Author Toko-Pa Turner wrote: “Our longing for community is so powerful that it can drive us to join groups, relationships, or systems of belief that give a false impression of belonging. These places of false belonging grant us conditional membership, requiring us to cut parts of ourselves off in order to fit in.”

How true!

Indeed the world seems to be filled with “conditional belonging.” Political and religious groups seem especially good at conditional membership don’t they?- offering up clear rules of what is ok to believe and do or not do in order to receive the coveted state of belonging.

Perhaps you have experienced this at one point in your life – A time when for the sake of belonging you had contorted yourself to a shape that was not really you. Or, perhaps you are one of those people who have become adept at avoiding being part of groups all together – allergic to belonging anywhere for fear of having parts of yourself cut off in order to fit in.

I have experienced both of these states myself.

And I will admit that it was not until this month when I began to deeply dive into this topic of building belonging that I began to really shift my thinking about where and when and how I belong. Let me share a little about what has happened and perhaps you can relate.

It all started with a quote from social scientist and author, Brene Brown. Brown writes: “I was so shocked to learn that the opposite of belonging is fitting in. Because fitting in is assessing a group of people and changing who you are. But true belonging never asks us to change who we are. It demands we be who we are.”

From my earliest memories I had felt that I did not belong – or at least that I did not fit into my family (which I equated with belonging). I always felt different than everyone else in my family. Both in how I viewed the world and how I liked to spend my time. I liked walking in the woods, I dreamed of going places and having adventures, at a young age I became interested in a healthy lifestyle and from my earliest memories felt a deep spiritual longing and sense that all of us were equal.

By contrast, everyone from my rural Pennsylvania, race car driving, beer drinking, atheist, racist and anti-semetic family seemed to have other priorities – and beliefs about life. I do not remember a time as a child when I felt that I was in the right place – “clearly,” I remember thinking from an early age, “ the “storks” had dropped me off at the wrong house”.

It took some time for me to figure out how to extricate myself from that place where I clearly did not fit into and where I did not feel I belonged. Once I removed myself however, I began to find places and people where I did seem to both fit in AND belong. Places where I felt similar to others, accepted by others and connected to others.

The first and most prominent of those places was in a yoga ashram. There I found a community who loved spirituality, who valued natural living and working to be of service to others. A community who saw all of humanity as whole and equal. And so it was there that I felt I fit in and thus – belonged.

Until that is ….. Until I started to notice those places where I did not feel I fit in fully. Places where I was different. Times where I was not sure I was accepted for those differences. And I remember beginning to feel that same old feeling from childhood. The feeling of being ‘different and not belonging – and so I eventually left that community.

And I began to question: If I didn’t belong there, where did I belong?
. What if I did not belong anywhere? And to be honest that fear would follow me through the years and not surprisingly showed up as I began to join in UU spaces.

Through the years, in UU space as well I have often questioned whether I belonged – after all I do not always agree with everything the UUA says or with everything my ministerial colleagues believe. And to be truthful, sometimes I have allowed this sense of not fitting in to silence me for the sake of not wanting to rock any boats or lose my belonging here too.

But this month as I have been reflecting on this topic of belonging, and on this distinction between “fitting in” and “belonging” something has shifted. “the opposite of belonging is fitting in” Brown say, .” Because fitting in is assessing a group of people and changing who you are.”

That means that even if that group is a group of good people, even if that group is a group of people who you mostly agree with and mostly like, changing who you are is still simply fitting in.

And Brown continued, writing:
“True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.”

The truth is that whether we contort ourselves to fit into a group or remove ourselves from a group for being different, we risk missing the experience of belonging if we do know that that belonging is only asking us to be authentic.

Truth be told, though I did not fit in, my family did not think I did not belong to them – I think from their perspective I have always belonged to them as the adventurous one, the spiritual one, the old fashioned one as my grandmother used to say. I belonged as the one that did not fit in. That was my belonging. Because I was so different I could not pretend I fit in and thus in being myself I opened the door to belonging. V-8 moment.

No one – and no group – can grant us true unconditional, perpetual belonging.

So what does it mean to build belonging in our community: I suggest that we build belonging by simply reminding each other that we already belong, We build belonging by inviting each other to the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to oneself.We build belonging by not asking each other to fit in but by knowing in our hearts that by the very act of their presence here, they belong!

By our very presence – We belong. You belong! That is what I am carrying with me this month – I hope you do as well

May it be so!

With Belonging,

Rev. Deborah