Sunday
In a former age Sundays saw us spending lots of the day at church. No longer, of course. Still, yesterday we managed a fair impression of that long-ago schedule, only over Zoom. The day got going at 8:30, when I started the Kids Church meeting in order to prep with our guest reader for the day. The actual prep took about 30 seconds, and then we enjoyed 20 minutes of lovely meandering conversation—you know, like you do at church. Elijah joined in. Kids are meant to join the meeting at 9:15 but the first one actually arrived a little after 9:00, so I talked to her for a few minutes. By 9:15 things were going strong. When Kids Church ended at 10:00 Zion and his friends hung around in meeting waiting for the adults to leave so they could talk and play together. It reminded me so much of the same group of kids mooching around the classroom space like they always used to do. So I left them the meeting, joined "big church" on my phone, and headed outside.
While I certainly do miss seeing people in person, I must say it was lovely to be able to "attend" church while walking the dogs in the sparkling snowy woods. And I was back in time to end what had become a Minecraft adventure in the former Kids Church Zoom and join the end-of-church social time—like coffee hour but only five minutes long and without coffee. Still, it was nice to see people! At 1:00 there was another church meeting, which ran until 2:30: unlike actual church, which is run in webinar format, this time you could see all the people. And there were breakout rooms and things. Then Harvey finished Sunday off with Youth Group from 7:30 to 8:30. Really finished: everyone else was in bed long before that was done (I did get up to say goodnight to him and turn out the lights). A full day of Zoom is exhausting! It was super nice to have so much church, just like old times. But I'm glad we can look forward to an in-person day today!