As usual, I had a digital meeting last night. the group meets weekly over Zoom and I’ve been the official host of the group for over a year. I was a regular participant in the group before I began working as Interim Minister of Faith Formation. the membership of the group changes, with some people joining and others dropping out for a while, but the average attendance is large enough to fill up the screen of my laptop and small enough that we get to know each other well and have established a small group rapport with one another. As the meeting began, I commented on the simple fact that about half of the participants had bookshelves in the background. A brief conversation ensued with one member saying that she now blurs the background so that other participants can’t read the titles of the books on the shelves. She is a professional who has many digital meetings each week and has given careful thought to how she appears and what her background is like. Others in the meeting commented on the keynote presenter at our climate revival last week and how the book he had written was prominently displayed as well as a photograph to which he made reference during the presentation.

The conversation got me to thinking about the background in my Zoom conversations. If I am at my office at work the background is mostly a blank wall, as we are in an interim position and haven’t hung artwork on the walls of our office. I could move my laptop so that the background is a set of bookcases, but they are mostly empty and don’t have my beloved titles because I have not moved books into this office. At home my desk is right next to a window, a location that I love, being able to have fresh air and a view of the neighborhood at hand. Behind me are some house plants that also enjoy the window, a printer, and a rocking chair. On the wall is a photo made by a member of our Idaho congregation of an historic bible, a chalice and plate. If I were to move my desk so it faced the window, however, the background would be all bookcases. I wondered if it might be worth the effort to move my desk for a class I will be teaching next week. My bookcases would make me appear to be more scholarly, I suppose.

It is most likely that I won’t move my desk. I like it where it is. And rotating my computer so that the background changes would be a hassle when I am teaching because I have multiple monitors and I need to be able to read and refer to things on my computer that are not shown to the class and to preview items that I will share on screen with the class before they show up on the screen for them.

I have several virtual backgrounds on my computer including a sunset on the beach and a photo of Mount Baker. When I presented at a large virtual conference during the summer, we were given a special background with the logo of the event, so that all presenters shared the same background. Virtual backgrounds are problematic as they required very precise lighting such as that provided by a ring light or several bright lights. I have decent lighting for my video experiences as I use lights that I have used for photography and know a bit about shadows and how to get crisp photographic images.

Our daughter-in-law is a counselor who frequently visits with clients on a secure video conferencing platform. She has a very plain background and studio lighting in her home office and a similar professional set up in her physical office for such meetings. She is careful to avoid distracting backgrounds. An undergraduate degree in film studies and a few years of working in films and television has given her a professional eye for those details that help her achieve success in her work.

I don’t, however, want to build a professional set for participation in virtual meetings. I have no need to hide the fact that I am semi-retired. My white hair and beard show my age quite clearly. I hope that my presence in meetings is meaningful because of my ability to contribute. I don’t care if I sometimes forget to mute my sound when my clock strikes in the background. I think that the chiming clock reminds all of the participants of the passage of time and, when a meeting involves people in different time zones, establishes my location.

There is something about professional television sets that always seems a bit fake to me. I’ve appeared on television on several occasions and have participated in studio interviews where the set is designed to look like an office or a living room. The cameras are aimed to show the furniture and background, but do not show that the setting is not an office or living room, but a pretend setting with bare concrete floors, soundproofing, and lots of cables just out of sight. I prefer to have my real home as my background. My plants have not been arranged by a professional florist. If my bookshelves were the background, people might notice that my books are not perfectly arranged and that I sometimes place items on the shelves simply because I don’t know where else to put them. My desk is usually cluttered and there are plenty of books in my home that are out on tables and desktops because I am constantly reading and like to keep books close at hand. I have no need to hide these things from others, but I don’t want my setting to become the focus of a lesson or a conversation that has a specific purpose and meaning that I want to communicate.

Non verbal communication is important whether the meeting is in person or virtual and I am aware that non verbal clues are different in different settings. I’m learning to adapt to what to me is a new world of communications. Along the way I’ll make plenty of mistakes and I’ll learn from my mistakes and from others. Somehow, however, I hope that my real identity shines through and that I don’t have to put too much effort into creating a background for my video presence.