Like you, I have been spending my fair share of time 'zooming' online.
By zooming, I mean participating in the Zoom Video Conference capabilities that allow us to see and hear one another online. This past Wednesday, during our 7:00 PM church gathering online, two friends from Australia—Bruce and Jill Wilson—'me with us' in real-time from their home in Melbourne. It is a strange time that we live, brothers and sisters.
These online gatherings are certainly not a replacement for in-person meetings. Yet, it is what's possible at the moment. Whether it is our youth meeting on Tuesday evenings or our children's meeting on Sunday afternoons, these zoom conferences allow us to remain connected to one another. In that way, they are an invaluable way to practice being the church.
So yes, I've gotten more accustomed to these digital meetings. But increasingly, I've become more and more distracted by something during the call. That something is me.
Let me explain.
As you may know, one's video feed is visible as you view the other windows/ videos of the participants who are also on the call. As much as I'm embarrassed to share this, it's hard for me not to watch myself as I interact and lead the zoom meetings.
I understand why the software designers placed a screen view of my video feed next to every other participants' window box. By seeing myself throughout the video meeting, it enables me to see what other people are seeing when they look at me. This is a helpful tool. I'd like to know if our children are making rabbit ears behind me while I am broadcasting.
But the sight of my mirrored image on the screen steals my attention, and I see myself more than I may be seeing other people.
The concern, of course, is that if we spend a disproportionate amount of energy focusing on ourselves, we will miss seeing other people. The temptation to see only one's self is magnified when we are not well. When we are distracted, or in pain, it can be challenging to see beyond ourselves. Remember the last time you had a toothache? All you could think about it was your pain. Our experience with a cranky tooth can steal our attention from many other essential matters.
The bottom line? Left unchecked, we'll spend life looking in a mirror when we need to be looking out a window.
Seeing others is necessary for us to develop empathy. Empathy is a way that we "love our neighbor as ourselves." It's not enough to live in our own experience. God directs us to see others, and to hear them, and to consider the world from their perspective. When we do this—when we adjust our gaze away from ourselves—we are in a Christ-like position to respond to others with compassion, kindness, service, and love.
How we are experiencing this extraordinary season is fraught with contradiction and nuance. Since we occupy such different places in life, our perspective and our experience with the crisis are particular to us.
Not surprisingly, some of us are grieving the loss of life-giving rhythms that we valued. Others of us are anxious about our paychecks being cut while being asked to do more than we've ever done before.
Some are relishing the slowdown and are grateful to have less to do.
Our children mourn the loss of gathering with their friends. Our young people feel lost in the uncertainties about next semester, or next year's internship, and what they should do after a graduation that never occurred. Grandparents cannot be present to meet their newborn grandchildren, and our elderly feel more isolated than ever before.
Yet, many of us are also grateful for unchanged retirement pensions, the cancellation of events that had once felt burdensome, and the refreshing newfound opportunities that we now have to linger in our gardens or out on the back porch.
With such a variety of responses to the Covid-19 pandemic's changing landscape, it behooves us to see beyond our own experience and to consider the perspective and realities of those around us. Loving our neighbor means seeing the world from their point of view. Loving our neighbor means hearing their story and considering what it must feel like to be in their shoes. We cannot properly serve others or love them until we've first listened to them. We choose to look out a window instead of a mirror so that we can better understand where our neighbors may be coming from.
No, there's nothing wrong with seeing our reflection, whether on a zoom call or in life. But if that's all we see…