From Your Minister
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When do you feel as if you—your opinions, your experiences, your beliefs—matter? And when do you feel as if you are marginal, that you and your life are invisible?
During a workshop, years ago, we were asked to respond to these questions. I paired up with a woman named Nancy, who said:
I grew up in a religion where I always felt as if I had to hide what I really thought and believed or I would be rejected. So in a way I felt invisible inside my own skin. When you feel invisible inside your own skin, you carry that sense with you everywhere else. I guess it wasn’t until I made peace with what I think and believe, and found a community that accepted me and encouraged me to know my own thoughts and beliefs, that I could feel as if I mattered in any situation at all!
I was moved by Nancy’s profound words. If we are not at home in our own skin, because of real or feared rejection from those around us, it becomes very hard to belong anywhere on the planet.
I realize that many people, for a variety of reasons, have had the misfortune of actually hearing the words, “You don’t belong here.” Although I can’t think of a time when someone said that to me directly, I have certainly been told in many less obvious ways that I might want to consider being someplace (or someone) different. I have felt this in religious congregations, in workplace meetings, in social gatherings, in restaurants, at hair salons, at the gym, in particular parts of particular towns and cities and suburbs.
Spiritual communities, we imagine, would be the one place where belonging could be experienced in the deepest, most complete way. And yet when being part of a community is more about belonging to a club of people who are just like us than connecting with people who share abiding care for one another and for the world, it becomes more of a negative force than a positive one.
Recently, in Minneapolis, a Methodist Church burned down. This was a church that I had visited during worship and found was not a good match for me. And yet, like thousands of other people in the city, I was in and out of the church constantly for meetings, cultural events, trainings and to see community groups. When the church burned down, we all went to the smoldering lot to grieve together. Signs were everywhere saying things like Love and Thanks—from the Latina mothers’ group, from the Hmong community gardeners, from the GLBT teen group, from the community radio station, from the puppet theatre, from peace activists, etc.
I stood in the rubble, reading these signs, and I felt profoundly moved by the generosity of this small urban congregation. While many of us present did not belong to that church, we felt that the congregation belonged to us, that in a profound way we were part of it and it was part of us.
This in turn caused me to wonder: if any other congregation, including CLF, burned down, who would grieve? If it was only the members themselves, would that be a congregation, or would it be a social club? Now, I know this is a trick question, because CLF is a congregation without walls and can’t burn down. But it is a sincere question, nonetheless. The real question is not who belongs to our spiritual community, but rather to whom does our spiritual community belong?
If we are to be worthy of our aspirations, we must continually offer ourselves more widely, more deeply, more generously. We are not here only for ourselves, or even only for each other, though certainly it is important that we are here for ourselves and each other. But in order to create a community in which belonging is deep enough to hold our whole selves, we must constantly be widening the circle, inviting more in, sharing with all kinds of folks, offering what we have to the world.
One of the songs we often use in our online worship services is called “We Belong,” by the singer Namoli Brennet. A transgender woman, Namoli has certainly experienced others telling her, both implicitly and explicitly, that she does not belong. Her song’s chorus says:
And when the same old voices say
That we’d be better off running away,
We belong, we belong, anyway.
She asserts that belonging is not joining a club, but rather is an act of both courage and resistance.
May the CLF be a place where belonging is big. Rather than being a gated spiritual community, may the doors and windows of our congregation be thrown open wide to all who seek entry. May all who seek to join our spiritual expedition and live our shared principles know their deepest and most generous selves here, and find strength together that we could not know alone. May our belonging here mean that we have more to share with the world.
And may we always find the kindness to look at one another, in all of our differences, as we walk around this wonderful and frightening planet, affirming to all that “We belong.”
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