7.13

 

Note: I wrote this for the 7/13 service on friendship and connection, but folx on zoom were so excited to connect that I barely got to say any of it, so I wanted to provide it here. 

Good morning, my name is Ember, I serve as our ministerial intern, and I am an all around medium human who today has their hair down, and I use they/them pronouns. It’s good to be with you. I wasn’t here last week, but I know that you all explored one of life’s central paradoxes: that we are both incredibly small and infinitely beloved.

Here’s another paradox: we’ve never been more connected than we are now. From our beds, our couches, our desks, we can reach across the country or the world with just a few taps. And still, many of us feel isolated. Even as we maintain hundreds of contacts, messages, and online groups, we can find ourselves wondering: where is the depth? Who really knows me?

This is not a new question for me. Growing up, I was a weird kid. I struggled to find people I connected with in my small, close-minded town. I was lucky to be able to travel to Portland sometimes, where I formed some community. But it was online where I found people who really understood me. Forums, nerdoms, fan sites and early social media were spaces that became lifelines for me. Some of those friendships are still alive today. We send each other letters. We check in when things are hard. We show up for each other, even if we’ve never shared the same physical space.

So this morning, we’re not gathering in person. We’re gathering in the space we have. And still, we are together. Still, we are finding our way toward one another. As someone who had a positive experience on early social media, it makes me really sad to see how splintered and fractured our online world has become but, our task isn’t to fix the internet or social media, or mourn what’s broken. It’s to learn what friendship means right here, right now, with the tools we have.

Let’s begin with an activity that invites you to reflect on your own connections. You’ll need paper and something to write with. If you have multiple colors or markers, go ahead and use them.

Here’s the exercise:

• Draw yourself in the center of the page.

• Then, map your friendships:
  Start with your closest friends, putting them nearest to you, then build outwards to casual friends, acquaintances, new friends, work friends or colleagues. Friends you’ve lost through distance, disagreement or death.

• You can color code or add symbols if you’d like.

• If you have any barriers or challenges doing this activity, imagine the map in your mind instead.

• If it brings up emotion, take it slow, feel free to use chat to let us know your needs. Use gentle curiosity.

Let’s take a few moments to share what came up for you during the mapping. You can unmute (if lots of people raise hands), or you’re welcome to write in the chat.

Here are a few prompts to consider:

• What do you notice about your map?

• How do you feel about what you saw or remembered?

• Is this map something you want to share, or something that feels more private?

Let’s take a breath together. As we move into the heart of this reflection, I want to talk about three key practices of friendship: initiation, consistency, and vulnerability.

Initiation comes first. It begins in the quietest ways, a message sent into the digital unknown, a thoughtful comment left on a thread, a simple “thinking of you” typed in the dark. It might be a birthday note to someone you haven’t spoken with in years, or the courage to hit “join” on a Zoom space full of unfamiliar faces.

Initiation does not need to be loud or grand. It is an offering of ourselves, a gentle knock at the door of another’s attention. It doesn’t require confidence or certainty. It just asks us to begin. To risk reaching out even when we do not know how we will be met. That first moment, no matter how small, is an act of bravery, an invitation into something more.

For some, this kind of reaching is natural, although even introverts and those with social confidence can struggle with that first step. And for many of us, it carries weight. We hesitate, unsure of whether we are welcome. These are the ghosts of past rejection, and they do not easily let go. But underneath them is a deeper truth: most people are waiting, hoping, aching to be invited in. You don’t need to craft a perfect sentence or choose the right emoji. You just need to trust that your reaching matters. That someone, somewhere, is ready to meet you in return.

If initiation is the doorway, then consistency is the commitment to continue to put one foot in front of the other after we’ve stepped through. It is the slow unfolding of trust through presence, not just once, but over time. In virtual friendships, consistency might look like returning to the same group each week, responding to someone’s message even when we’re tired, or remembering a detail someone shared last time and following up with care. These small acts accumulate. They signal, “I haven’t forgotten you. I’m still here.” In remote spaces, where we don’t have the benefit of passing someone in a hallway or sharing spontaneous moments, consistency is what keeps connection alive.

At the same time, I want to name something that may feel familiar to many of us: digital presence can be both nourishing and exhausting. Social media is designed to draw us in, but it doesn’t always feed us. While online spaces have helped many of us stay connected, especially those of us who are disabled, neurodivergent, or geographically isolated, they are not the whole picture. Consistency doesn’t mean being constantly online. It doesn’t mean replying right away, or saying yes to everything. It means finding sustainable ways to return to each other with intention, whether that’s in person, over video, or in writing.

We no longer live in a world where connection happens by default. We have to choose it. We have to make space for it. That might mean showing up to Sunday worship, or joining a regular Zoom circle, or simply keeping a thread of conversation going over time. Especially in spiritual community, especially when we gather across distance, consistency is the practice of saying, again and again, “You are on my mind.”

That is the beginning of trust: not just arriving, but arriving again. Not with perfection, but with presence.

Finally, friendship asks us to find the path beneath our feet, the path of vulnerability. Once we’ve stepped through the door of initiation, once we’ve begun to walk with consistency, it’s vulnerability that shows us where we’re really going. It’s what moves friendship from something pleasant to something meaningful. In both remote and in-person connection, vulnerability is the moment we risk telling the truth. Not just sharing updates, but sharing uncertainty. Not just offering our ideas or accomplishments, but offering our ache, our longing.

In online friendship, that risk can feel even sharper. There is the pain of being open with someone who disappears without explanation. The confusion of caring deeply for someone we’ve never met in person, and not knowing what we’re “allowed” to expect. The difficulty of setting boundaries when there’s no shared rhythm, no natural end to the conversation, no body language to guide us.

Vulnerability doesn’t always lead to closeness. Sometimes it leads to silence. Sometimes we’re not received in the way we hoped. And still, we try again. Because even with all its uncertainty, vulnerability is how we grow trust. It’s how we make friendship something more than convenience.

Audre Lorde wrote, “We are constantly encouraged to pluck out one part of ourselves and present it as the whole.” Online spaces often amplify that pressure; present your brand, your best self, your cleverness, your calm. But real friendship, even virtual friendship, asks something different. It asks us to show up with our whole self. To let others see the parts that don’t fit neatly into a profile. The parts that are still raw or in progress.

We might overshare. We might hold back too long. But the path of vulnerability is about presence. About returning to relationship with honesty and care. About trying again. And again. About choosing, whenever we can, to begin again in love.

It’s not about saying everything, or saying nothing. It’s about finding the people with whom our sharing is adequate, where our truth is met with enough space, enough gentleness, enough reciprocity to feel like belonging. Vulnerability is less about how much we reveal and more about how willing we are to be real in relationships that can hold complexity. And in both online and in-person spaces, it means resisting the pull of echo chambers, where sameness feels safe but intimacy never grows. True connection requires difference, dialogue, and the courage to be fully ourselves even when we’re unsure how we’ll be received.

Let’s close with a final exercise. You’ll be paired with one (or 2, depending on numbers) other person in a breakout room. If you’d prefer not to participate, just say so in the chat, and feel free to use this for quiet meditation.

Here’s your invitation. Choose one thing to share with your partner:

• Something that makes you feel sad

• Something you regret

• Something that makes you feel small or unsure

• Something that feels tender

I will drop these prompts into the chat, I invite you to share with curiosity and listen with care.

BREAKOUT ROOMS

Before we go, if you’d like to stay in touch with someone you connected with today, feel free to share your contact info in the chat. I am also dropping the link back to the webinar so you can join us for the final minutes of our service.

May the friendships you seek begin to take root in fertile soil.
May you reach out with kindness, return with consistency,
and trust that you are worthy of being known.
So be it. Blessed be. And may it be so.