Dear Friends,
First of all, thank you so very much for the cards and well wishes given for my 40th anniversary celebration. I am deeply touched by this outpouring of love. My hope is to respond with thank you’s over the next two months. Look for something in the mail!! Thanks as well to the great team who hosted the Open House on Sunday. It was a perfect event. It could not have gone any smoother. And, God gave us perfect weather.
Secondly, you have heard us talking about The Chosen, a TV series about the people Jesus chose to be his disciples. Many of you joined us in the spring to watch season one and listened in as a small group of us had a “fireside chat” (via Zoom) to highlight certain aspects of the particular episode we just watched. We used this approach because of Covid and the lack of space here at the parish to host a large group of people watching a show together. We recorded each of those Chats and they are available on our YouTube page which you can find from a link on our website. Many of you have done so over the summer.
Now we are ready to view season two together. We received a few requests from you to do this as a group rather than via the internet. However, we continue to face the same challenges we had last spring with spacing, shared discussions, and access. Perhaps we can figure out a way to do it in the future, but for now we are going to do this again together via Zoom and have it recorded for those who wish to view it later. To make the Fireside Chat a bit more interesting, we have invited different parishioners to be a part of that “chat” each week. I thank them ahead of time for their courage to be willing to be “on camera” in front of their fellow parishioners and to offer their thoughts and opinions about the episode.
I know from the feedback we received in the spring, that you appreciated the thoughts of the folks in the Fireside Chat and that those comments spurred further reflection and insight on your part. One of the areas of frustration in the spring was your inability to ask questions and give feedback via the Zoom process. We will try to do better this fall, but please be patient with us as we adapt to this new way of communicating.
Some may ask why we are doing this together to begin with. Can’t people just watch The Chosen on TV on their own? What is the deal? After all, we are not getting together in a theater to watch it as a parish?
The reality is that we receive and respond better when we are joined by others. On our own it will not have the same impact. Lots of studies have been done on this. There was a recent study by Yale psychologists Erica Boothby, John Bargh, and Margaret Clark which demonstrated that life is indeed sweeter when we share our experiences. The researchers set out to find out whether or not sharing an experience with others changes the way people experience things in daily life.
In the study, research participants rated a pleasant-tasting chocolate as more likeable and flavorful when another individual they didn’t know was eating the same chocolate at the same time — even though they didn’t communicate with each other. Similarly, the researchers found that when participants tasted an unpleasant-tasting chocolate, they were more likely to dislike the experience when another person next to them was eating the same bitter chocolate. The researchers concluded that “sharing an experience with another person, without communicating, amplifies one’s experience. Both pleasant and unpleasant experiences were more intense when shared.”
As Boothby explains, “When people think of shared experience, what usually comes to mind is being with close others, such as friends or family, and talking with them. We don’t realize the extent to which we are influenced by people around us whom we don’t know and aren’t even communicating with.” The authors suggested that this amplification might be caused by a heightened attention to a stimulus when others are also focused on the same thing. Perhaps empathy may be in play here through the imagined experiences of others. The researchers also hypothesized that it is plausible that we see the world not only through our eyes but also through the lens of those around us. As Clark put it, “there may be something to seeing the world through another person’s eyes. When you and a partner experience something together, it may add to your own experience.”
Just watching The Chosen together as a parish, sharing the same experience, listening to the reflections together will bring us closer to each other and hopefully closer to the experience of Jesus and his original set of followers. Even though we are doing this on our own computer or TV knowing that other parishioners are sharing the experience with us, that we can talk about it when we are together, and that we are listening to the thoughts of fellow parishioners during the Fireside Chat should make the whole experience more profound.
Please join us for The Chosen on Wednesday evening at 6:30 pm. Here is the link:
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/8200636516?pwd=MmpLVE1rRWdjeVExTFRRS25JU2VoQT09
All are welcome!
Peace,
Fr. Damian
For more information on St. Frances Cabrini Parish, please check out our website at stcabriniomaha.org