Anita Bushell talks about the many ways she believes Zoom fails to provide the connections Quakers need.

Anita Bushell  00:45

I would argue that I’m not a Zoom hater. I look at zoom in the way that certain individuals might look at their vegetables.

Peterson Toscano  00:55

I’m Peterson Toscano. This is the fifth episode of Quakers Today podcast, a project of Friends Publishing Corporation. The first season of Quakers Today is sponsored by Quaker voluntary service. 

Peterson Toscano  01:08

Ann Jerome is a member of a spiritually significant online community. She writes about her experiences in the Friends Journal article, “We listen as God Listens, cultivating sacred space online.” She agreed to read excerpts from her article.

Ann Jerome  01:27

Video conferencing is testimony to the fact that friends practice is dependable, always and everywhere. The faithful Friends’ process went like this. There’s a pandemic starting and it’s going to be challenging in unprecedented ways. I will need a new kind of spiritual support, perhaps with the constancy of a spiritual nurture group, and the exploratory quality of worship sharing, but with more spiritual intimacy, and in a format that can reach across long distances, it should capture the pandemic’s opportunity to foster spiritual growth. The result, shaped for nearly three years by a series of loving hands and hearts, is an ongoing practice that has become an essential spiritual discipline for many friends. We’ve been calling it deep listening, or in the words of my predecessor as convener, “small groups to speak and listen deeply.” 

Ann Jerome  02:23

It has some familiar characteristics, but those who attend agree that it’s a new and distinct form. Ironically, meeting from a distance brings us closer together, we get closer to each other’s faces than we would if we were together in person. And when we’re moved to show each other something, we may even virtually tour each other’s homes. What we have learned from those who’ve been meeting in this practice for years now is that deliberate, focused listening invites love in the practice itself is very simple as convener, I create a query each week, and a day before our meeting, I send it to an email list of about 60 friends. At our weekly meeting time, friends gather in an online video conference for a little over an hour, we have 10 minutes of waiting worship, a half hour of sharing about the query in pairs or groups of three or 415 or 20 minutes of reflection with all those present, and a few minutes of worship to close. 

Ann Jerome  03:28

The format is similar to worship sharing. What distinguishes it as unique is a handful of elements. One is the nature of the queries, which are written to be especially deeply searching and broadly welcoming. Another is that relatively little direction is given the query stand alone without advices or accompanying texts. The sacred space we’ve created extends into breakout rooms. Moving between the whole group and smaller ones, creates the space for deep connection within a wider community and randomly composing the small groups allows friends to experience this intimacy with different people each week. 

Ann Jerome  04:10

We gravitate naturally to customs familiar in worship sharing. Each person speaks once before anyone speaks twice, we use time equitably. We speak from our own experience and hold others’ sharing and confidence we receive without judging, correcting or offering assistance. Most importantly, we set aside the habits of secular conversation. When we returned to the whole group to reflect on our experiences in the breakout rooms, friends often express all people report breakthroughs to new spiritual understanding, even when they had expected to have nothing to say about the query for the day. 

Ann Jerome  04:50

We find, too, that cultivating these sensations for an hour a week, makes them more available to us the rest of the time. One friend, whose goal is to live in a prayerful worship full truthful state, finds this a gymnasium to train toward that end. One significant factor in such results is the presence of many deeply faithful and experienced friends who cultivate and model the quality of listening that has always been central to friends practice. Welcoming newcomers one or two at a time, has helped to keep a balance between stability and dynamic growth. Since a different group attends each week, we’re evoking the principle and sensation of community rather than creating a community in the way that for example, monthly meetings do. 

Ann Jerome  05:42

We’ve been astonished to discover that this profound practice works not despite but because of its online framework. In this new custom, which has grown from old ones, new technology combines with methods that have always been at the heart of friend’s practice, to reconnect us with the power of profound listening.

Peterson Toscano  06:05

That was Ann Jerome reading excerpts from her article “We listen as God Listens, Cultivating Sacred Space online. It’s available in the March 2023 issue of Friends Journal. You can hear a recording of and reading the entire article, or you can read it for yourself at FriendsJournal.org. 

Peterson Toscano  06:25

Coming up, we hear from someone who has a very different opinion about building Quaker community on Zoom. Anita Bushell will talk about the false promises of virtual meetings. 

Peterson Toscano  06:37

But first, during the pandemic, Linda Seger spent a lot of time on Zoom, connecting with friends around the world. Zoom worship grounded her spiritually. And as a writer, she practices personal quiet contemplation in order to tap into the creative, artistic process.

Linda Seger  06:56

I live in the mountains of Colorado, about five or eight miles from Colorado Springs. And I’m actually what I call a Quaker at large now, which means I am taking advantage of the Zoom meetings that are all over the world. I go to Portland, Oregon, I go to Cambridge, Massachusetts, sometimes to New Zealand on Saturday afternoons. And I’m finding that a very, very rich experience, partly because my next book is going to be about Quakers. 

Linda Seger  07:29

When we start getting ready to write, being able to center allows you to go to the computer to start that process without being in a frenetic desperate state. And I find that that intersection is very close to Quakerism. And I think also that sense of being called to do your art, whatever that art form is. 

Linda Seger  07:54

I usually start the writing with some quiet time. Just say, you know, God, this is this is the next step. So be with me and let your Spirit be with me. In the beginning of Genesis, it says the Spirit of God hovered over the deep. And the correct translation seems to be the word hover rather than move. And I got to thinking that that’s what Quakers do. We hover, we hover before we speak. And that’s what the artists can do is before you go over to the easel before you go to the computer, just sit there and hover for a minute. One person described it as the diver on the board before they dive in, that they have that moment of anticipation. 

Linda Seger  08:43

Nobody makes us do our art. It is very rare for anyone to say, I will make you paint that picture or write that novel or do what that is. So we have to have joy not just in the result, we have to have joy in the process. And whatever we have to do to create joy in the midst of the discipline. I think that becomes just as important as creating the piece

Peterson Toscano  09:12

That was Linda Seger and an excerpt from the QuakerSpeak video, “Quakerism Creativity,  and the Artistic process.” You will find the full video and other QuakerSpeak videos at the QuakerSpeak channel on YouTube, or visit QuakerSpeak.com. 

Peterson Toscano  09:31

While Linda and Anne point to Zoom meetings as a meaningful way to connect with others in a faith community, one writer in Brooklyn, New York has no love for online video worship spaces. Anita Bushell outlines her discontent. In her article, “Zoom Spells Doom and Gloom, The False Promise of Virtual Meetings,” she shares some of her thoughts with us and excerpts from the article.

Anita Bushell  09:58

Too much technology makes me feel awful. I become disconnected, distracted and disproportionately not present. I look at Zoom in the way that certain individuals might look at their vegetables. I’m not one of them because I love my veggies. But I think that idea that you have to have certain things in your life because they’re good for you quote unquote. Or maybe they’re helpful to you that you have to put up with them. 

Anita Bushell  10:27

During the pandemic, I was, as so many of us were, incredibly grateful to have this available to me, so that we could stay connected, so I could continue to teach I could continue to work. And I understand and I’m taking into account that Zoom has provided an avenue for those who might be immunocompromised, those who can’t get out of their houses, those who have health issues. However, in relying upon Zoom, we lose the many benefits of worshiping in person, the quiet, or not so quiet, of an urban meeting, trying to center amid the hubbub eye contact over a cup of coffee during fellowship hour, the warm facial expressions exchanged in a conversation in the parking lot the impromptu opportunities for eldering the model the behavior of sitting quietly in worship. In short, the live human connection. For these reasons, a live meeting where one is possible will always be more gratifying to me. 

Anita Bushell  11:26

When we are present fully100% present with each other in person, we are not doing anything else. I think that social skills and social interactions always excite me. It’s very much that David Brooks quote that I mentioned in the article about social capital, just those little interactions that we have on a daily basis when we go out of the house that I think really fuel us, they make us feel human, they make us feel better about being in our communities being in the town square as it were. So that’s why it will always be my first choice.

Peterson Toscano  12:07

That was writer Anita Bushell reading her articles, “Zoom Spells Doom and Gloom, The False Promise of Virtual Meetings.” It’s available in the March 2023 issue of Friends Journal, or read it at friendsjournal.org You can find a link to Anita and our other guests along with a full transcript of this episode at Quakerstoday.org 

Peterson Toscano  12:31

Thank you for joining me for this episode of Quakers Today. Our podcast is written and produced by me Peterson Toscano. I receive assistance and input from the Friends Journal staff, Gabe, Gail, Martin, Ron, and Rebecca. Thank you so much. Music On today’s show comes from Epidemic Sound.

Peterson Toscano  12:51

Season One of Quakers Today is sponsored by Quaker Voluntary Service. Are you between 21 to 30 years old? Are you looking for community and purpose driven work? Consider applying to QVS, a year long Fellowship for Young Adults. Fellows work at nonprofits while building community and exploring Quakerism. Visit QuakerVoluntaryService.org and follow QVS on Instagram at QuakerVoluntaryService. 

Peterson Toscano  13:20

If you have a comment or suggestion for our show or you just want to say hi, you can email me podcast(@)friends journal.org  If you stick around after the closing, you will hear from listeners who share their opinions and experiences with virtual online worship communities. Thank you, Friend. I look forward to spending more time with you soon.

Peterson Toscano  13:51

Now in a moment, you’re going to hear listeners’ voicemails about online communities and worship. But first, let me share with you next month’s question. I hope lots of you call in for this one. 

Here’s the question. What is it daily practice that clears your head and steadies you for the day? Leave a voice memo with your name and the town where you live. The number to call is 317 Quakers. That’s 317.782.5377. Plus one is calling from outside the USA. You can also send an email. I have these contact details in our show notes over at Quakers today.org. 

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Now we hear answers to the question: What are your thoughts and feelings about virtual online worship communities?

Amy Richards  

Hi, my name is Amy Richards, and I am from the Southeast Yearly Meeting. I am someone who came to Quakers, to Friends during the pandemic. So my experience with online has been a true amazing blessing because I am disabled. And of course with COVID and the restrictions that were there, this was my one and only way to be able to be exposed to Friends And the joy and blessing of sitting and various meetings, very specifically club Treasure Coast worship group I’ve spent the most time with, but it has been an enormous blessing. The patience, love, care, concern, the worship experience has been extraordinary, the movement of spirit and the healing that it brought to me as a person who is mixed heritage. I’m every race, and I am indigenous as well. And the strength that it gave to me to heal to use my voice, including this message, has been just an amazing process. tThat I can now attend other things to support that First Nations specifically and language classes online and other ways of supporting First Nations that I wouldn’t have had the courage before all the love and support that was given to me by the groups that I’ve been able to be a part of. 

Amy Richards  

So very, very grateful for the groundbreaking efforts for Friends who have had the courage to speak out and venture out into technology, as we all did during that time period, many, many things, most specifically the Treasure Coast worship group, but also I had time spent with Pendle Hill as well. And that was an amazing experience to have that and a lot of different classes that were put forward by Southeast Yearly Meeting. And of course, attending business meetings, which I think might be a humorous statement to say that that’s a blessing. But it has been I just do able to see quicker process Friends’ process and dealing with challenges and issues and ideas that come up has taught me so very much that I would not have known had I not had this virtual experience. So for me, it has been absolutely wings and freedom for me to be able to experience this time it just sit with with friends as a whole.

Chelsea May  

Hey, my name is Chelsea May and I live in Benton Harbor, Michigan, but attend meeting in Kalamazoo, Michigan with the Kalamazoo Friends Meeting. You know, virtual meetings have been so important for me and I am new to the Quaker faith. I grew up Presbyterian. So I guess this kind of goes to the last question as well. I recently started attending Quaker meetings in the past, I think, two years now. And when I was living in Missouri, I was two hours away from the closest meeting of Friends in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and you know, it was worth it. I would drive there at least once a month. But the virtual meetings made a huge difference for me. And now I live in Benton Harbor and the closest meeting is in South Bend. But I work in Kalamazoo, so it feels more right to attend meeting there for me because that feels like a closer community, and about an hour away from me. So some days, especially when it’s snowy, I just, I can’t drive there. It’s not safe, or, you know, I commute every day. And so sometimes I really don’t want to drive. 

Chelsea May  

And those are the days where I’m so thankful for virtual meeting. I can snuggle up with my dog or my cat. Both not yet both, but I guess snuggle up with them and be present with them, but also with God and with my meeting, all at the same time. That’s such a beautiful thing. It has been so important to my face my connection with God and communities. I’m originally from Texas, and  I have been struggling since graduating in 2020 from seminary. I’ve been struggling with finding community outside of my relationship with Spouse And it’s so hard to make friends as an adult. And this has been absolutely vital for me. I have remained in contact with seminary friends and friends from high school and college and all of these places because of virtual meeting and it has become way more important than I ever thought it was. So I I need it.I need to protect this important. Thank you.