I’m terrible at selfies. Like, so bad. Like, dear-God-I-don’t-actually-look-like-that-do-I, I-might-need-to-destroy-this-entire-phone bad at selfies. I’m the type of person who covers up her webcam with packing tape.

But the times, they are a-changing. Needless to say, in light of recent events I’ve had to suck it up and peel off the tape, making sure, of course, to smile for my FBI agent.

I am not exactly thriving in quarantine, folks. But while my social life, SAT score, motivation, and personal appearance are all headed straight for oblivion, my neglected front camera is really living its best life right now.

As you may have noticed, we live in Zoom now. And most areas of my life are feeling the effects. One of the first things to shut down during the pandemic was the Episcopal Diocese of Texas, which, for those of you who don’t happen to live with a priest, is the regional governing body of the Episcopal church. All services from the Louisiana border in the east to Austin in the west were suddenly cancelled.

My church, being tiny and stubborn, immediately got together a Zoom meeting schedule instead. I know it doesn’t seem like much, but y’all have to understand–a large proportion of the congregation is over seventy. Under normal circumstances they’d treat a smartphone as a biohazard. But they just rolled up their sleeves and figured it out, and we kept right on going.

It’s not just our own church members, either. We have people log on every Sunday from six states, from Washington to New Hampshire. Each week, I sit down in front of my computer so I can hear my mother preach a sermon from another room over our spotty wifi and watch people cry a thousand miles away, because all of a sudden, this matters so much.

Obviously, it’s not just religion that’s having to innovate. After weeks of struggling to work up the ambition to put on real pants, I decided I was in dire need of human contact. A few of my friends and I set up a weekly lunch meeting. I had spent quarantine lying on the couch reading depressing headlines and thinking Deep Thoughts ™. It startled me how good it felt to talk about things that don’t matter.

About this time, my grandparents entered the chat. Literally. People, my grandmother texted me. Texted me. With her actual French-manicured hands. Amazing.

We drove east to Crockett, Texas to sit on their porch (six feet away from them, of course). What struck me in that moment, sitting in the shade and trying not to touch the armrest of their porch swing, isn’t that I hadn’t gotten to do this since February. It was that I hadn’t gotten to do this ever. For some reason, sitting on the porch and talking had simply never occurred to us. Six feet apart though we may be, I thought, we are at this moment closer together than ever.

It seems like everyone I know is reaching out for each other, hoping for something to hold on to. This week, I got a letter–like, in the mail–and writing back and forth is surprisingly fun. I’ve been having long phone conversations with friends I usually only text. Today, someone from my church contacted me just to see how I was doing. And I finally reestablished contact with a close friend who lives in California.

Things may never go back to the way they were. People all over the world are losing their jobs, their families, their lives, and their hope. Worst of all, no one really knows when this will be over. Shelter-in-place may have lifted, but we’re far from out of the woods.

In the meantime, everything has changed. School has been reduced to–at most–a bunch of little squares on a computer screen.

Grocery shopping is a post-apocalyptic experience. People are afraid to look each other in the face. Their jobs, if they still have those, are either confined to their inboxes or possibly life-threatening.

It seems like the only constant in the world is my lack of skill at selfies.

But living in flux has forced us to adapt. Whether it’s learning how to use some newfangled technology or finally seeing the benefit of an old one, attending board meetings in Google Hangouts or delivering the mail despite the risk, we can all rise to this occasion. Things may never go back to the way they were. But, well…things were different then.

As for me, I have some new constants to rely on. Rain or shine, I’ll meet my friends every Friday at noon.