The Gift of Belonging
 Linda Reith ( March 19, 2006)
What a joy to be asked to speak to the question of belonging. The word belonging holds within it being and longing. As Unitarians we come together to form a community that affirms our particular way of being, which is to celebrate longing over knowing. For many of us, discovering Unitarianism is extremely precious, simply because our skepticism, our questing, our doubt and our determination to say yes to many sources of wisdom and not just one excludes us from easily belonging to the mainstream.
We walk through the doors and join the service, ears cocked to detect dogma and doctrine. Our freedom to believe what makes our individual hearts sing is so dear to us that we are suspicious of any group that says we can truly belong. However, it is human to need to join, to be reflected back, to have community for our journey. As Alan Jones, Dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco says in Reimagining Christianity,
Human beings are tribal and scribal. We can?t live without a sense of belonging: we are tribal. And we can?t do without appealing to texts, stories, customs, and creeds that support our tribal identity: we are scribal. But there are many tribes and thousands of texts, so we go to war over territory and over whose tribal story is true.
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It is precisely that element of warring that lights the flame in the Unitarian chalice. Jones goes on to sound quite Unitarian despite being an Anglican leader, but I guess the point is not to make claims. He says,
Belonging and believing are indispensable to us, but they get us into trouble. It requires great skill, discipline, and dedication to honour belonging to a particular community without becoming defensive and exclusive. It is equally difficult to affirm deeply held convictions without being threatened by or contemptuous of those held by others. Reimagining religion calls us to a new level of spiritual maturity that is open to questions and unafraid of difference, and sees the call to unity stronger than the call to divisiveness.
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To join the Unitarian community is to commit to spiritual maturity and be profoundly supported in that process. Never has that community been more vital. Let me quote my other current favourite author, poet and ex Catholic priest, John O?Donohue P.xxiv
In post-modern culture there is a deep hunger to belong. An increasing majority of people feel isolated and marginalized. Experience is haunted by fragmentation. Many of the traditional shelters are in ruins. Society is losing the art of fostering community. Consumerism is now propelling life towards the lonely isolation of individualism. Technology pretends to unite us, yet more often than not all it delivers are simulated images. The ?global village? has no roads or neighbours; it is a faceless limbo from which all individuality has been abstracted. Politics seems devoid of the imagination that calls forth vision and ideals; it is becoming ever more synonymous with the functionalism of economic pragmatism. Many of the keepers of the great religious traditions now seem to be frightened functionaries; in a more uniform culture, their management skills would be efficient and successful. In a pluralistic and deeply fragmented culture, they seem unable to converse with the complexities and hangers of our longing. From this perspective, it seems that we are in the midst of a huge crisis of belonging. When the outer cultural shelters are in ruins, we need to explore and reawaken the depths of belonging in the human mind and soul; perhaps, the recognition of the depth of our hunger to belong may gradually assist us in awakening new and unexpected possibilities of community and friendship. Eternal Echoes Exploring our Yearning to Belong.
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Awakening possibility ? that?s the magic of belonging. Moving from the edge to the centre, so the momentum of the whole hums around us. When I say to myself and to the group, ?I belong with you.? A resonance begins. The group is affirmed, because I have chosen to be part of it. I am affirmed because the group has welcomed me. ?We?re all better when we?re loved,? says Alistair Macleod. Belonging allows vulnerability and vulnerability allows growth. The seed stays closed till it lands where it belongs. As long as it is closed it doesn?t grow. So joining is saying yes, I can grow here. I can become more of the person I want to be as part of this group, as a Unitarian. The seed responds to warmth, earth, and water. What is it about this congregation that feels nurturing to you? What promises that you can become more of the person you want to be in this circle? Take a moment to feel your answer. Pause. Turn to the person next to you and tell them. What difference did it make to stop and identify the what?s positive here? Then what happened when you shared it? That release of energy allows synergy. That?s the power of taking the risk to join the group. As long as we dance along the edges there?s a certain energy withheld in us and in the group. There?s a guardedness that restrains spontaneity. An opportunity might arise, but there?s hesitation ? I?m not really a member, maybe I shouldn?t? She?s not a member, maybe she wouldn?t want? We put energy into maintaining separation instead of responding to the natural flow of belonging. As a member there?s an assumption of connection, of likely interest and involvement not only locally, but in the extended Unitarian presence. One yes leads to more yeses. Saying yes to an inner yes is the secret to becoming our best selves. Finding a community that evokes yes in us is a gift because there?s a mutual becoming. When we join we make a commitment to that becoming. Too often, that?s exactly what we fear. That we?ll say yes and then more will be expected of us ? maybe more than we can freely give. We don?t trust ourselves to say No. There can be no Yes without No. There can be no joining unless there is a firm separateness, a commitment to oneself that ensures the individual is protected from being engulfed. In small groups, as UUcongregations often are, it is very challenging to refuse a request. If not me, then whom? Will we survive if I say No? It requires faith that the enterprise has its own buoyancy and because it fills a powerful and legitimate need; the energy required will appear. What we continually rescue, we cripple with our doubt and eventually with our resentment. Anyone who?s ever been in an intimate relationship or tried to raise a child may recognize the truth of that statement. However, it is only by joining that we give ourselves the opportunity to learn the skills of trusting the process. The skills that feed trust are essentially spiritual skills. We are developing our ability to open to the presence of more than ourselves. Poet John O?Donohue describes this opening,
The one who dreamed the universe loved circles. There is some strange way in which everything that goes forward is somehow still traveling within the embrace of the circle. Longing and belonging are fused within the circle. The day, the year, the ocean?s way, the light, the water, and the life insist on moving in the rhythm of the circle. The mind is a circle, too. This is what keeps you gathered in your self. If you were just a point in space, you would be forever isolated and alone, If your life were simply a line through time, you would be always trapped at this point with all past and future points absent. The beauty of the mind is its circular form. Yet the circle of the mind is broken somewhere. This fracture is always open; it is the secret well from which all longing flows. All prayer, love, creativity, and joy come from this source; our fear and hurt often convert them into their more sinister shadows.
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It is only in community that we can overcome the fear to trust our brokenness to lead us to authenticity. Let me share a quote from Henry Miller introduced to me by Barbara McDowall, an interfaith minister in Guelph,
Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.
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That's a tall challenge and one more easily achieved with the support of belonging to a group committed to that goal. Being part of the Unitarian presence builds our confidence in ourselves. We gather to us the power and success of the whole. We proudly claim the achievements of past Unitarians and current ones, local members and ones speaking on our behalf to government or to the U.N. We have allies. Sometimes obvious allies who put up posters, play the guitar or give hugs. Sometimes spiritual allies who inspire and give us confidence by their simple existence now or in the past. That's why it is important to know our history through books like this one (Unitarian women). So then we can say, I'm part of what they were part of. I have access to their vision. We are more together than we are alone. Let us celebrate that we have a spiritual community where we feel we can belong, where we can bring our hopes and dreams and have them nurtured, where we can bring our fears and explore them rather than shutting them away, where we can become more adept as spiritual seekers. Let?s give John O?Donohue the last word.
Without the shelter of belonging, our longings would lack direction, focus, and context; they would be aimless and haunted, constantly tugging the heart in a myriad of opposing directions. Without belonging, our longing would be demented. As memory gathers and anchors time, so does belonging shelter longing.
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