Finding Elizabeth

Why friends aren't optional

In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a city of Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.

“Our last activity is called Walking to Emmaus,” the priest announced.

It was the final day of a Catholic young adult retreat. We were told to count off to randomly pair up with another retreat participant, then take a one-on-one walk together and share our takeaways from the weekend.

I was sitting at the front of the room and was number “one” in the count off. Resisting the urge to turn around, I mentally reviewed the 40 or so other participants. If I got paired with that guy who had asked for my number in the Rosary Garden, things were about to get real awkward.

The crowd was breaking up as people found their partners. A hand shot up at the back of the room. “NUMBER ONE,” said a bright voice. The heads parted, and there was my fellow disciple.

We’ll just call her Elizabeth, because that’s who she turned out to be.

The talks and activities throughout that weekend retreat had been quite good, but the struggles and stories we shared during our “walk to Emmaus” were the takeaways I think about most that continue to inspire me.

We ended up at different tables during the closing lunch, but before she left, she came over and said, “Do you want to be friends?” I gave her a hug. We swapped phone numbers.

Six months later, I was hiding in the bushes, at the request of her about-to-be-fiancée-now-husband, to take candid pictures and surprise her at their engagement. Last month, I was a bridesmaid in her wedding, tracking down lost boutonnieres, running after forgotten parasols, flirting with the best man.

And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the child leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”

“Why is this granted to me?” I’ve been blessed to find many kindred spirits, many “Elizabeths” over the past year or two. Another Elizabeth is now my roommate. We just had about 10 Elizabeths over for a housewarming tea party. If you’re an extrovert who makes friends easily, maybe this sounds like a simple, ordinary story. As a lifelong, practicing Catholic, I wish I could say that finding meaningful fellowship like this is the norm at Catholic events - but it hasn’t been typical in my experience.

Whatever is at the core of your life should also be at the core of your relationships, and since my Catholic faith is my cornerstone, I sought community in the church - but always struggled to find it. I went to Catholic schools, taught PREP, attended plenty of talks and Theology on Taps, even ran a small group of my own, but in spite of all that involvement, I never, until recently, felt like I found a true Catholic community. I had close college friendships that I thought would last, but most faded about half a decade after graduation. After college, my efforts to build community in my diocese seemed to bear fruit for others - friendships and even a marriage emerged from the small group I ran - but not for me.

God has sent me many blessings, many of which I’ve shared here as the Bookish Princess. But the Bookish Princess is a blog and a YouTube channel and a persona, not a person. As a person, I swallow bitter pills just like everyone else, and in spite of the blessings I tried to be grateful for, often the bitterness of continually trying and failing to find friendship seemed to be poisoning me. By the time the pandemic came around and shut down most events, I was happy to use that as an excuse to give up. I had my faith, my parents, my brothers, my farmhouse, my hobbies, a good job, a garden to plant, a kitten to raise, books to read, books to write, videos to create, connections made online. Maybe in-person friends and community didn’t matter much.

“For behold, when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”

Today is the feast of the Visitation, a story we hear in the Gospel of Luke. After the angel Gabriel appears to Mary, and Mary speaks her beautiful “fiat,” she leaves her home in Nazareth and goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth. Mary must have had family and friends in Nazareth, but they’re not the ones whose words have been passed down for generations. Elizabeth is the kindred spirit who gets it. Elizabeth speaks the words of truth, affirmation, faith, and praise that Mary - and all of us - need to hear.

Why didn’t God put that support system in Mary’s immediate neighborhood? Why did she have to travel so far to find Elizabeth? When he’s grown up, Jesus experiences rejection in his hometown, and, given the total silence of the Gospels on the subject of Nazareth’s reaction to the Annunciation, it’s likely Mary experienced rejection there as well. Probably some of her neighbors were unpleasant, but probably many of them were good people. They just weren’t the kindred spirits she needed.

Sometimes God doesn’t put our community where we expect to find it. He puts coldness where we hoped to find companionship. We find rejection instead of relationships. There are years of loneliness that you just have to get through. I don’t know why God works this way, but if he made sure Mary had an Elizabeth, I think he has an Elizabeth out there for each of his children.

And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden. For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name. And his mercy is on those who fear him from generation to generation.”

I was so nervous when I went on that weekend retreat. I expected it to be the same sort of bust that I’d experienced so many times before. I had to bargain with myself to get myself go. It was a long-ish drive away, but I thought about how the apostles had gone on long journeys to build community. God had given me a car and money for gas, I might as well use it.

The bitterness had gotten bad enough that I knew I had to at least try. Life without in-person friends felt like a barren landscape, like a dead end, and I had dwelt in that desert for too long. I had been lingering in Nazareth when God was calling me away.

Jordan Peterson talks about how essential social communities are to the human condition, and I think he’s right. You can’t really know who you are until you’ve bounced your personality off other people and seen yourself through the eyes of your face-to-face peers. The friction that results from those encounters can be awkward and painful, but that’s how you grow, how you develop the judgment to know who to trust and who not to trust, when to stay and when to seek. Not everyone you find will be a kindred spirit, not every group will be the community for you, but kindred spirits and good communities do still exist. You have to seek them with the expectation of finding, with a patient trust in God, with the intention of being present to whoever God puts in your way, with the recognition that everyone God puts in your path has a purpose, something to teach you.

As I sought friends and community more intentionally, I realized that some, perhaps much, of my loneliness was of my own making. I had often chosen the company of books or the Internet over the company of people. I had been proud and selfish when I could have been humble and generous. I had allowed bitterness and envy to take root when I could have cultivated peace and understanding.

“He has shown strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts, he has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away.”

An essential undercurrent to these reflections is that friendship has to happen primarily in person. Community has to be rooted in embodied reality, not the Internet. Throughout most of human history, we had to be embedded in communities in order to survive. Now it’s easy to fulfill our basic needs without knowing our neighbors. It’s also easy to slip into living hollow lives.

Friends aren’t optional, even if they’re difficult to find and difficult to maintain. It’s one thing to move on from a community that’s not serving you when God is calling you on a journey. It’s another to give up on community because the journey is hard and even the best Elizabeths have flaws and foibles to bear. In my subscriber book club earlier this week, we discussed how life was so much more community-centric in the past. If you lived in a small village, you had to find a way to entertain and enjoy your neighbors as friends, to smooth over awkward patches and disagreements and learn to live with them in spite of their shortcomings - because you couldn’t escape them. It may have been brought about by circumstance rather than choice, but that commitment was powerful.

It might feel like those days are past, but we need that commitment to in-person community. We can reclaim it. When you don’t see me around here as much, it’s because I’m out there reclaiming it. The Internet and its myriad of possibilities and connections can have its place, just as quiet alone time reading a book can have its place. I still love to spend an evening in with Jane Austen, just as I’m still proud of my YouTube and Substack subcreation, and I still have stories to share here.

I’ll always be grateful for the support and loyalty of my subscribers and especially for things like my virtual book club (our next meeting is June 26!) and chance encounters with subscribers in person. My life has been enriched by the camaraderie and inspiration that I’ve found on the Internet, and I feel privileged to have been a source of camaraderie and inspiration for others. You feel like you’re friends with your favorite online creators, but when it comes down to it, it’s mostly the persona and not the person you’re befriending. As a creator, it’s like someone is having a fun conversation with you, yet you’re excluded from it, you don’t get to be in the room - so was it really you they were talking to? Online friendships and interactions can be fruitful and meaningful, but we all have to resist the trap of thinking they can replace real friendships and interactions. They just can’t measure up to all the vital subtleties of a back-and-forth, face-to-face conversation.

Elizabeth needed Mary as much as Mary needed Elizabeth. Friends will make your own life better, but you will also make their lives better. When you fail to make the effort to put yourself out there and find Elizabeth, you’re failing others as well as yourself. The sustained, intentional, in-person connections that we work to find and build transform us into the saints God is calling us to be in a way that the Internet never can. They are how we build the Kingdom of God.

“He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his posterity for ever.”

Visitation (1503) by Albertinelli