You Will Be in the Midst of Them

By Shannon Conley

During the 2020 shutdown, our extended family gathered several times a week for prayer and worship, for conversation, for games, for connection. Our eight zoom screens kept us together as I felt the year slide by: winter to spring, and then summer. On each panel I have written the prayer of St. Chrysostom, with which we close our liturgies of Morning and Evening Prayer. The refrain “and you have promised…that when two or three are gathered in his Name, you will be in the midst of them” coming out of my speakers is a sign of the essential virtual connections that kept me grounded and forward looking even as we physically isolated from each other and from the world.