Prayer At the Start Of Another Zoom Meeting
Dear Deepest Connection Of All,
I know we’re supposed to think it’s better than the alternative when the alternative is not meeting at all. That meeting makes us and we find ourselves in everyone else. I know. I-Thou. I get it.
But these video conferences can be the crowd without the wisdom, the connection that disconnects.
At least, in the old days, when you’d chipped in with that illuminating insight and everyone carried on as if you weren’t there, it was because it wasn’t that illuminating. Not because you were still on mute. Or when the person with the gift of no self-doubt was making another speech, you might catch someone’s rolling eyes and understand you were not alone.
Now we’re all blind to the non-verbal cues, the crinkle around an eye or tweak in a lip, tender encouragement or courteous query. The rhythm in a breath. A raised eyebrow, a wink, the comedy grimace. Now displaced by virtual background holiday snap, or a cat, climbing, onto the speakers lap.
Inside this flat earth of digital portraits, eye contact is history, body language impenetrable and all agendas hidden. The face of the person meaning to send you her kind smile has frozen in a terrifying glare. The persuasively choreograped argument, in favour of Item 4, has corpsed and been hastily buried. Everyone is talking over everyone else. Now all stopping. Now all star. Ting. Except those saying nothing. And those, somewhere, out there, still awaiting admission to the meeting.
Dear Ultimate Meeting And Mysterious Synchronicity, you have this reputation for real presence, offline, online and in every undreamt paradigm. But some of us adapt less easily and might need some kind of upgrade.
We count our blessings in connecting digitally while disallowed from connecting physically but in the absence of the usual cues, may we not read disagreement as dislike or being talked over as anything more than digital delay.
May our distorted sound catch up with our pixelated vision and all those scrambled words, lost in transmission, find a home in someone else’s meeting. May we not jump to conclusions if someone departs their screen just as we begin to talk. May their homeschooling be more urgent. Or their bladder.
May the host reserve the power of ‘mute all’ for when that person is making that point again, and then invite to unmute only those who have not yet spoken. (While not singling anyone out.)
May travelling this unfamiliar landscape not completely exhaust us and may our bandwidth always find room for patience, gentleness and a peace that bypasses misunderstanding.
May every meeting open and close with a poem or a joke or a moment of silence. A brief transfiguration to remind us who we were before all this, and who we may be again.
May our agenda always be kindness and the waving hand our ecstatic benediction. And may there never be any other business. For ever and ever. Amen
See also
I Lift Up My Eyes (Lockdown Psalm)
‘Lifelines, Notes on Life & Love, Faith & Doubt’ by Martin Wroe & Malcolm Doney.
