Stand and Deliver but Please Say your name first.
"Please join us today ... for singing and worship.
When delivering a message please state your name first."
RantWoman understands hesitation about applying one's own name to ministry which is supposed to come directly from God. In RantWoman's experience messages from God sometimes arrive imperfectly depending on the personalities they arrive to. Recognizing this is part of the task of worshipping together, but there is a further fellowship reason for this practice in the age of Zoom.
For various reasons, Friends need desperately to know who they are worshipping with. This is difficult if one can't see across the room or is prone to misidentifying blobs sitting far away. For RantWoman, merely seeing a beloved Friend's name in the Zoom participants list is often enough to fill her heart with joy. Rantwoman can also play around with magnification enough to see faces in detail she cannot see in person.
In a hybrid meeting, though, RantWoman, especially for newcomers, RantWoman sometimes has no clue who is speaking and deeply appreciates Friends offering their names just to help RantWoman better retain connection between the message and the person it has been given to.
Stand and Deliver: taming the Owl
Many Friends Meetings now use an Owl 360 degree camera. Once again, issues which vex RantWoman also tend to vex other people. The Owl is supposed to track voices and point toward whoever is speaking. RantWoman is unclear about why this does not always work and about what Friends can do to attract the owl's attention before delivering a message.
Some Friends try vigorously flapping their arms. Standing and offering one's name is one easy way to ensure that the Owl points toward a person offering ministry. It turns out that many people who join worship on Zoom really appreciate being able to see the Friend who is speaking.
Stand and don't deliver: Running out of someone's Light
While digesting Stand and Deliver considerations, RantWoman has been reminded of a different supposedly nonviolent practice: "stand and don't deliver." This refers to a practice when people in the room have grown tired of a message, of one or more Friend and sometimes everyone else standing to "hold silence."
This of course works brilliantly--NOT--when someone can't see across the room to tell people are standing. RantWoman has also come to realize that when the whole room is standing, it may be nothing wrong with the speaker but simply Friends uncomfortable with imperfections in delivery, bafflement about the tone or content of a message. In other words, perhaps it is not the speaker but the room that has gone beyond their Light!
Merely standing until silence returns, at least for RantWoman, feels stifling and completely unhelpful in terms of getting to places where messages may be more clear or Friends may figure out where messages might fall on less rocky ground. At a BARE minimum, is there room for Friends to speak to the Friend one is trying to silence one on one? OR is there work for the whole Meeting to do?
Here RantWoman is going to stop for now lest she succumb to a temptation to go off at GREAT length about perpetual need for CLERKS to be open to CONTINUING REVELATION about working with the voices Friends bring.
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