REsources for Living
Podcast: Download (Duration: 4:57 — 4.5MB)
Subscribe: More
There are certain Big Questions that all of us deal with across the span of our lives. The answers may very well change over time, but our spiritual journeys are built around how we answer those questions. Questions like: What do I love? What are my gifts to give? What is asked of me? Where is my deepest joy?
And Where do I belong?
This is a question for really little children who are just figuring out that there is a world of people beyond their family, some of whom turn out to be a circle of friends. It’s a question for older kids who have to work out complicated social networks that bring some people in while excluding others. It’s a big question for teens who are investigating separation from their family as well as connections with peers at a time when they feel like nobody understands who they really are. Young adults have to figure out where they belong as they build independent lives of work and community and family of choice.
And questions of where we belong don’t go away in mid-life as we raise kids or have careers or try to figure out how it is that our lives have meaning. In societies that increasingly isolate the elderly, Where do I belong? can come to a crisis point for those who have lost friends or homes or relationships that have defined them in the past.
Where do I belong? Being able to answer that question is one of life’s deepest satisfactions. As a middle-schooler I remember seeing teens from our senior high youth group hanging out at the church in piles, draped over one another in comfortable companionship. And I was so envious of that easy sense of belonging together, which I had never experienced with a group of people my age. Unlike most things that you wish for at 11 or 12, when I was old enough to join the teen group I discovered that what I imagined was real.
There was a place of belonging, of acceptance, of membership in a tribe that welcomed you because you showed up. None of us felt like we belonged in the typical high school cliques; all of us were in some way “weird.” But together we found a place of acceptance and welcome that went beyond our local church group to include the network of UU youth groups of churches across our region and beyond. It was a life-changing experience for me, and one that led me into ministry.
But even in that beloved community there were times when I felt alone, out of place. Belonging is never complete. We all carry both our separate selves—that no one will ever completely see or understand—and also our longing to be known, to be accepted, to feel at home. It reminds me of a song by the late UU troubadour Rick Masten, about the Homesick Snail. Where, asks the song, does the homesick snail belong? If you carry your home on your back, then surely you can be at home wherever you are. But what if you are homesick in your own home? What if your heart aches for a sense of belonging even in the places where you most belong?
It occurs to me that the core of the word belonging is longing. The reality is that, while many of us are blessed with families that love us (however imperfectly), blessed with friends who listen to us and communities that share our values, none of us ever belongs in an absolutely complete way, as much as we might want to. Individuals and groups will disappoint us, failing to live up to our expectations and their declared values. People (and we are all people) will choose selfishly, putting their own desires ahead of the needs of the group. Even at our very best, at our most compassionate and connected and loving, we will still fail to see and understand one another completely. That’s just the nature of being human, walking around in our separate bodies without the capacity to mind meld.
The truth is that belonging is not a state, it’s a process. It isn’t something you have, it’s something you build. It takes time, plus the willingness to listen and be wrong and work out a better way, a deeper understanding. And yes, sometimes it takes the willingness to walk away, to accept that there are places where you will never belong, where your core values are not shared. And then it takes the courage to walk forward through some new door, following that longing for connection into the delicate work of building trust and understanding.
It isn’t easy. It isn’t ever finished. But it is at the center of our hearts’ longing.
- REsources for Living - December 1, 2020
- A Fond Goodbye - December 1, 2020
- REsources for Living - November 1, 2020
