Readings on Belonging

Readings on Belonging

“In the absence of belonging, there is always great suffering.” Brene Brown

“I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.” George Bernard Shaw

Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free.” Starhawk, from Dreaming the Dark

The ancient question, “Who am I?” inevitably leads to a deeper one: “Whose am I?” – because there is no identity outside of relationship. You cannot be a person by yourself. To ask “Whose am I” is to extend the question far beyond the little self-absorbed self, and wonder: Who needs you?  Who loves you?  To whom are you accountable?  To whom do you answer?  Whose life is altered by your choices?  With whose life is your own all bound up, inextricably, in obvious or invisible ways? Douglas Steer

Anam cara in the Celtic world was the “soul friend.”… With the anam cara you could share your inner-most self… you are understood as you are without mask or pretension. The superficial and functional lies and half-truths of social acquaintance fall away, you can be as you really are. Love allows understanding to dawn, and understanding is precious. Where you are understood, you are at home. Understanding nourishes belonging. John O’Donohue

“Africans have a thing called ubuntu. It is about the essence of being human, it is part of the gift that Africa will give the world. It embraces hospitality, caring about others, being willing to go the extra mile for the sake of another. We believe that a person is a person through other persons, that my humanity is caught up, bound up, inextricably, with yours. When I dehumanize you, I inexorably dehumanize myself. The solitary human being is a contradiction in terms. Therefore you seek to work for the common good because your humanity comes into its own in community, in belonging.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu

The child does not yet know what belongs and what does not: therefore for her all things belong. The ear of the child is open to all music. Her eyes are open to all arts. Her mind is open to all tongues. Her being is open to all manners. In the child’s country, there are no foreigners. Rev. Kenneth L. Patton, UU

As it turns out, men and women who have the deepest sense of true belonging are people who also have the courage to stand alone when called to do that. They are willing to maintain their integrity and risk disconnection in order to stand up for what they believe in… Guess what emerged as the greatest barrier to belonging? Fitting in. Because when we fit in, we assess a situation and acclimate. When we belong, we bring ourselves to it and say this is who I am. Brené Brown

The aim is to experience the fact that everything belongs — the good, the bad, and the ugly. Often this is hard — especially coming to terms with the ugly — and may take living a while. At almost fifty, I am beginning to realize that more clearly. I can see myself better. At twenty-five, I had no strong sense that everything belonged. Richard Rohr, Quest for the Grail

 In a spring day in Farmington, Maine, as I was walking downtown, I made my way through a line of cars that were waiting for the light. In front of me was a large Confederate flag flying from the back of a white pick-up. I crossed the street, not looking at who was driving the truck, and went into the store. As I went about my business, I felt stunned; my mind stirred with thoughts and feelings, memories and speculations. I felt fear, and anger, and curiosity; worry, and defiance, and humiliation.

As I stood at the register, I chatted with the older white woman behind the counter. “Hi, how are you today?”

“I’m good, how are you?,” she replied. I paused, and then I told her about the truck with the flag.

She said something like, “Oh, yes, we have some of that around here, but don’t let it upset you. Don’t let it get to you.”

I appreciated her gesture, her attempt to comfort me. At the same time, her gesture made me more uncomfortable. She was asking me to respect that person’s right to fly that flag and shrug it off like everybody else. What she failed to see, or perhaps ignore in a gesture of “colorblindness” wrapped in the First Amendment, is that I am not like everybody else who walks in the shadow of that flag. I am from “away;” my hair is coarse; my skin is dark brown. I am a black man in Maine. In so many ways, I am not like everybody else around here. But I want to belong here. In so many ways, that flag represents the denial of my rights, my belonging.

It is impossible for me to blend in, to hide my black body, to “not let it get to me.” I don’t have the privilege of hiding from history. Because I am conscious, I know what it is; I know its name. It rides in the back of a pick-up truck, it proudly stalks around town like an alpha predator. It clings to me like a nightmare, while it seems like everyone else is walking through a dream. I point at the thing and say “Look!,” and the crowd replies, “Yes, but…”

When I hear “Yes,” I feel heard. When I hear “but,” I become invisible; my life doesn’t matter. It’s this “but—,” this disbelief in the truth of black bodies, this tolerance for something that is ugly and intolerant, that is the terror that “everybody else” allows to walk in their midst: a casual terror that I cannot escape any more than I can escape my own body, my own consciousness. A terror that makes all lives matter less. I struggle to wake up from the nightmare, and the dream that is its mirror image. I struggle to make my life matter, for black lives to matter, so that all lives will matter.
Jabari S. Jones, UU

What longing lies at the heart of your presence here [at church]? Here’s my answer to the question… This is what I know: the gentle, sustaining, wordless power flowing through everything, connecting everything, making everything whole; and I know the hurting, grieving, violent world. I long to feel whole and connected. And I long to respond in some meaningful way to the world’s immense hurt. In more concise language, I long to belong, and I long to help. In the end, these two longings are why I went into ministry. They are why I go to church… Having said that, the human longing to belong goes much deeper than belonging to a congregation. Belonging to a congregation is belonging with a small b. Belonging with a big B—or Big B Belonging—is that sense of belonging to the larger human family, or belonging to the whole of life, or belonging to God or Goddess, or to some holy power… Rev. Joshua Pawelek, UU

“In my best, my most alive moments — in my mystical moments, if you want — I have a profound sense of belonging. At those moments, I am aware of being truly at home in this universe. I know that I am not an orphan here. There is no longer any doubt in my mind that I belong to this Earth Household, in which each member belongs to all others — bugs to beavers, black-eyed susans to black holes, quarks to quails, lightning to fireflies, humans to hyenas and humus. To say ‘yes’ to this limitless mutual belonging is love. When I speak of God, I mean this kind of love, this great ‘yes’ to belonging. Brother David Steindl-Rast

Some of us aren’t meant to belong. Some of us have to turn the world upside down and shake the hell out of it until we make our own place in it.” Elizabeth Lowell

“Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,” Walt Whitman

Longer Texts

From UU World, a personal essay about belonging and Unitarian Universalism as a person of colour.

A powerful piece on white culture and belonging in Unitarian Universalism, from the Rev. Rebekah Savage

A tale of meaningful belonging to the Jewish religion from On Being.

Toni Morrison on belonging and migration from Brain Pickings.

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