Rev. Tracy’s West Hills UU Fellowship service, Sun 11/10, titled “Uncertainty is the worst“, was beautifully centered on the messages of resilience, hope, perseverance, community, patience, etc. Unfortunately there were many audio issues with Rev. Tracy’s mic and the podium mic not working at all for much of the service. Melody, our Soul Weaving Zoom host, tried to increase volume but it was out of our control. Some of us went directly to WHUUFs YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@whuufcommunications5006/streams) that Melody posted in the Zoom chat. There we could adjust the volume more directly but it still was very low. (FYI: The recorded service has been audio-corrected and I highly recommend listening to Rev. Tracy’s beautiful and heartfelt message! It is available at the YouTube link above.)

In the future, when Soul Weaving schedules a ‘livestream’ Sunday service from a different church, we’ll share it over our usual Zoom channel AND we’ll also share the direct link to the church we are visiting in our Newsletter service announcement and in the Zoom chat on Sunday morning. Hopefully this will provide our INUUC folks a chance to go directly to a service and see if any audio issues are less, using a direct link. We enjoy watching services in our INUUC Zoom ‘room’ together, but sometimes audio or tech issues seem to be amplified, taking away from the experience we all hope to have on a Sunday morning, through no fault of our own. Joining other church YouTube, Zoom, or Facebook streams can expand community in a time we all need one another even more than we did last week. 

Soul Weaving appreciates your patience as we continue to learn about how to best share services on multiple platforms. The audio issues at West Hills UU Fellowship yesterday were distracting and unfortunate, but also remind us that INUUC is not alone in its challenges with audio and tech! 

Ann-Scott Ettinger and the SW Circle