Friends, Nourishment, and Community
I sometimes worry that I’m humble bragging when I talk about my friends from college.
There’s about twenty of us. Twenty-five? I don’t know, the Discord group is getting out of control. We just love people, so we invite our siblings and our significant others and the friends still at school invite more friends still at school. Basically, anyone in their twenties who is too cool for Instagram.
Originally there were about twelve of us. We became friends over microwaved lunches and nerdy memes, rickety tables in a dark basement, the loneliness of commuting and neglect of the school admin, the difficulties of gas money and leaving your charger at home ten miles away. We won complete squatters rights in the commuter lounge by virtue of our constant presence and loud banter. We might have gotten a bit loud and proud with our political debates. We might have scared others away, I don’t know, but we tried to be friendly to everyone and we had a blast with it.
They nourished me from a socially insecure sophomore to an extrovert.
The best part, I always thought, was that we all had different majors. We weren’t a boring, stifled friend group that just studied together and hyperfocused on one discipline. I mean, we studied together when we had classes together, begged advice from each other and asked around about profs — you know, which to avoid. We spanned several classes and ages and started creating inside jokes.
Now, we keep up mostly online over Biden memes — egads he’s awful — and cannibalism jokes — nom nom. A few people have found romance with each other through our Discord, and we tease them mercilessly. Usually, there’s very little discord on the Discord. Mostly it’s hey I’m dropping some free food by campus today or anyone want to come on a hike? or yooo guys have you seen this science discovery on the news tho.
Most of us still live in the Newberg area so we drop by each other’s houses and have Christmas parties and get together for coffee.
But the best thing, really the best thing, are the theological debates.
Personally, I like to just casually mention something super Catholic and watch people’s heads explode and then be like oh sorry guys I’m done with lunch break now catch up with you later and then come back four hours later to see where they are at, haha.
The debates just keep happening, especially between 11pm and 2am. We have a lively time between the 14% of us who are Catholic and all the other denominations. They might have the majority, but we Catholics fortify ourselves with extra sips of beer and tradition.
Ew, dude, you pray to saints?
Megachurches? Really, bro?
Ok, I’m kidding, it gets a lot more nuanced and intellectual than that!
We debate literature and comedy, God and hobbies and history and…
Well, actually, we can’t really argue history because only one of us is a history sensei and she spits facts like a tennis ball launcher — you really can’t argue with her because she knows all the factoids and is Catholic.
Most of all, in difficult times, I know that if I just ask, I will receive. All it takes is a hey guys will you pray for my mom and their faith and love sustain me.
And I pray that all my other friends, all the other friends I’ve had in life, the ones I used to work with or lost track of or moved away from… I pray they all find Christian communities as loving and intellectually nourishing.
And if you haven’t yet, well, just email me, my friend — genevievegwolf@gmail.com. I will introduce you around.
