There’s early voting going on for the city council election in NYC right now, and my councilmember is running basically unopposed for re-election. As I get ready to go about my Saturday, which will start with going to the polls, I’ve been wondering why exactly I am going to vote at all. What’s the point of engaging in this ritual of voting for a candidate who has no chance of losing anyways?

Yesterday, I had dinner with a friend from my Friends Meeting and we had a good conversation about building community. Our meeting is hybrid, with the option to go either in person or on Zoom, and we were wondering together about how the switch to that format since the pandemic (before I joined) has changed the life of the Meeting. The accessibility element is great – we have some members who physically can’t travel to Meeting for various reasons, some weeks or at all. But there are many of us for whom that’s not the case: I, like several of our members and attenders, don’t live very close to Meeting, but I can make the trek, and often do.

We were thinking out loud about this topic together, about all the ways that coming together with people in person is important for building community. For one thing, the traditional role of most religious communities is deeply connected to geographical place. Connecting with people who all live near enough to a church, temple, meeting house, etc. that they can commute there on a weekly basis usually means getting to know people who can visit you in the hospital if you’re sick, or organize a meal train after you’ve had a child. Learning to trust people who you know will be there – physically be there – is a big part of the value of a religious community for many people, I think.

She also brought up the point that those informal conversations people tend to have to fill the spaces aren’t nearly as likely to happen on Zoom, and they are the reason that people make friends and build trust by repeated exposure. The little chats that you have with a person on the elevator, or while you’re waiting for a gathering to start, or after one has ended, are so fundamental for relationship building; on Zoom there’s no elevator and we tend to log on right when something begins and then log off as soon as it’s over.

All of this still still left something out of the equation for me, though. I felt like besides these things, there’s something else that’s not easy to explain that goes missing when I attend meeting on Zoom – or participate in any of the communities I’m in remotely – instead of traveling there. I mulled over this with my friend and she, a very wise person who has been part of our Meeting for over 50 years now and knows a lot about building a community, helped these ideas start to crystallize:

I think making the effort is important in itself. It reminds me of the extremely terrible reality show that I watched, The Ultimatum: Queer Love. There was this constant refrain from the people on the show about wanting a partner who “shows up” for them. As much as I would not wish that show upon my worst enemy, there’s something to be said for that idea of “showing up.” Rather than expressing anything in particular that we need from each other, it gets at the importance of going out of our way for each other in itself. Ultimately, making an effort is how we figure out and then demonstrate what our priorities are.

Furthermore, phrasing it as “showing up” is so interesting and apt. I know that the members of our congregation who only attend on Zoom put incredible effort into our community. I see their efforts and I can see that they accomplish a lot of really important things. But the geographical element is important. Sometimes we want to make an effort, not to accomplish anything, but just to be with each other.

So, I’m going to publish this and then show up at the polls. I moved to my neighborhood a year and a half ago and don’t feel as connected to it as I would like. Deciding whether to vote today has made me realize that despite being here so much of the time, I actually haven’t been showing up for this community that I’m a part of. I’m here! Every time I am home, I have that physical presence element. But the effort part has been missing. Hopefully being aware of this will enable me to be more involved in this community that I can’t help being a part of, but want to feel more connected to.