Birthday season

My name is Tom. I am a Quaker and father of ten, the last three adopted and the last four still at home out in the mountains of southern New Mexico. Isolated (I had to go down 5000 feet, across the White Sands and Tularosa Desert, and then up another set of mountains to get to Las Cruces, my nearest meeting), I started Cloud Quakers about two years ago this December. It's been successful and I feel like I have a community. I am busy though and unable to expand really to meet the need.

Lately I read a facebook post in which people chimed in about how zoom just doesn't make it for them. A minority said they liked it - liked seeing names with the faces, being able to watch or do as they wished, etc. But most people felt that just being online was not quite the same as in-person worship.

Ironically, my Quaker skills set in and I found myself listening to their grief. I feel like pandemic grief is short-lived - we will all see each other again eventually - but inabilty to connect online is real. And there are a lot of people who feel that way; I know from my home meeting, southern Illinois, where a majority, of my friends even - just couldn't get into doing it on zoom.

I feel like I've got what I wanted - a community whose members know each other, and care about each other, and have some background about the trials each of us is going through. Last week there were thirteen, I counted, and all were returning attenders. We don't have some of the things larger meetings have - discussions, social hour, potlucks, music - but we have each other, and that seems ok for the present.

My old friend Karl, one of the founders of Cloud Quakers, has started another zoom Quaker meeting. This is interesting and is modeled partly on what we have. I actively encourage him to advertise with us and will provide a link soon. My feeling is, a person has to shop around to find the place, sometimes, where one feels best. It is not bad for me if someone moves over to Karl's. What is good for them is good for everyone and ultimately Quakerism. That's because there's really a lot of room in this online worship world, and each space can occupy a different part of it (after all, there are at least five distinct kinds of Quakers in North America alone), and the closer we can get to our true spirit and needs, the happier we are and more assured we are of sticking with it.

I think a zoom renaissance is about to transform Quakerism, but I've said this all along. I myself am retired, losing my hearing, having more trouble being a truly central figure. For the moment I will satisfy myself with knowing that Cloud Quakers was the first, two years ago, and we were on zoom before the pandemic. We could, possibly, have capitalized on the great need out there, what with everyone isolated and in need of some spiritual comfort. But we were here for people, and still are, and that's saying something right there, that I'm proud of.

Happy second birthday, Cloud Quakers. Long may you live!

I will have more about the nature of online worship as time goes on. It is a topic of great interest here, though for me it was a practical necessity, and at first, I never had time to question what I had lost. I was simply unable to drive across that desert every week, and I needed Quakers more than once a month.

This may strike you as rambling (it is), but it's me, and it's the genuine thing. I think we Quakers are best at just being ourselves and sticking to the truth. So I've been concentrating on that, and it's working out pretty well.