Live and in Person
But when the assembly is to be gathered, you shall blow, but you shall not sound an alarm. Numbers 10:7
For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them. Matthew 18:20
We live in a world that has been forever changed by Covid. I think back on the early days of the instruction to “shelter in place,” when I thought, “Well, we’ll have to lay low for a couple of weeks til this thing blows over.” We knew little about this disease and how it was transmitted, and as the reality that we would be in isolation for months- if not longer- started to sink in, we went about the practice of masking, forming small pods whom we would associate with (if anyone out of our household), leaving our mail outside for 24 hours, and washing our groceries- all of them, including the cereal boxes and milk cartons- before putting them in our refrigerators and on our shelves. I invested heavily in rubbing alcohol, hand sanitizer and anti-bacterial cleaners, which, along with other necessities, like toilet paper, were sometimes either non-existent or rationed at our local supermarket.
The bright side was that we learned to adapt in creative ways. Some of us spent more concentrated time and played more card and board games with our partners than we had in years. We sometimes went outside at an appointed hour and clapped for emergency workers. And we learned how to expand our on-line presence to Zoom with our friends and create meaningful content, from church services to music videos to whatever our work demanded of us to keep alive. When we knew more about how the disease travelled, we felt safer to spend time with friends out of doors, and got our steps in as we walked and talked. And all this time, we lived in anticipation of a vaccine that would allow us to go back to life as we had known it.
The vaccine did come, and it was a good thing. It did not, however, return us to an earlier era. In the year between March 2020 and March 2021, when the first vaccines became available, working at home had become common, and many people preferred it to commuting to a job. And both our habits and our infrastructure had irrevocably changed. Churches had by this time invested thousands of dollars in audio and video equipment and trained members to produce good quality livestreamed services, with the bonus of allowing people with limited mobility, or who had moved to another part of the country, and even new members who found the services on-line to worship and connect with the community. But it also meant that if one were feeling lazy on Sunday morning and decided to stay in one’s pajamas and sip a nice cup of coffee while watching the service instead of getting it together to make it to church in person, we could! And while that seems like a nice option to have, it also means that when we do show up in person, there is less of our community there to share the experience with, and the pews can feel a bit empty at times.
For me, personally, one of the things I missed most during the isolation time was live music. When it finally felt safe to venture out into a space crowded with strangers, I was re-initiated to the world of live music performance by going to hear a friend of mine and his jazz group play at a small venue in Cambridge. While isolated, I had watched a fairly large number of live and recorded performances on-line; but whether it was seeing my friend play, or that my friend was particularly brilliant that night (which seemed to be the case), or just the sheer thrill of hearing live music, I can’t describe the joy I felt. As good as the music was that I had watched on my computer screen, there was just no comparison.
I think in the end, all of those things played a part in creating the joy I felt that night. But above all, the magic came from the satisfaction of the need we all have for sharing experiences with other people; for being in contact with living, breathing flesh in all of our human imperfection; for community: a need I had been deprived of for far too long. There is a visceral energy transmitted between people in the same room that cannot be recreated or manufactured in any other way. You just have to be there. And when you are, you realize one of our deepest needs as humans, and one of the best feelings we are blessed to experience.
So thank God for live music, and thank God for people! And thank God for church and for coffee hour after church, which just might be as integral to our worship as a good sermon!
Gathering God, thank you for bringing us together, whether to worship you, attend a ballgame, go to a family reunion, put in a day’s work, enjoy a meal with friends, or hear live music, which are all forms of worship if we understand them as your gifts to us. Amen
Willie Sordillo