The Patchwork Quilt of Post-College Community

December 15th will mark 5 years since I was whisked across a stage, shook hands with people I didn’t know who in turn gave me a cardboard tube with nothing inside. It seems so insignificant, if not a little strange, but that walk across that stage on the day of my graduation from college symbolized the walk into adulthood for me. I was in my 20s, but it appeared life was just beginning or perhaps beginning all over again, just as it had years earlier when I walked across another similar stage wearing similar garb.

5 years ago, the job market for college grads wasn’t so bleak as it is now. Back then, you walked across that stage with confidence, a cheerful boldness, resting in the hope of a bright and promising future. Current economic disenchantment aside, I think there is a largely unaddressed tribulation lurking on the other side of that stage: community.

When I walked across that stage into post-college, career life, I found myself alone. I live in a college town. This transient town isn’t a final destination of choice, but a stepping stone for most. The vast majority of people don’t seem to have roots, things that keep them invested, things that keep them in it for the long haul. And sure, there were actual people surrounding me, but walking across that stage changed me. College seemed to me to be some sort of dam that held back the oppressively crushing weight of adulthood. Walking across that stage released it. And what was worse yet was there were few I knew around me who were going through it with me. And by few I mean none. For the first time in my life, I was going through such a significant experience utterly alone.

But what do I mean by alone? Carl Jung said it best. “Loneliness does not come from having no people around you, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to you.” That’s what I’m talking about. Sure, there were people around, but no one was going through what I was going through. In a town of constant turnovers, college graduates leave as fast as they can. The ones who stay behind marry and raise families. I fit into neither category and no one else around me stood where I stood.

The first couple of years after I graduated were the worst. I’d never felt so completely surrounded and so completely alone. I longed for a community of people who were going through this with me. Though none were to be found, somehow I made it.

In fact, it had been years since I really even thought about it. That is, until a friend of mine recently graduated and much to his disappointment felt called to stay.

We had coffee on a Sunday. As I sipped, he spilt. The frustration and fears he expressed were the exact same ones I had nearly 5 years earlier. Hearing them come from another person made me realize I wasn’t alone. Not now, at least. And neither was he.

At the end of it all, he apologized profusely for being a downer on an otherwise beautiful day. I assured him it was no trouble at all.

He paused. Then,

“How do you do it, Nicole?”

I was hoping he wouldn’t ask me. I had spent the last few minutes trying to remember how I got to where I was today.

It’s hard to say, really. I told him everything I could think of: how I learned to be alone, how it all boiled down to a simple obedience to a calling on my heart.

Then, suddenly, an image came to mind.

“What’s more valuable: a comforter or a quilt?” I asked him. A quilt, of course.

I think community in college is kinda like a comforter. You’re all cut from the same cloth. You’re all in the same boat. At a moment’s notice, 15 of your best buds can grab some outdoor tables at Starbucks and share your school-inflicted woes. You can stay up until the sun rises and sleep through your first class the next morning and do it all again in a whim. Community in college is so effortless, it’s like breathing.

But post-college community is so different. To me, it’s more like a patchwork quilt.

Each piece of fabric is from a different cut of cloth. Some are scraps, some are repurposed, all are a little older and worse for the wear {at least they are in the good quilts my granny used to make}. If you just look at a pile of these little fabric remnants, there’s no way you’d see how it could possibly fit together, but a quilter would know. They get trimmed and arranged and pieced together. Painstakingly. Slowly. With much work and much effort. So much time. And in the end, you get something with such value.

That’s what post-college community has been like for me. Each person with the paisley print or plaid pattern of their pasts, coming together with great sacrifice and intentionality to make something where they feel they belong. To make a new home.

You’re not together because you’re alike. You’re together because you’ve made a choice and you’ve seen it through.

It’s never easy. We all have different jobs, different lives, different passions. So much works to tear us apart, but our common thread is Christ. He binds us to bear one another’s burdens, delight in one another’s delights.

This town is tough. It’s hard learning to love in a town that leaves. But with a community like this, it makes it easier to open up and love again. Because you know in the end, it’s just a matter of choice.

I gave an interview recently about the community-oriented coffeehouse I help run. We talked about community and they repeated back, “Yeah… like unity”. It caught me. “No,” I told the interviewer. “I don’t think community and unity are the same thing.” In community, you’re not always all the same. What makes community great is the diversity. It’s the fact that we look, act, think nothing alike, but we come together anyway. We love each other anyway. We live together anyway.

Community, to me, is stronger than unity. A patchwork quilt is more valuable than a comforter.

After coffee, my friend and I threw together an evening in the front yard around a chiminea.

As we cleaned up in the kitchen, I suddenly remembered our conversation from earlier that day.

“You know how I do it?” I asked him. “How I make it living in a town without people who are going through what I’m going through?”

“How?”

“This. This is how.” I told him. Pizza, blankets, fireworks, friends and friends of friends, and fire. Intentionality. Piecing together what doesn’t seem to make sense to make something valuable. To make a new home.

Community. Tattered and torn, but together. This is how you make it.