The Spirit Leads Us Onward, Via Zoom
By Lindsay Boyer
from Contemplative Outreach News, December 2020
When I was invited to write an article about Zoom fatigue, I set out to interview some of the many who have been attending Centering Prayer groups on Zoom, one of whom asked me this wonderful question:
“Is it cheating if I do ALL my Centering Prayer in online groups?”
My interviews suggest that the main story is not Zoom fatigue but an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the new technologies that make it possible for us to pray together in the amazing multitude of Zoom groups that have sprung up. While some of us are longing to return to our in-person groups, others are saying, “Please don't ever end this online group!” and "I hope things never go back.”
Zoom fatigue is a term that has been created to describe the exhaustion that some feel from attending too many online meetings during the pandemic era. It can be very demanding to follow a conversation when we can’t read body language in our usual ways and are interrupted by blips and delays. Latency issues change the rhythms of how we talk back and forth. Add to that the weirdness of seeing our own faces as we speak and the need to master the ever-changing controls on our various devices—there is a lot to negotiate! But do the factors that create Zoom fatigue apply to contemplative groups? We are not involved in crosstalk. We are not struggling to read each other's body language in the way we might be if we were in a business meeting. We spend much of our time on mute and some of us turn our cameras off, especially during the meditation. Sometimes we have our eyes closed while others are speaking or even while we ourselves speak. For much of our time together we allow ourselves to go within rather than struggling to make ourselves heard or to take in information. For those of us who experience Zoom fatigue in other areas of our lives, our contemplative Zoom encounters may be an antidote rather than part of the problem.
Meditation Chapel now has over 100 facilitators, over 140 groups, and continues to attract new participants. Busy people can use time zone differences to squeeze in a group early in the morning, late in the evening, or even in the middle of the night. Quite a few people join online groups every day and some do virtually all their daily Centering Prayer sessions there rather than alone, an option previously available to almost no one. People love not having to drive at night or travel at all. They love seeing each others’ cats, dogs, partners, babies, decor, and window views. While some may have quibbles about the details of group format, for the most part these represent the same kinds of differing preferences that participants also have regarding in-person groups: do we enter on mute, or start with a little chat? How much sharing do we do, as opposed to spending most of our time together in silence?
At the beginning of the pandemic I met with Pamela Begeman, on staff with Contemplative Outreach, Ltd. and on the steering committee of Meditation Chapel, to brainstorm together about how to help Centering Prayer groups get started as quickly as possible on Zoom. Recently we checked in again to exchange notes on where the events of the last eight months have taken the Centering Prayer community and where the Spirit might be leading us next. Pamela expressed her excitement about the way the movement into online groups has led us "beyond mythic membership consciousness.” On Meditation Chapel, there is no longer a sense that “I go to my church and meet with my prayer group.” We’re in an environment where we don’t get to pick who our group is, we just show up, and “that has interesting effect on consciousness, the fruits of which will show up down the road.” Sometimes we don’t even know what part of the globe our fellow group members are from. As we join from different time zones we exist almost beyond time. There is something very egalitarian about our images in their little boxes of equal size and random order. While we may lose something by not knowing each other in familiar and localized ways, we gain something in our sense of ourselves and each other as equal partners in a global community of prayer. The seemingly random assortments of people who come together for prayer prevent us from over-identifying with the group and underline that we have been brought together by divine providence.
Pamela and I identified what we see as emerging trends. While online quiet days and shorter retreats have become more commonplace, there is a hunger for longer online retreats. Some communities are experimenting with five to eight day retreats in which participants are not on Zoom all day long but spend some time in silence in their homes, punctuated by times of coming together on Zoom for talks and practice.
Now that many people have more opportunities for practice and greater access to groups, their committed contemplative practice is taking them deeper, and many of them are hungry for increased spiritual sharing to help them process their experience and insights, yet they aren't always looking to do that within the Centering Prayer groups themselves. One group has developed a pilot program of offering group spiritual direction to some of its members. What other opportunities might online groups offer their participants to help them bond together and deepen their sense of online community, all the while protecting the sacred space of contemplative prayer time?
Local Contemplative Outreach chapters have new discernment issues to explore. The whole idea of a “local” chapter is becoming obsolete. What does local mean in this new context? What do we put in our “local” newsletters when we have access to international events but not enough time and space to publicize all of them? It's time to rethink everything, which can be both exciting and bewildering. Perhaps chapters that once were local will rearrange themselves around themes that call specifically to them and the competencies of their memberships rather than their geography. It's all being reordered, and our contemplative practices can help open our hearts and minds to the extraordinary possibilities that lie before us. Many local chapters are in discernment about whether to go beyond the one hundred person threshold of a regular Zoom account: “Okay, I can kind of wrap my head around one hundred people, but am I ready to be the facilitator of an event that might reach five hundred?”
While contemplative groups don't have large financial resources to promote the practices that are so dear to them , events and technologies have suddenly given them new power and reach. Contemplative Outreach service teams are seeing that their offerings can appeal to vast new audiences. The Centering Prayer Introductory Team recently reached more than 400 people with an intro workshop, while the 12-Step Outreach team had more than 800 registered for a weekend retreat. Small groups may sometimes even be nervous about how many people their events attract, and wonder if they need to set cut-off points.
Rather than being fatigued by Zoom, we can be energized by the new ways our contemplative practices equip us to approach this unique situation. While the pandemic has created many hardships, losses, and challenges, our odd and wonderful new online communities have helped us nurture spiritual resources that we can offer to our anxious and disrupted world. Our practices allow us to cultivate an openness to the movement of the Spirit that enables us to follow the twists and turns of this adventure we are on. As Pamela observed, “You start to see how the mind has constraints you didn't even know it had and you're being asked to blow through all of them all at once.”
Let’s use our beloved contemplative practices to break down our own barriers and resistances to what is suddenly and astonishingly possible. The Spirit flows forth like water that will go wherever there’s a channel open for it. It has taken us to surprising places and it is not done with us yet. May we continue to follow its exciting, creative, and holy movement.