{"id":17170,"date":"2022-03-30T11:35:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-30T16:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/customwordpresssites.com\/mjb\/?p=17170"},"modified":"2026-02-26T13:32:52","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T19:32:52","slug":"community-and-loneliness-in-a-new-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/customwordpresssites.com\/mjb\/2022\/03\/30\/community-and-loneliness-in-a-new-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Community and Loneliness in a New City"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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When I moved to New York in 2017, I was naive about urban geography. Coming from rural New England, I thought that city life would give me easy access to all the excitement and friendships I\u2019d seen on TV. I imagined checking out museums after class or making a quick hop from Manhattan to Brooklyn for a party. My friend Ana lived in the city, so I thought I\u2019d see her all the time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It turns out that Ana\u2019s place, in Far Rockaway, is an hour and a half from my place in Morningside Heights \u2014 on a good day. The museums are closer, but taking a cross-town bus after a day of classes would be a pain. New York is full of paradoxes: Manhattan is a compact island that\u2019s always expanding, contracting and reinventing itself. Everything is close together, but it takes a long time to get anywhere. And it\u2019s full of people but terribly lonely. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"new
“Leaving NYC” by Abby Rampone<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Even though I lived on my seminary\u2019s campus during my first semester \u2014 among people who would eventually become close friends \u2014 I too was lonely. I sat in my room at night feeling like a hermit in my cell. The city was a living, breathing thing around me. The 1 train rumbled by on the elevated tracks, keeping me awake. Drunk students lingered and laughed outside my first-floor window. The frequency of sirens made me imagine I knew about every emergency for miles around, like I could catalog all the suffering of Manhattan. The Amtrak wailed as it passed along the Hudson and I shivered; it was the same train that howled through the night in my rural hometown, hundreds of miles to the north. I was both connected to everything and cut off from it all, alone in my box of a room. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For many middle- and upper-class people of my generation, this is typical. We chase opportunities from city to city, imagining the lives that we can build and rebuild. The privilege of education, money and connections afford us the freedom to uproot ourselves. This is the American Dream, even for those of us who know that the American Dream is a scam. We \u2014 I \u2014 long to be one of those cosmopolitan citizens of the world. We relish in our ability to create lives for ourselves in all sorts of places, always chasing something new. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As my peers start to see the shadow side of this freedom, we react against it in small, defiant ways. We look for community in churches, bars, and book clubs. Craving connection, we carve out our little niche in the big city. We bond over how hard it is to build bonds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I knew that the root causes of my loneliness were things like capitalism, globalization, individualism and the disintegration of community organizations. While I couldn\u2019t do much about some of those things, I was in seminary because I believed in community. As a Catholic, I figured I had a leg up on my non-religious peers: I could just plug into a church that had spent decades, even centuries, building infrastructure for human connection. But it wasn\u2019t that easy. Finding a left-leaning Catholic community proved harder than I\u2019d thought. I hopped from Catholic parishes to house churches to Protestant youth groups, looking for a place to land. It took me a year before I finally started putting down roots at the Catholic Worker houses on the Lower East Side. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In part, my loneliness was a symptom of my urge to explore. Spoiled for choice, I searched for a community that met all my needs. If I\u2019d stayed in rural New England, I would\u2019ve gone to the local Catholic church. I would\u2019ve met people by showing up in the same place week after week, year after year. If I settled on a community and put down roots, I could\u2019ve built my home there. It is unrealistic to want a church that feels like home immediately. A home must be cultivated and sustained. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that\u2019s not the whole picture. At my rural college, I went to the local parish every week \u2013 and no one ever spoke to me there, either. The people seemed perfectly friendly, but I was just part of the stream of college students that passed through, year after year. I\u2019d be there for a little while and then I\u2019d be gone. I was part of the parish, but I wasn\u2019t. The parish and I had both accommodated ourselves to transience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I came here in search of new community, chasing connection to a new city, and I have found all the new joy that I imagined.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I recently read \u201cNew Monasticism: What it Has to Say to Today\u2019s Church\u201d by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. Wilson-Hartgrove speaks from a Christian tradition that diverges from my own Catholicism in important ways, but he understands the Catholic Worker movement as part of a 20th century trend of alternative Christian community life that some call \u201cnew monasticism.\u201d Toward the end of the book, he proposes that Christians should consult with their community before moving, considering how their absence will affect the larger whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He writes, \u201cIf our home is in God\u2019s kingdom, we cannot pledge our ultimate allegiance to America. If God is our Father, the nuclear family cannot be our god. Instead, we\u2019ve got to say that our primary commitment is to the church. But for those words to have any real meaning, churches will have to get serious about membership. We need to name our commitments to each other and develop a process to determine whether God is calling an individual to leave our community or whether the forces of the economy are simply tearing us apart.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This both attracts and disturbs me. It chafes against my persistent individualism. I want the freedom to get a better job, go to a better school, build a better life. I want to see the world, meet new people, try new things. As a misfit from a rural town, the thought of being trapped makes my skin crawl. It\u2019s easy to imagine how allegiance to a community can be abused or exploited. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taking a step back, though, there\u2019s something uncomfortably enticing about what Wilson-Hartgrove describes. What if our bonds were strong and deep enough that consulting our church about a move felt natural? What if our churches didn\u2019t structure themselves to accommodate transience? What if we had everything we need right where we are? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"chicago
Chicago Skyline by Abby Rampone<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 2021 I moved to Chicago. I have spent the past year starting over, sitting in my room and listening to the life of a city around me. I\u2019m making friends, visiting churches and rebuilding in the wake of the pandemic. I don\u2019t exactly regret my move: I came here in search of new community, chasing connection to a new city, and I have found all the new joy that I imagined. It was hard at first, but I\u2019m putting down roots. At the same time, though, I wonder: What if we didn\u2019t accept loneliness as part of growing up? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

ABOUT THE AUTHOR<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Abigail<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Abby Rampone is a writer from Vermont. She has lived at two Catholic Worker houses, an intentional community called the Women’s Interfaith Residency Program and the Fireplace Community<\/a><\/strong> in Chicago. Abby writes poetry, rescues cats, cross-stitches and supports climate justice movements like the fight against Line 3. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in comparative literature from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and a Master of Divinity in interreligious engagement from Union Theological Seminary. She works for Call To Action<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When I moved to New York in 2017, I was naive about urban geography. Coming from rural New England, I thought that city life would give me easy access to all the excitement and friendships I\u2019d seen on TV. I imagined checking out museums after class or making a quick hop from Manhattan to Brooklyn...","protected":false},"author":149585912,"featured_media":17178,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2528],"tags":[324493,214,2416,78716,698755374,65178,4903,10049,698755558,795298,116,5409],"series":[698756626],"class_list":["post-17170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","tag-catholic-worker","tag-christianity","tag-church","tag-city-life","tag-community","tag-loneliness","tag-lonely","tag-moving","tag-new-monasticism","tag-relationship-building","tag-religion","tag-urban","series-messy-jesus-business"],"acf":[],"episode_featured_image":"https:\/\/customwordpresssites.com\/mjb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Chicago-skyline.jpeg","episode_player_image":"https:\/\/customwordpresssites.com\/mjb\/wp-content\/plugins\/seriously-simple-podcasting\/assets\/images\/no-album-art.png","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"dark","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https:\/\/customwordpresssites.com\/mjb\/feed\/podcast\/messy-jesus-business","embedCode":"

Community and Loneliness in a New City<\/a><\/blockquote>