by Elizabeth Lynn

As crises are likely to do, the Covid-19 pandemic has graced us with several clever twists on familiar phrases. There is the Coronacoaster (mood swings while in lockdown). Coronials (children conceived during the pandemic). The Quarantini (no explanation needed, right?). My own favorite, however, is the Elephant in the Zoom (the thing no one is talking about, but everyone is thinking about, during an online meeting). 

That elephant may be something as inelegant as what appears to be a lampshade, or cat, affixed to the speaker’s head. But it may also be something more profound.

It may be the continuing uncertainty about how long we will be vulnerable to this pandemic, in our bodies, families, congregations, communities, even with a vaccine—and disagreements about how we should conduct ourselves in the face of that vulnerability.

It may be the growing awareness of how the pandemic is impacting bodies, families, congregations and communities differently, affecting people of color at a rate of two to one—and how that unequal suffering, borne of centuries of injustice, is showing up in the different experiences of the people on the Zoom. 

It may be the recent presidential election, with its stark illumination of deepening divides in the ways Americans read reality—and how those divisions might be present among colleagues in ways not previously understood.

It may be the unpredictability of finances in a recession, on top of longer-term challenges that were already being felt in organizational budgets—and what that might mean for one’s own job security and economic well-being.

For some of us, it may be the stress of working from home, with no buffers between work and family—while for others of us, it may be dread of impending demands to return to the office for no foreseeable benefit to life, limb or work. 

In reality, for most organizations at this time, all those elephants are likely somewhere in the Zoom. Our unspoken questions are more profound, and at once more widely shared and more acutely personal, than our spoken ones.

While understandable, talk of “returning to normal” is going to choke off the conversations that need to happen about these elephants. Instead, they need to be surfaced, respected, and talked about. Indeed, if addressed in an open and non-coercive way, our elephants can help us find our way forward toward needed improvement. There is, after all, an opportunity and a freedom to make change in a time of disruption. To jump from elephants to automobiles for a moment, it is always easier to steer a moving car than a parked car. So, rather than putting all our energy into getting the car parked again back in the same spot, how can we steer wisely into the world ahead? 

One thing we can do is to ask better questions of ourselves and one another in our meetings. In so doing, we would be following the lead of our own religious traditions, which are invariably full of excellent questions and question-askers. Reflecting on the angels of the Christian gospel in a recent blog post, philanthropic leader Fred Smith observes that “In the moment when people are grief-stricken, confused and immobilized the angels are asking questions that seem to be more disturbing than comforting.” Better questions push us beyond our comfort zone (or comfort Zoom). They are bigger questions, for which we do not know the answer. They are questions no one is asking but everyone is holding.

Another thing we can do is set aside time for reflection on those questions during our online meetings, with help from a ‘third thing’ we are discussing, and no expectation that we will all agree on what it means. And again, in so doing, we will be following the lead of our religious traditions, which teach us to attend to scripture and story in conversation with one another with an attitude of humility. One such ‘third thing’ might be Fred Smith’s fine meditation on angels and their hard comfort, linked above. Another third thing, especially aligned to the coming holiday, might be O. Henry’s 1907 story, Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen, which invites us to think about American traditions of giving in the midst of inequality.

What are the elephants in your Zoom? What damage are they doing by roaming around unaddressed? By contrast, what is in motion now that could invite positive, needed change if we start talking about it today?