Then the Cheese Balls Showed Up

When I peer out my front window, the view is no different than it was before the word, “pandemic” became more than just a Jeopardy answer. When all was right with the world, nothing much went on out there. Sure, back in the day, you might have seen the occasional young mom, taking her toddler for an airing in a jogging stroller, or the old guy who walked his black lab up the road to the local high school. The same few people who wandered by during the “before” are still wandering by during the “after.”

If I just stayed inside, as strongly suggested by the medical community, I could almost pretend that all is calm. All is well. A walk outside, though (which is still allowed, as long as I’m alone), tells a different story. We’re three-quarters of the way through the school year, yet the local high school is out of session. Not for spring break. Not for the weekend. It’s closed. If we’re lucky (and we probably aren’t), it’ll open Monday, March 30, 2020.

Often, when a major event occurs, people, who are so inclined, can find comfort in their church. This time, though, the churches, just like the schools, are closed. At least technology offers a solution: virtual services. This past Sunday, my church held our second virtual gathering.

The area for the video sermon takes up three-quarters of the computer screen, while the other quarter displays the “chat” section. If you’ve ever been to church, you know people don’t generally hold conversations during the sermon. Last week, at our first virtual service, I confess I spent more time reading people’s comments than listening to Pastor Marc’s message. This week, I guess other people came to the same conclusion because all the “good mornings” and “greetings” messages only went on for the first half hour of music before the service.

During the first twenty minutes of that music, I merrily bobbed my head to the joyous sounds playing from my laptop speaker while typing the odd comment to friends on the “chat” side of the screen. Then I got this idea … why not listen through my headphones? Brian was working on his own computer in the other room and even though he probably wasn’t distracted by the “glory halleluiahs” emitting from my laptop, I decided to silence the sound anyway.

These are stressful times and my brain hasn’t been functioning properly lately. I blame stress and not the fact that I’m easily distracted. When I pressed the on button for my Bluetooth headset, I didn’t let go when the lady voice told me my battery was full. Instead of her voice announcing that I was connected, she said, “Pairing.”

My first thought was, uh oh. Where is she going to pair my headphones? To the microwave? The headphones and my laptop were already good friends. And that was when the sound cut out.

NOOOOO! My glories stopped halleluiah-ing and the sermon was two minutes away from starting. I called to Brian for help, forgetting (again I blame stress) that he takes long, agonizing moments to puzzle through a problem and more time to find a solution. By the time we established that the headphones were properly paired and not malfunctioning, that the problem had to be on the end of my virtual church, it was five minutes after the service should have begun. In my haste to get out of the Bluetooth window and back to the church window, I “X’ed” out of the wrong window.

NOOOO! My church window was gone. I had to reopen my email to find the link. By the time I got back on, the video view displayed nothing but a black square and all the chatting text disappeared. NOOOOO!

I sent a quick email to the church producer asking, “Is there a problem on your end or is it me?”

Before her answer came through that it was them, the video feed had resumed. So had the audio and all the chat text.

I could tell I’d rejoined late because Pastor Marc was in the middle of a sentence. It didn’t take long to catch up and all was well. Until the cheese balls showed up.

A brief aside, our pastor is creative and often uses props to help reinforce messages.

On this particular Sunday, Pastor Marc used cheese balls for one of his metaphors. It certainly made a colorful point, watching him toss tiny orange spheres of puffed cheese off camera, but it also distracted me.

I don’t know if the distraction was stress-related, but I became fixated on those cheese balls. Was he really just throwing them at the floor or was the camera operator catching them in his mouth? Was the church producer chasing after the rolling orbs and scooping them up with a dustpan and brush? Maybe they had a dog off camera. I envisioned a basset hound, its floppy ears dusting the floor as he snuffled up errant cheese balls. The camera view pulled back to reveal a couple cheese balls on the floor. Immediately, I wanted to call out to the screen, like an overzealous movie-goer watching a horror flick. “Look out behind you! Don’t step on it!” The church rented the office space where the video was shot. What if the pastor accidentally ground a cheese ball into the throw rug? That orange powder is not coming out with a Dustbuster. What if they get kicked out of their office space?

So yes, I broke the unwritten, “let’s not chat during the sermon,” rule and typed that I imagined a dog eating the cheese balls. I probably should have kept all my distracted thoughts to myself and probably should apologize for that. But cheese balls. In virtual church.

I had to laugh. And maybe that was the real point. There’s a lot of stress going on right now. If a few cheese balls can take a person’s mind off their troubles, then why not?

But if you don’t have a bucket of cheese balls to throw at each other, maybe these helpful stress relievers from Gemma Brook’s blog will help.

Or, in the words of Puffy, the famous cheese ball, “If you can’t stay cool, stay orange!”

[By the way; after the initial distraction of the cheese balls abated, I did go back and re-watch the church sermon.]