In the long, lonely aftermath of the pandemic, I have been thinking about social healing and what might be needed to rebuild community relationships. Barbie helped us go back to the movies en masse, and sports stadiums have welcomed fans of both Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift. My kids have playdates again, although all the kids I know prefer for the friend to come to their house. And Shakespeare in the Park was fully revived this past summer on the Green Stages around Seattle. Yet, as my kids point out, I still cry at church. My lament is not yet over for the destruction caused by years of social distancing.
I see the communal rubble in stark relief. I see the anxiety among kids in my neighborhood and the way this is manifested in various behavioral challenges and eating disorders. I am keenly aware of the learning that was lost while my husband and I taught on computers upstairs and our kids mastered the art of watching YouTube in the basement. Most of the marriages I am close to are struggling with challenges that were amplified by the pandemic and continue to be exacerbated by working from home. My students are harder to catch when they begin to fail and the embodied routines at my college have changed in subtle, but significant, ways.
I see the communal rubble in stark relief.
A few weeks ago, I walked to a small neighborhood arts venue and sang along with 250 of my neighbors at the sold-out event called “Pub Choir.” It was not in a pub, and we were not in a choir, but all in attendance now feel famous because the performers recorded it and put it on the internet. Even months later, I am still bubbling from the collective effervescence of learning a three-part harmony version of “The Best,” famously covered by Tina Turner. Australian choral director Astrid Jorgenson set the stage by telling us to put our phones away. They would be filming us. We were the show. She had us belt out the chorus from “What’s Up,” by 4 Non-Blondes to figure out which voice part to stand with. Before she told us what song we would be singing and recording that night, Astrid said, “You might not know this song. You might not even like this song. But tonight, it’s not about your preferences. This is about us, singing together.”
Astrid taught everyone their lines with a glorious low-budget PowerPoint presentation. We were instructed to follow our color-coded lines that were accompanied by memes to remind us of the style we were going for. There was a little girl tossing her hair like a rock star, April Ludgate from “Parks and Rec” shimmying at her office desk, chickens who kept their heads still while their bodies bounced around, and a guy sliding on an icy sidewalk for a “slippery” part. Astrid would sing the line for us, then have us sing it back to her.
It was a holy call and response with subtle correctives like, “I see you moving a lot and working hard. I like your version, but I am wondering if you might want to try my version?” When she heard that a few of us “got it,” she winked at us saying, “I see you elementary school music teachers out there! Fabulous! Now squeeze the hand of someone near you and whisper to them, ‘We’ve got this’ and make sure they follow you for the slippery part.”
Despite my church’s amazing response to the COVID pandemic and my own leadership in online church services, I really hated it. I hated it because it amplified the reality that we were isolated from each other. I didn’t hate what was happening online, I hated that I felt alone. The social ties I had to people, the way we used to sing together, shake hands with strangers when we passed the peace, and hold hands when we prayed — gone. I missed listening to people sigh, cough, laugh, or cry when they offered up a prayer aloud. I missed the squirrelly kids in the pews who asked their parents questions during the moments of silence during the service. All of this was lost.
In March 2020, I published a book that shared my research on the transformative role that the arts play in the faith lives of young adults. Despite my reticence, a friend convinced me to order 100 copies of the book and throw a book launch party. That party never happened. There is a tragic irony in having 100 copies of a book about aesthetics and embodiment arrive on your doorstep the very same week the world goes virtual. I was supposed to be a speaker for a women’s retreat in May of 2020, and the theme was “Embodiment.” For the Zoom retreat, I shared my own lament based on Lamentations. It had lines like,
How lonely sits my calendar
that once was full of travel!
She who was once a weekend warrior,
spends hours on Zoom for work,
with an inbox full of campground
cancellations.
The flights to my adventures have been
cancelled,
every birthday that passes has a
tinge of sadness;
the entry to my house has no visitors,
my minivan has not left the driveway
(except to go to Fred Meyer).
and now the car battery is dead,
but it doesn’t matter anyway,
because the stay-at-home order
was just extended.
My lament was not merely about the loss of activities, but for the holy human connection that happened during those activities. One of the main findings of my research was that the arts and aesthetically rich experiences connect us to one another. This finding about social bonding is not new and echoes the findings reported in Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam that was published in 2000. It’s hard to remember, but the reality of social distancing was a trend decades before the pandemic.
One of the main findings of my research was that the arts and aesthetically rich experiences connect us to one another.
Working toward communal reconstruction
Astrid’s instructions were not only about our voices, but about our bodies. After we had sung, “And I said Hey, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, yeah, yeah. I said, hey! What’s going on?” she moved us into three voice sections telling us we could check in with our friends during the bathroom break. We were not to stand with the section where we might have been placed in other choirs in the past, but where we felt most confident belting it out. Singing passionately was the goal. When we sang the line, “Tear us apart? Nooo … ” we were to look like our heart was being poured out like a waterfall. To direct us she danced across the stage, flipping her hair, shimmying, and occasionally pausing the rehearsal to have us all erupt in cheers for one section that finally got the slippery part right. My friend Julianna and I squeezed hands with our neighbors, poured out our hearts, cheered, and shimmied on command. When Pub Choir ended, we hugged strangers while complimenting them on their passionate singing and practically skipped home.
In The Body’s Grace, Rowan Williams writes that our bodies can evoke joy in another, in a way beyond our control. He is writing about sexual encounters, but this joy is present in other bodily human encounters as well. This type of transcendent, blissful, joy is not possible without the physical presence and sincere participation of others. When we gather, pray, and sing together, we embody the reality that we are not alone, we are part of the body of Christ. Our worship is a collective effervescence of the faithful. Singing a song that might not be your favorite, and trying to sing it well with a bunch of strangers (who are in fact your neighbors) is the antidote to the public isolation of earbuds and working from home.
To reverse the effects of social distancing, we need experiences of social bonding, and congregations are uniquely positioned to do this communal reconstruction. Congregations have the opportunity to rebuild communal life, to help us find and enjoy one another again, to invite people to re-member themselves into the body of Christ. When I described Pub Choir to my yoga instructor she replied, “You know, I am not religious, but this is the role that churches used to play in our society: bringing people together.”
To reverse the effects of social distancing, we need experiences of social bonding, and congregations are uniquely positioned to do this communal reconstruction.
When pastors invite strangers to hold the hands of those next to them and say, “We’ve got this!” or challenge congregants by saying, “You might not know this song. You might not even like this song. But tonight, it’s not about your preferences. This is about us, singing together,” they are weaving us back together, inviting us to participate in transcendence.
