Jayne doesn’t talk to her colleagues. Sure, they’re all camped out under the same florescent lights, but they remain at their respective “work stations,” eat lunch alone at their desks and listen to headphones as they type. If her boss needs something, he emails her. He sits 10 feet away.

Of course, there is an upside to this technology, (says the blogger). Jayne can quickly communicate with field workers from Kabul to Kenya. She’s developed a rapport with a co-worker halfway around the world. And when she goes back to the cramped basement apartment she calls home, she signs on to Skype and talks to her boyfriend through a webcam that allows them to see each other as they read through the bible together. (She’s a pastor’s daughter –she can’t help herself.)

In his address at Nationals stadium in DC, the pope commented on these unusual times:

“It is a time of great promise, as we see the human family in many ways drawing closer together and becoming ever more interdependent. Yet at the same time we see clear signs of a disturbing breakdown in the very foundations of society: signs of alienation, anger and polarization on the part of many of our contemporaries; increased violence; a weakening of the moral sense; a coarsening of social relations; and a growing forgetfulness of God.”

So while the world is becoming more interconnected on the global scale, we are increasingly losing our sense of belonging in the very places in which we live, work and play.

When I was a freshman at Boston College, I participated in a theology class that incorporated community service into the curriculum. For one year, I studied Niebuhr and Augustine, critiqued Barbara Ehrenreich and C.S. Lewis. I learned words like 'eschatology' and 'ontological.' And as part of my class work, each week I spent time with a homebound 89 year old woman in Brookline.

Rae was a physically frail but tenacious woman who, despite painful arthritis, still wore pantyhose and heels behind her walker. Her body was failing but her spirit was strong. She called me 'dear'. When I first started visiting her, I brought with me the haughty insistence that I was enacting the corporal work of mercy to “visit the imprisoned.” But she, a New York native Jewish woman, quietly performed her ministry on me.

When I entered her charmingly outdated apartment, Rae made me feel at home. I, a homesick freshman, was grateful to gain a grandmother in an unfamiliar city. Rae was always appreciative of my presence, as she would often go days without having a visitor. And for me, in a college environment devoid of accountability, it was nice to feel needed. We leaned on one another.

"Do you know the song 'Empty chairs at empty tables?'" Rae asked me one afternoon, referring to the tune from Les Miserables. “I do,” I answered, having grown up listening to the musical’s soundtrack. “That is what my life is like,” Rae told me as tears fell from the corners of her eyes.

There's a grief that can't be spoken.
There's a pain goes on and on.
Empty chairs at empty tables
Now my friends are dead and gone.

Rae’s tragedy was that she had outlived her spouse, relatives and friends. And my sadness was that I was away from home for the first time in a strange place that often seemed unforgiving and apathetic to my existence. But when we were together, sharing stories and snacks at her kitchen table, the seventy years between us melted away. In those moments, we were enough for each other.

I’ve forgotten the meaning to those multisyllabic theology terms, but Rae, who died two years ago, remains with me. And now, in a twist that only this modern world could make possible, I take to the internet with her story.