Transience and monthly meeting community

Next week will be my last meeting for worship of the year at Sarasota meeting, where I've been attending since starting college in the fall. That struck me this morning at worship; my last time for quite a few weeks. Between now and the end of August, I'll be worshiping at home in Miami and, I hope, many other places as I travel around the country. But not here, and part of me is grateful for it. The year has been full of the kind of ups and downs that I'm ready to distance myself from for a bit.

I wandered in this morning just as most Friends were entering the worship room. I noticed how many people greeted me with a smile, knew my name, shook my hand. I didn't think I knew people there very well. I didn't think people there really knew me.

I've spent a lot of time this past year talking with other high school and young adult Friends about how they feel alienated from their monthly meetings. College students and other young Friends who regard themselves as transient seem to experience this particularly acutely; in many cases, they are displaced from the meetings where they grew up, and in almost all cases, they say that the meetings they attend don't embrace them, don't involve them because they are "only passing through." Many of the most active and involved Young Friends I know don't attend meeting while they're away at college, a loss to both them and the communities that might have been enriched by their presence.

But I realized today that, at least in my case, maybe some of the feeling of isolation is self-created. It is hard to walk into a room of white-haired folks and feel like an equal member of a community, and far too easy to excuse myself from the labor of building community with things like, "I have to write a paper," or, "I wish I could stick around for fellowship, but I have to get back before the dining hall closes." Why do I make these excuses, instead of reaching out for a place and people to belong to? I think it's because I convinced myself coming in that I would never quite belong here; I would come along, ruffle some feathers (one of my gifts), and be gone before anyone really had time to know me.

But despite myself, I have made some connections. I can harp all I want about the difficulty of fitting into a new community (it can be difficult, I don't want to underplay that) and about the scarcity of young adults in my meeting (Sarasota is primarily a retirement town), but when it comes down to it, people know my name, if not my pronouns, they ask about school, though they sometimes forget to inquire about anything else, and they value my presence. One of the meeting elders made a point of going up to my mother at yearly meeting sessions and telling her what a wonderful addition I make to Sarasota meeting, and it really meant a lot to me.

Next week, the other college student and I are going to teach Quaker songs in First Day School. My mother will be here to pick me up for the summer, I'll bring my guitar in, and we'll all share the kinds of silly, semi-historical songs that every Quaker kid should know: George Fox, Lucretia Mott, "Wear It As Long As You Can". Somehow that plan seems to encapsulate the kind of community I need while at school. I want to be part of the meeting community through service to it. I want to share my gifts in whatever ways I can, and been seen for that. And I want to recognize for myself and share with others that creating a new set of connections doesn't sever old ones; we are all part of one vibrant, slightly disfunctional Quaker family, and when I worship someplace new, I am just connecting with new members of it.

I have much to be grateful for.