To someone who doesn't understand American sports and retiring in New Jersey, watching thousands of people cheer when laundry is raised up in a tall room would look really, really weird.
And it makes total sense if you understand the ritual.
So we can recognize that it's okay that the activities that are symbolic in a singer space may look really, really weird to outsiders, but they're meaningful to the inside, and we don't need to worry about will this make sense to everybody outside the boundary who doesn't know what we're doing here? Hello, and welcome to the Art of Community: Conversations.
My name is Seth Resler, and I'm from Community Marketing Revolution.
And this is a series of conversations in inspired by the international best seller, the art of community.
It's got a new second edition that's coming out with 25% more content.
And so I wanted to have conversations with the author.
Uh, it is Charles Vogl, whose work has been used to develop leadership programs at Google, Airbnb, Twitch, Amazon, and the US Army.
He has also presented at the Yale Leadership Institute, the Harvard Law School, the Stanford Graduate School of Business, among others.
Welcome Charles Fogle.
Hi, Charles.
How are you? Hey, Seth.
It's always exciting to talk to you and to share something we both think is important.
Yeah.
And so if you've been following along with these conversations, you have seven principles of community in the book, and we've basically been taking them one by one and talking them about what they are.
Today, we are talking about the Temple principle.
And so I wanna get into exactly what this is and and talk to community builders about how they should be thinking about this principle and applying it to their own communities.
Let's start with an actual quote from your book.
You say a temple is simply a place where people with shared values enact their communities' rituals.
The temple represents the community strength and legitimacy.
It's a sacred space, a place set aside for a particular use.
And so I think a lot of people when they think of temples, they obviously it conjures up an image.
It conjures up an image of a, maybe a religious or a spiritual place.
Uh, you know, we maybe think of, of, for example, churches or mosques or other places like that, but you're not just talking about spaces like that.
Are you? I'm not.
And the book was informed or is informed by my own study of spiritual traditions that have been bringing people together for well over a thousand years around shared dives and purpose.
And that's one of the reason I use that term.
And when we look at spiritual traditions that have continued to bring people together in powerful ways and making them more resilient, uh, surprise surprise, they're always temples.
And so I wanted to share this idea that no matter who we're bringing together, it can be important.
It certainly can augment our efforts if there's a special place where we come together.
And, uh, we talk about rituals elsewhere in the book.
This idea that we want to do things together that have meaning that are not just practical.
And often these rituals help us recognize, acknowledge how we're all changing.
And so to have a special place, you can do that matters.
Makes a difference.
And, you know, in the book I talk about, it doesn't need to be a permanent place, a permanent building that that's only what you do there.
You know, a lot of people have beaches they'd like to return to as a family or as a sports team, and they have rituals they do on the beach.
Uh, do they fund rituals or meal rituals? And then someone's backyard can be a place where, uh, we gather regularly and know whenever we gather we're gonna find people in our community and we're gonna be safe.
But if we have no space, if we never make a space that's safe, that's special, that we do things the way of meaning, then there's definitely something that we could, um, invest in to improve, uh, how we're bringing people together.
And you talk about in the book how the spaces can, in fact, be temporary, that you can use, you know, it doesn't have to be something that is set aside and it's a permanent structure, and that's what it's always used for.
Mean, it could be something like, uh, for example, a banquet hall that is transformed for a particular, uh, ritual, uh, or or some other space like that.
Right? Well, it could be a banquet hall, and it could be a backyard and in my house, so we use my living room.
Uh, we have very special rituals that we use for my son's birthday, but then as far as I know, only our family does it, uh, for a special reason because it's special to our family.
And we make that space special, uh, for his birthday ritual every year.
And there's a number of things we can do to make any special, any place special.
The first one is, uh, we just make sure there's a clear boundary that people have to cross over to walk in.
So, for example, Um, I got married, uh, very close to the beach in Hawaii, and there are a lot of people like to go to beaches.
And I don't know if any given beach is special for wedding to everybody, uh, but one of the things we did is we put a ring of flowers around the ceremony space So when our guests arrived, at some point, they had to physically cross over a boundary, in this case, of flowers, to enter the sacred space, the space that I would get married in.
And of course, when my wife and our families showed up in procession, we too crossed this boundary, a very specific line that demarked when we were entering into the sacred space.
A door totally counts.
As you said, you could use a banquet hall.
Uh, you can set up that door in such a way where guests understand when they show up and they enter that room, uh, we're gonna do things in this room.
They're special.
Maybe someone's getting married.
Maybe someone's getting honored.
Uh, maybe there are credentials that are gonna be handed out.
But the point is is that that space is gonna be special while we're using it.
You know, it's, uh, interesting to hear you bring that up.
When I was younger, I used to take hopkito, uh, a martial art, and we were just practicing in a room at the university gym.
And my instructor was not a lot for sort of the ceremonies and and the the pomp and circumstance, but one thing he always insisted on was that when you entered the door to practice, you bowed to the room, and and he said I want you to mentally take everything else you've got going on in your life and just leave it at the door and walk in and be here.
And then again, bow to the room when you leave, and you can pick it all up.
And I think what he was doing in that was acknowledging that boundary that you're talking about, saying, Hey, there is a boundary here, and I am crossing over it at this moment.
Yeah.
When you walked through there, you did something that was symbolic, right, because it wasn't practical.
That that, uh, let you know and let others know that you're entering a space that was set aside to do something special or said differently what you would do in that room and the rules about what you would do in that room were different in that room than they were outside that room.
So we could say that in a different way.
The things that were okay to do and say outside that Hopkito straining space were different than the things you were supposed to be doing in that room.
Am I right about that? Yeah.
If I if I just walked up to random strangers and did to them, you know, the things that I'm doing to my fellow students in the hospital class, it would be frowned upon.
They would not like it.
Well, and there were conversations you could have over dinner Right? Mhmm.
With, uh, maybe beers that would be totally okay, uh, at dinner with beers, and you better not have those conversations in Okeydoke class.
Yes.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Yes.
Absolutely.
And and you mentioned the backyard.
I mean, it's it's interesting to hear you say that as well because last summer, uh, we had a baby shower, uh, because, um, my daughter-in-law had a had a a daughter, uh, and we welcomed that, you know, with a baby shower.
And it was the same kind of thing.
We transformed that backyard, which normally just is a backyard into a space.
The boundary in that case was already there.
It was just a fence.
Mhmm.
But you actually talk about in the book some of the other, uh, aspects of a temple.
Uh, and so I wanna go through them.
And because I recognize many of these just from the way that we transformed our backyard into that baby shower, the next one you mentioned is an invitation.
We've talked a little bit about invitations in the past.
How does that principle apply when it comes to temples? You know, if I wanna make a space special, be that for a group of volunteers or people celebrating, uh, a baptism for a family member, uh, one of the things that makes a space special is who shows up.
Right.
So if you can imagine that baptism and Bishop tutu shows up, uh, my guess is that space would feel more special.
Am I right about that? Yeah.
Absolutely.
He didn't, by the way.
But yeah.
She didn't show up.
Right.
Uh, so one of the things we can think about when we're creating a sacred space is who are we inviting and who will make it special.
And let's not overthink it.
If it's for a daughter that's getting baptized, then invite family members and people important to your daughter and not just put a poster out in your neighborhood that says, hey, we're gonna have cake.
Please come if you like cake.
Right.
Right.
So who we invite to put in the space matters in making it special.
And it could be, you don't need to do very much else.
And the people that are important to you show up, uh, that space may become very special.
I mean, we can do other things, but notice that alone, you know, might do it.
Let's talk about some of the other things that we could do as well.
And I'm sure you're gonna tell me that this isn't a checklist.
You don't have to do all of these.
These are these are options.
These are some of the ways that you can essentially set off that temple and make it special.
But you talk about clothing as something that, uh, can make a a space sacred too.
Talk about that.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
The way we dress for an event can communicate how we're relating to it.
So if you wanted to make a graduation party, particularly special, uh, it may make a big difference to ask us to dress in a certain way.
Maybe they dress more formally if that's what you want, or maybe even more wildly if that's the tenure you want.
The point is it's not normal.
Uh, a sacred space is a space that set aside.
And when we set it aside, uh, different things happen there than spaces we don't set aside.
So dressing in more widely or more formally, or even, um, maybe uniformly.
Right? You know, I've, uh, done some work with military, and, uh, there are some occasions where they, for reasons that are obvious, uh, show up all dressed the same.
And there's a certain, uh, level of commitment and a camarader that that is communicated when people come dressed exactly the same.
So one lever we can use is, uh, think about what we're asking people to wear and what that communicates.
And let me reiterate.
You said this is not a checklist.
You're absolutely right.
They're all tools that we can use to make an event we want to be special, special.
And ideally, the event is fun.
And one of the reasons we wanna make a sacred time and a sacred ritual in a temple fun is people don't wanna come back if it's not fun.
So find out how it's gonna be fun for you and then do that.
Uh, and these are just tools that can help you get there.
Some of the other tools that you mentioned are sound and lighting.
And again, thinking about that baby shower that we did in the backyard, uh, we pulled out a PA for that because unlike other events where we have, uh, over in the backyard.
This is one where we wanted a focal point, and people wanted to be able to, you know, uh, address the couple having the baby.
Uh, and then in terms of lighting, I mean, I mean, it was pretty basic.
It was tiki torches from Home Depot, but it was something that just kind of made it different.
So talk a little bit about the way sound and lighting can be used to Okay.
Well Uh, I love your example.
How you intuitively knew you wanted to make sure the sound worked for the event you wanted to host.
You wanted people to hear the words that we shared, which were important for baby shower.
And then you intuitively knew that you wanted to make the lighting special.
You wanted to make it different than it is in every other night in your backyard.
So, uh, with sound, if we want a space to be special, we can see how we're gonna make the sound different than it usually is.
Um, if a place is usually cacophonous and noisy, then creating event that's quiet and calm can be really, really special.
So think of a a college courtyard where there are usually lots of events, uh, a lot of people talking.
If we create an event where we make it calm, then maybe, uh, an honoring ceremony or memorial ceremony, all of a sudden that comes much more special because we're used to being that space when it's noisy.
If a place is used to being quiet, for example, in a library or maybe your living room or backyard, uh, making it more loud could be special, maybe not for the whole event because most of us don't wanna be allowed event for hours, but making a part of that loud is musically or just with, you know, right to sound of cheering.
So we can think, well, what are the contrasts of what's usually going on there that indicates, hey, this is special? And then lighting, um, all people who, um, are liturgists or have studied a lot of theater, know lighting makes an enormous difference.
It's really hard to be intimate, uh, in in relationship, and maybe even romantic and sober under bright shining fresh lights, for example.
So the first rule that I like to share is put the lighting where you want the attention.
Uh, you were at this baby shower and my guess is, uh, the parents and the grandparents wanted to say something.
So make sure there aren't flood lights all around the crowd away from the speakers and make sure there is lighting on the speakers.
And this Sounds obvious to me, but I've been at events where nobody thought that out, and so there was lighting distracting us from everywhere, everywhere we could look, except where they wanted the attention.
And it's not rocket science.
You can turn off lights that are away from where you do want the attention, and you can bring in lights.
There are so many options now with LEDs to bring it closer to where you want the attention.
And especially if it's a backyard, fires are a great option, uh, fire ring.
Right? And have someone stand there.
The other lesson I like to bring from liturgy in theater is we want warm lighting.
We want lighting that most reflects, uh, firelight because it, uh, is calming and lets us feel intimate.
So, you know, I try to get rid of the blue lights, which are often used for security cameras, for example, and look, so where can we warm that light up, make it more yellow? And then another rule that just helps us think about where is the lighting gonna help us is how can we diffuse the light? I don't wanna light a whole space with one light bulb or one super bright light bulb and think, well, there's plenty of light technically we can see.
And that's what you were doing when you were bringing those tiki torches is you were bringing a warm light, in this case, fire light.
And by virtue of having more than one tiki torch, you you disperse the light so that it wasn't too intense in one area.
And my guess is you noticed that really, uh, made the space more comfortable and made it feel more intimate for the kind of baby shower you wanted to host.
I'm so glad to hear you talk about this because I feel like sometimes I geek out a little too much about the lighting in a place like my backyard because I have sort of those flood lights that are just their colors and they're just on the plants in the background to kind of give it an ambiance.
And I I think way too hard about this stuff, and I'm glad to hear you go into such detail to know that I'm not the only one.
Uh, so Well, it makes an enormous difference, and I noticed people who are not trained in this, they can feel the difference.
They don't know what is off.
And so for those of us know, while the light is too blue or it's too bright or it's too focused or it's focused the wrong place, we know if all I have to do was change this and it's gonna feel more intimate.
And I'll give you an example.
I was invited to go to a dinner at a long table in the Boston area, and I was there, uh, as a thought leader there to, to speak to this very large group, and they put us a long table of, I think, of 20.
And they had arranged for a private room and a restaurant.
The private in the room of the restaurant had these sconces all along the walls, and then we were sitting at a dark table.
And I knew that if we could just dim those constants to almost nothing, and we put 15 lights along the center of the table.
This dinner we were having would have felt two to five times more comfortable intimate.
And all we would have to change is get the lighting away from where the tension is, I e the walls, and put it where we want the attention, which is at the table, and it would have felt so much more magical.
But nobody thought that through, uh, as you well know, candles are cheap, and, um, it's easy to dim and or turned off lights.
And, uh, most people don't mind sitting in a table that's candlelit across from other people they wanna talk to.
I wanna go back to something you mentioned when we were talking about sound, uh, because you mentioned music, and it made me realize that there are certain ceremonies that happen, you know, certain rituals that happen in certain spaces where there's music associated with it.
Uh, for example, a wedding, you know, and we all think about the song that, uh, people play typically when the bride and groom come down the aisle, uh, or a graduation ceremony where we all think about, you know, certain music that is played in that kind of circumstance or, uh, even a funeral that there's often, you know, things like taps that are played at, uh, at a military funeral, for example.
Um, so music is a part of that as well, right? It is.
You're talking about music that's put in intentionally to shift the mood of an event, and it's can be very, very powerful.
You know, words often speak to our intellect.
When we're serving food, it often, uh, amongst other things speaks to our body.
Music, uh, most powerfully affects our emotion.
It can do other things as well, but when I think of, you know, the most basic elements that are creating experience.
The music affects our mood or the emotion, the words speak to the intellect and meaning in the food at some level, um, affects our body.
So we can think about, well, what is the mood that we want to introduce with the music.
And, obviously, there are some traditions where we we have certain expectations, and and we can choose to fulfill the expectations or work against them.
The warning is when creating a spaker space.
I've noticed that many people are afraid or feel boring.
And so what they do is they turn on just any music or music they like, uh, loudly, and it becomes distracting.
And they don't have any good reason to have that music other than they think based on no other standard, that it's a good idea.
And they don't understand that it's actually pulling away from the intention that they invited people to participate in.
So be very intentional about the music and use it to sort of set the scene.
And, I mean, almost similar to what you're talking about with light, you don't want the light to distract from the thing that's important.
You don't want the music to distract from it's important to do that.
I think it's a great point, Seth.
All of these elements that we're talking about are something to consider.
There are tools that can be used to enhance because you have intention, but if you just throw stuff in the space because you've seen other people do it or you saw in a movie, it quickly becomes distracting.
And in my experience, most people are just really excited to be in a space with people they care about that share their values and then have come to do something that they think is important.
And we don't need to work very hard to entertain them or create distracting experiences if the intention is set correctly.
So sometimes less is more.
So Very often, less is more.
I think you and I are unfortunately in a culture where there's so many opportunities to fill our senses with portable music and portable lights and, um, you know, literally an endless stream of talking that we've forgotten that doesn't take very much with intention to create a powerful event.
In fact, Seth, you've probably noticed when communities be they a school or a church or neighborhood, experience a tragedy, uh, there is a longing for a moment of silence.
And I think that people who long feel that silence don't even recognize what they're longing for is a sacred time, a time set aside, where things are different to honor what's changed.
They just want silence.
And, uh, there's a reason that there's a longing for silence and not different and more distraction.
You mentioned one other element in the book that I hadn't considered.
And I thought it was really thing.
And that is height.
Talk about how that can be used to set a space.
Yeah.
One of the things I learned while studying sacred spaces in spiritual traditions is amongst the things we can look at and four when we enter a strange space to us is what is placed higher up and what is placed lower.
Because at some level, there's a correlation between how high something is placed and it's importance.
Now, obviously, uh, there's going to be different interpretations of that.
But if I go to a temple and never been somewhere before and very high up or a bunch of portraits, uh, my guess is those people are really important.
If I show up and there are certain quotes that are on the wall that are very high up and probably big, then my guess is, uh, that wisdom by those people is really, really important.
So for example, at your baby shower, uh, my guess is, uh, there were people that were more important for that event that were standing and people who were less important at that moment we're invited to sit.
Right? There's an intuitive sense that when we have the parents speak or the grandparents speak, they stand up.
And we can think about that how we're, um, setting up the space.
For example, if there's a words we're gonna hand out, if there's some kind of badge we're gonna hand out, if we're going to honor someone, we can think about how we're orienting the space on who's higher and who's lower.
You know, as you talk about that, I'm thinking about a wedding, where you often have groomsmen and maids of honors who are standing while everybody else is seated in in seating or pews or whatever it might be.
Uh, and I hadn't thought about that before, but, yeah, this idea that Yeah.
Just whether people are sitting or standing can make a difference.
So Well, uh, you know, one of the really fascinating things is when we look at, um, preaching or wisdom sharing in spiritual traditions, in some traditions, the speaker is high up for example, the Christian pulpit.
And in some cases, they're low and the gathered people are raised up on, um, on risers or in, like, a stadium seating.
And that might seem just like a curious choice But in some traditions, the canonical word from the book and the interpretation of it is very, very important and what you and I Seth may think about those words or interpretation, not that important.
In other tradition, uh, the speaker is sharing something of their interpretation, but the real value is how it is practically applied in what we call an economic experience of that wisdom.
And so very often where the speaker is relative the listeners in a spiritual tradition can reflect the importance of the speaker and the importance of the interpretation in that tradition.
Does it ever work in reverse, uh, the height thing? And and I'm thinking, for example, of a sporting event, I I don't know whether you would consider that a temple and and those are rituals that happen in there, but at a sporting event, the the seats that are high are the cheap seats, you know, and it's Jack Nicholson who's sitting there on the floor, you know, real close.
Um, I I I don't know.
Does that mean that sometimes the the height is works in a different fashion? You know, when you're talking about a sporting event, absolutely, there are absolutely sporting spaces that have uh, grown into powerful ritual spaces for communities.
And I'm thinking about the football stadiums in Europe, for example, where my understanding is many people consider the football stadium the cultural epicenter of the community.
But there's a difference between the practicality of a space and the symbolism of a space.
So in a stadium, the the cheap seats are high up because they're farther away from who's important, the players.
Right? And then important people they're not important because they're on the floor, next to the players.
They're important, you know, because they're important, and those are the expensive seats because they're close to the players.
So that's about proximity, right, to people who are the most important.
But if you think about, you know, where the owners of the teams sit in The United States or where the net the networks place their people.
Uh, again, they're elevated.
Right? It's not simple, but we can use that lens to understand what's being celebrated.
You know, one of the things you talk about in the book is that what happens in these sacred spaces might look weird to outsiders who are not in the space and are not participating.
Explain a little bit more about what you mean by that.
Well, in the book I mentioned that in The United States, we have this tradition of retiring jerseys, and that includes raising up a sports jersey with a number on it, um, close to the ceiling of an arena while people are cheering.
To someone who doesn't understand American sports and retiring in New Jersey, uh, watching thousands of people cheer when laundry is raised up in a tall room would look really, really weird.
And it makes total sense if you understand the ritual of honoring someone by retiring their jersey.
So we can recognize that it's okay that the activities that are symbolic in a sacred space may look really, really weird to outsiders.
Uh, when you understand what's going on, we call that esoteric knowledge as a technology is simply of knowledge, you know, within the community that's not shared outside.
And so we can create rituals inside the sacred spaces that are funny or weird, hopefully not harmful.
They're meaningful on the inside, and we don't need to worry about will this make sense to everybody outside the boundary who doesn't know what we're doing here? You know, I can think of many times where I've seen a scene in the movie where somebody who doesn't belong in a space, somehow finds themselves witnessing a ritual that is happening in a space like this, and it it's it's meant to have some sort of effect on the movie.
Sometimes it's to show that this person is an outsider that something odd is going on.
But it's they're capitalizing on that dynamic of, uh, a ritual can look weird to somebody who's from the outside and doesn't belong in the in the sacred space or or is seeing it for the first time.
In some ways, I think there's There's a correlation between the weird or the better up until some breaking point.
And the reason is if it doesn't make sense in the outside, but it makes sense to you and me, SaaS, it's even more special.
And I want everyone to have experiences that are really special to them that other people won't and maybe can't understand, but sustain us and invigorate us in our own relationships with others and how we're connected.
This goes back to something that we talked about in an earlier conversation.
We talked about the example of firefighters who have their sort of their own sense of humor that they only share with each other and that they wouldn't use another spaces because other people wouldn't understand it.
In some ways, the rituals serving the same purpose.
It's something that only the people in the community would understand and people outside might not.
So That's exactly right.
It's all under what we call esoteric knowledge.
And, uh, the Estoteric knowledge is really important for us to recognize that we understand each other and we recognize that other people don't.
Um, in fact, I just got back from a mountain trip.
I think you know that I'm a very serious skier and ski instructor.
And I was shocked in this last trip, uh, skiing with some people who didn't understand the mountain safety rules, keep each other safe, that, you know, ski instructors are really drilled in.
We're always in looking out about how much space.
You give other people and what space you take.
And I realized that there's a lot more esoteric knowledge I have about, um, mountain safety, people who take this seriously and do it a lot than people who don't.
And, uh, it was a wake up call to me about how inculcated I am in this mountain sport community to the point where I didn't even recognize how much I know and use and take for granted that is really weird to people on the outside.
Last thing I wanna ask you about, uh, we've been talking primarily about physical spaces, you know, spaces that you go to in person.
But now with the rise of the internet, we have the ability to create digital spaces and in some cases, people are coming together in real time, for example, through virtual events or maybe Zoom calls or things like that.
In some cases, those, uh, digital spaces are asynchronous.
Uh, so something like a Facebook group where somebody go comes in and posts, and then somebody can come along hours or even days later and comment, you know, Slack channels, Discord servers, things like that.
Can these digital spaces be used as temples, uh, or does it have to be a physical space? I'd like to think there's a continuum on how effective and supportive these sacred spaces can be.
And so there may be a above zero specialists when we're talking about online space with asynchronous engagement, unfortunately, it's pretty low.
And whenever I say this, somebody gets mad because they wanna give me quite frankly an outlier exam example about how it was really important to them, which is to say yes.
There there are examples, but in the bell curve of experience, they're they're not very strong.
In fact, uh, my co author, and I, Carrie and I say that if people aren't there together, if there's not a beginning and an end of experience, it's not really a gathering.
If I can log on later and watch the video or I can read catch up by reading it, then it's not really a shared experience.
It's something.
It's a doc meant, right, but it's not a shared experience.
So I will say while there are exceptions and there are exceptions on balance asynchronous experiences, for the purposes of what we're talking about, don't really count and not that effective.
And online spaces, you can create a sacred online space using some of the tools we talked about.
One is, uh, you restrict who you're inviting in so that when people show up, they're confident people there, uh, or they're for a particular reason.
There needs to be, oh, a boundary to cross into, which is usually a digital boundary.
Right? You need to have the link to get in there.
And then there need to be different rules on how you behave there at that time, then you would behave somehow somewhere else.
And part of that is making it different.
Making how I don't know how you usually gather in line, but make sure that during that sacred time, whether you're honoring someone or celebrating something or announcing something, that it's different.
And then, of course, you need to have, uh, some kind of activity that's not particularly or efficient that, uh, is symbolic on what you're doing to, uh, enact whatever you're enacting, which could be a celebration or honoring.
So you can do it, but for those who are just looking for easy hack on creating sacred spaces, bring people together, just know that at the end of the day, the research is obvious, bringing people together in physical spaces is much more powerful.
And even if you can't bring everybody together, uh, bring some of those people together to to offer them that particularly powerful experience of being with one another in a sacred place during a sacred time.
This makes a lot of sense to me because I I can see the parallels between digital and the real world, you know, when you're talking about, you know, why asynchronous isn't as powerful, it's sort of like walking into a church when there is a church service going on and walking into a church when there isn't a church service going on.
Right.
Mean, there's still some power in it, but it's not quite the same thing as when you're, you know, that's not even close.
Other people.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
Uh, I mean, if if there's an Easter Sunday service at St.
John Deivided in New York, and there's a hundred person choir performing, and, uh, the liturgy is fully performed, and you show up four hours later, Seth, and they say, oh, we have a recording of it.
Right? And even they play speakers, Is it terrible? Probably not? Could you enjoy it? Maybe? Could you have an experience that you wanna have again possibly? Is the same as being in an Easter service to stay down the divide without the person choir? Of course not.
So let's stop pretending it is.
Right.
And, uh, acknowledge that can do something, but that's not aspirational when we wanna bring together people in a powerful way.
It sounds like there's more value in bringing people together in real time in a digital space.
You know, such as a a a virtual event.
But again, I get what you're saying, that that's still not as powerful as an actual in person event.
And look, I think we learned all this lesson during the pandemic, right, when all of a sudden we had to try and substitute our in person gatherings for a digital recreation of those gatherings.
And there was value in that, but it wasn't the same as when we could do it in person.
Right? Well, not only was it not even close.
I mean, you seth and I know lots of people who just avoid online events because we're so sick of them.
Right? The last thing we want is another moment online watching something happen.
Well, this has been a fascinating conversation.
So that is the temple principle, uh, and you're starting to see how they connect to each other.
So, uh, again, Charles, thank you for, uh, having this conversation with me.
And the book is the Art of Community, and there's a new addition coming out.
So everybody should go check out the second edition, and we're gonna have more of these.
We're gonna talk about the other principals soon
