BELONGING
Unity Church-Unitarian Newsletter Column, June-July 2014
It is a basic human desire to belong, and to belong to something that matters. It can be the difference between a life that is joyful and abundant and one that feels empty, lonely, and alienated.
A sense of belonging to a community, family, or place gives us stability and support. We can feel more comfortable questioning reality, planning our future, and exploring our sense of self when we have that kind of stability and support. Knowing we belong somewhere can give us the courage to explore ourselves, our ideas, and the world.
Our societal need for belonging is increasing as more traditional social fabrics (church, neighborhood, extended family, local social groups) are less immediately accessible in a country where more people move more often, live further away from where they work, and the nuclear family has become more isolated. According to Diana Butler Bass, generations ago, people joined churches and committed to shared beliefs, then aligned their behavior with those beliefs, and then achieved a sense of belonging. Today, the order is reversed: people join churches in which they seek belonging first, then they adjust their behavior to fit in, then they address the question of aligning their beliefs with the community.
The costs of not-belonging are high. Historically, belonging to a band or tribe of people often meant the difference between life and death. Contemporary capitalism means it is possible to physically survive as an individual, but there are still intense spiritual and emotional costs to not belonging. Many of the children who have turned to violence in schools over the past decade share the narrative of never having had a sense of belonging. We all have had moments of feeling like we did not belong, and some of us have had long periods of time where it felt like we did not belong. But what would it feel like to have never felt belonging? How would that change us as people? Belonging is a blessing not everyone shares. Do those of us who have experienced that blessing have an obligation to make it more widely accessible? What would that look like?
Belonging is not static or one-sided. It is a dynamic relationship, and thus involves a process of connecting, making a commitment, evaluating, and recommitting. Like any relationship, we can evaluate how much of a sense of belonging is coming from within, how much is external, and how much is simply about the right match between an individual and a group. Sometimes we find belonging in places we did not expect to find it, and sometimes we do not find belonging in places we did expect to find it. When we decide we belong, do we commit? What is the covenant of that commitment? What are the rules and obligations? What does it mean to be a member of the chosen community/family/church? What happens when the honeymoon is over, and the relationship is challenged by all the real difficulties of life? Do we still belong then?
There are even larger questions of belonging, higher up on a theoretical Maslow-ian hierarchy of belonging. Once our more basic belonging needs are met, like the need to belong to a family or group of friends, a community, or a place, we can consider more existential belonging questions. What is our place in the universe? Do we belong to humanity? Do we belong to a larger vision, like that of the Beloved Community? Do we belong to the universe? To the cycle of life? To God?
--article written by Jennifer Nordstrom with input from the month’s theme team: Lisa Friedman, K.P. Hong, and Drew Danielson