Quick Link: Jennifer Fulwiler on Building a Community

Lots of good stuff in this post. I especially appreciate how she's noted that you have to make sacrifices to make a community work, and that this is the kind of thing which is not instant, but instead takes many years (nine in her case):

Five years into our marriage, I felt like this whole community-building endeavor was a failure. Only my mom lived near us, and while she was a tremendous help, she was also busy with her full-time job. We’d been members of our parish for a couple of years, but I hadn’t really met many people. Any kind of socializing was difficult with two toddlers and a baby, and I didn’t even know my neighbors. What I didn’t understand then is that true communities don’t pop up overnight — or even over the span of a couple of years. It takes a lot of time, but the wait is well worth it.

She notes that not everybody can do this--it may be that we're included in "not everybody." But with a little bit of luck, at least a part of the family and a few good friends will live closeby. Community-building requires sacrifice, but it's well worth the effort.

Five years into our marriage, I felt like this whole community-building endeavor was a failure. Only my mom lived near us, and while she was a tremendous help, she was also busy with her full-time job. We’d been members of our parish for a couple of years, but I hadn’t really met many people. Any kind of socializing was difficult with two toddlers and a baby, and I didn’t even know my neighbors. What I didn’t understand then is that true communities don’t pop up overnight — or even over the span of a couple of years. It takes a lot of time, but the wait is well worth it. - See more at: http://www.conversiondiary.com/2013/07/how-we-built-our-village.html#comment-176861

Five years into our marriage, I felt like this whole community-building endeavor was a failure. Only my mom lived near us, and while she was a tremendous help, she was also busy with her full-time job. We’d been members of our parish for a couple of years, but I hadn’t really met many people. Any kind of socializing was difficult with two toddlers and a baby, and I didn’t even know my neighbors. What I didn’t understand then is that true communities don’t pop up overnight — or even over the span of a couple of years. It takes a lot of time, but the wait is well worth it. - See more at: http://www.conversiondiary.com/2013/07/how-we-built-our-village.html#comment-176861

Five years into our marriage, I felt like this whole community-building endeavor was a failure. Only my mom lived near us, and while she was a tremendous help, she was also busy with her full-time job. We’d been members of our parish for a couple of years, but I hadn’t really met many people. Any kind of socializing was difficult with two toddlers and a baby, and I didn’t even know my neighbors. What I didn’t understand then is that true communities don’t pop up overnight — or even over the span of a couple of years. It takes a lot of time, but the wait is well worth it. - See more at: http://www.conversiondiary.com/2013/07/how-we-built-our-village.html#comment-176861

Five years into our marriage, I felt like this whole community-building endeavor was a failure. Only my mom lived near us, and while she was a tremendous help, she was also busy with her full-time job. We’d been members of our parish for a couple of years, but I hadn’t really met many people. Any kind of socializing was difficult with two toddlers and a baby, and I didn’t even know my neighbors. What I didn’t understand then is that true communities don’t pop up overnight — or even over the span of a couple of years. It takes a lot of time, but the wait is well worth it. - See more at: http://www.conversiondiary.com/2013/07/how-we-built-our-village.html#comment-176861

Five years into our marriage, I felt like this whole community-building endeavor was a failure. Only my mom lived near us, and while she was a tremendous help, she was also busy with her full-time job. We’d been members of our parish for a couple of years, but I hadn’t really met many people. Any kind of socializing was difficult with two toddlers and a baby, and I didn’t even know my neighbors. What I didn’t understand then is that true communities don’t pop up overnight — or even over the span of a couple of years. It takes a lot of time, but the wait is well worth it. - See more at: http://www.conversiondiary.com/2013/07/how-we-built-our-village.html#comment-176861