The Cloud Quakers Worship Group is now fairly stable as at least four or five of us come every week. It's nourishing, interesting, and lively. I couldn't ask for more. My own purpose was to have Quakers in my life, and around as I try to raise the last four of my ten children, who also happen to be pretty tough, as they present issues we weren't totally familiar with. Now, as I participate in Cloud Quakers on a Sunday evening, my whole family knows I'm at meeting. They tiptoe around me and listen in a little. They consider it a part of me and what I do, and I like that.
There are several issues that have come up in the course of starting a new meeting, not the least of which is zoom itself. Somehow my friend Maurine, a founding member, got listed as "Admin" and her picture now appears as "Admin," while the rest of us appear with our names by our pictures. I am not even sure how she became "Admin;" I certainly never gave her the honor, and so, now I'm wondering how to get it back. She doesn't want it. Like most Quakers; when Nominating Committee comes around, we're nowhere to be found, and so those who are missing get nominated. But in this case, it's a matter of knowing Zoom.
And as we get larger, zoom shows and streams each of our pictures, but you can no longer see each one, because the screen will literally show only about five or six. The remaining are tacked on to that five or six, and you can see them with effort, by clicking on an arrow, but only at the expense of those who you were in the presence of earlier. We like to be in the presence of each other; that's why five or six, on this platform, is probably the ideal number. But surprisingly the format and accessibility of Cloud Quakers is popular, and people are joining us from all over. Starting with us five or six, and our friends, we have an ever-widening community.
It's possible that we attract a few who have had trouble fitting in with their local meetings. I don't have a problem with that. If this were to become regular, our people might be a little more outcast, swim-against-the-tide type Quakers. I don't have a problem with that either. I believe Quakerism is itself large enough to fit those who want to be Quakers but who don't necessarily enjoy worshiping with the local variety. I know when I was in a certain medium-size town in Texas the local variety was mostly evangelical, fundamentalist, etc., and if I hadn't found friends of my own variety, I might have become disjointed altogether. As it is we Quakers are a little scarce in this world and there are whole swaths of the countryside, southeast Kansas for example, where they're hard to be found.
If Quakerism were able to hold and sustain a larger population of like-minded souls, who are attracted to our ways but unable to find agreeable communities, Quakerism would be much larger than the four or five thousand that it is now. It's the existence of communities, that nourish their people, and shine their light on their children, that are the essence of sustainability. We in the loosely knit online Quaker community can do many of the same things for our members as the old rural, meeting-house based communities used to do for theirs; it's just going to be different. We can't shake hands after meeting, or offer hugs. But we'll have to have our own traditions to sustain us.
The question comes up about whether we should be a meeting; whether we should have Meeting for Business; whether we can do some of the things meetings do. I am of mixed feelings. We are now a worship group, and I don't have any problem having a worship group that is somewhat outside the regular structure of Quakerism. I very occasionally attend Las Cruces meeting; I am still a member of Southern Illinois Quaker Meeting. I've been a Quaker for long enough that I don't have a problem representing it or clerking a meeting. In a sense, though, I want that connection, and may go down to Las Cruces just to ask for it. We would be part of Intermountain Yearly meeting, I suppose. We would gain membership in a Yearly that perhaps would know about us, and visit, and / or help us out.
Ah, but that's a question for another day. For this one, let's simply figure out how to use Zoom to our best advantage.
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