Zoom has changed my life
A friend (who I met via zoom) asked me recently did I have any questions. A previous question had produced in her a poem. I looked through what I wrote and I could see that I ask a lot of questions so I had plenty to send her.
That brought awareness to questions and when I was asked yesterday evening (in a zoom call), “Tell me something about your past?” I thought, ‘Another question.’
What surprised me was that there seemed nothing relevant to tell him. I was thinking, “What is there about the past that is relevant to this moment?” It seemed there was nothing and that felt right. I felt good that what mattered was the moment I and he was in, ‘What did he need to know more about me than he did?’ ‘What did I need to know more about him?’
Had I ever seen the past as so irrelevant?
Earlier another friend phoned me to wish me well for Christmas and the New Year. I found myself pausing her and saying, “The best place for me is the moment.” The moment will bring me to Christmas and New Year indeed Christmas and New Year are more likely to be brought to the moment. I am not great either these days for looking ahead.
How relevant is the future?
In the zoom ‘Global Meeting for Worship’, a friend spoke about attending a 12 steps programme meeting and was emotionally moved by the virtual group hug at the end. There was something about the gesture that moved him at an emotionally deep level that here in our meeting I could feel it. Afterwards in the social time, we spoke about how great zoom is but also the bits that it can’t do like hugs. I wanted to share but my audio failed me that while it couldn’t do hugs I felt the emotion of the friend in the meeting and he was in Arizona. If anything Zoom has shown us that we are connected we just didn't have a medium to show us how connected we are.
I have been attended Global Meeting for Worship since the end of May almost 7 months. What has kept bringing me back? It could almost seem like my relationship with God no one else knows I am in this zoom meeting other than the people I am with. I doubt I would have kept returning if there was no emotional connection with those with who I meet.
I was reminded of how much Zoom has changed the way I interact at a Solstice gathering in Canada on Monday night. As a friend joined from Jerusalem, and others from parts of Canada, US and England and we said “Hiya” because we knew each other from other Zoom places. So get this, people I have never met physically I now greet as friends in other Zoom places.
I was at another Zoom event hosted in Pennsylvania when a woman from California was asked if she knew anyone else on the call and she said, “Yes I met Gordie in Californa.”
The year-end always draws me to a reflective mood and in it, I find myself thankful for Zoom and the places and people it has led me too around the globe.
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