You Belong Here.
What to Remember When Waking
(David Whyte)
In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.
What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep.
To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.
You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.
Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window
toward the mountain presence of everything that can be
what urgency calls you to your one love?
What shape waits in the seed of you
to grow and spread its branches
against a future sky?
Is it waiting in the fertile sea?
In the trees beyond the house?
In the life you can imagine for yourself?
In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?
Moving during a pandemic in October means that at best, you will get to meet your neighbors across fences and from several yards away. Such conversations may involve a good deal of polite shouting and animated gesticulating to understand one another. It means that the neighborhood you are now technically part of is reduced to rows of silent, curtained homes, with their owner’s pandemically encouraging signs with messages like “We got this!” and “Mask up! Stay Safe” propped against the window for passersby to read.
When we moved to our new neighborhood last fall, it seemed like no one was venturing out for a walk except for Drew and I, who were hoping to at least locate a face to frantically wave at with a good deal of neighborly intention. But after several solitary, dreary afternoon walks, we had resigned ourselves to the reality that we would likely have to wait until spring or summer to greet the people who live around us. As we turned the corner to walk home after one such soggy walk, we saw a handmade sign taped inside someone’s window that simply read,
Y o u b e l o n g h e r e.
It’s strange how powerfully a single sign and three ordinary words lifted our spirits at a time when we felt like outsiders. That was the only handmade pandemic sign I’ve seen that has stuck with me, because it was a sign of welcome in the middle of a strange and isolating time.
Even more special was the fact that on our next walk, the homeowner was sitting on his porch with his one-year-old daughter. We got to meet them and thank them for what the sign meant to us. “You Belong Here” led to our first neighborly encounter.
* * *
I wonder how many of us have forgotten how vital it is to remember our Belonging—in our lives, families, neighborhoods, and churches.
Our sense of belonging informs everything about how we move through this life. Feelings of non-belonging cast a grey pall on our western society that is already deeply steeped in a culture of individualism. At times, it feels impossible to belong to such a rapidly-changing, isolating world. The cultural message I’ve intuited about belonging is this:
I need to fight for my belonging.
I need to keep showing up on social media or at various events so people see me and remember that I am here. Belonging belongs to the successful, the high-achievers, the likable, the desirable.
If I don’t belong, it is because I am not good enough.
In his work Eternal Echoes, Irish poet John O’Donohue wonders if our distinct human longing to belong is connected to the deepest roots of our origin—our belonging to God. If this is true, then no judgment that any person places on us has power to determine whether we belong or not. He writes:
Perhaps your hunger to belong is always active and intense because you belonged so totally before you came here.
This hunger to belong is the echo and reverberation of your invisible heritage.
You are from somewhere else, where you were known, embraced and sheltered.
Ever before we came to be on this earth, the Father saw us, knew us, loved us. He knew the particular ways we would be wounded; like a good parent, he also knew what would bring us joy, safety, and comfort. God named us his children long before we named him Father, and he sent his son Jesus to show our fragmented, lonely world how much he longs for us to live as his children. Ephesians 1:5-6 says,
God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son.
Knowing I belong to the family of God is the only antidote I have found to the feelings of non-belonging that so often crop up like pesky weeds in the garden He is tending in the soil of my soul. In his poem, "What to Remember When Waking,” one of my favorite poets reminds us of the truth of our identity and our inheritance as beloved, chosen children of God:
To remember the other world in this world
Is to live in your true inheritance.
You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
You are not an accident amidst other accidents
You were invited from another and greater night
Than the one from which you have just emerged.
You were invited. You belong here.
In his letter to the church in Ephesus, Paul tells the Gentiles of the good news of their belonging to God’s family through the unifying work of Christ. In Chapter 2, he says:
Now all of us can come to the Father through the same Holy Spirit because of what Christ has done for us. So now you Gentiles are no longer strangers and foreigners. You are citizens along with all of God’s holy people. You are members of God’s family.
Once an outsider himself, Paul knew the truth that we can only invite others into their belonging if we are first grounded in our own belonging. Experiencing the miraculous grace that came from belonging to God meant that Paul was eager to share this invitation to others, reminding them of the truth of their identity:
You are a beloved, chosen child of God.
So walk confidently in the family inheritance you have received through grace.
Who do you know who needs to be reminded of this today? Maybe it is you. Maybe it is your grocery clerk, or the man standing on the corner holding a sign. Maybe it is a family member or friend. Whoever came to mind, I want to leave you with this blessing from Mary Oliver’s poem “The Wild Geese.” May you carry it as a smooth stone in your pocket, a solid reminder to hold on to the truth of your belonging when life starts to feel grey:
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.