Belonging

Psalm 139

Despite all of the ways we can find it really easy to do most things by ourselves, I think that all of us are actually looking for belonging. And as time goes on, I also think that this belonging we are searching for is becoming harder to find. In the United States, we value individualism and find anything that is remotely collectivist (collective responsibility, collective investment, collective power) to be suspicious.

Belonging doesn’t mean we are always trying to hang out in groups. A sense of belonging comes from being rooted in a place, or being connected with other people. When we belong, we feel known and we do not have to pretend to be anyone else than who we are. When we belong, we can feel safe enough to rest.

A lack of access to this fundamental sense of belonging that so many of us have, especially in the United States, is at the root of a lot of the violence and dysfunction we are seeing in our country. Between 2020 and 2021, a time when increased isolation was forced upon us due to the pandemic, hate crimes reported in the US increased by almost 12%.

These days, a cursory glance at the news will lead us to stories of anti-semitism and islamophobia, homophobia, and racism. We see absurdities in our politics as, more and more, politicians capitalize on all of the anger that seems to be rampant in our society—stoking rage in order to gain votes. This rage gets amplified in echo chambers created online as people try to find community and belonging there rather than in the spaces where they do life.

And as I have pondered about all of this over the years, and asked “where the heck is this coming from,” I have found myself reflecting on just how easy it is to be alone. We can easily entertain ourselves unceasingly, we can easily find many drugs of our own choice (and in many cases have them delivered to our door step!), we can easily live in communities where everyone remains isolated from one another, we can easily resist any accountability to being responsible to a community when that accountability challenges our sense of being “in control.” It’s easy to be alone in our world today.

When we are isolated, when we feel like we don’t belong, or don’t fit, then an older evolutionary part of our humanity triggers in our a body a sense that we are not safe. And when we feel unsafe, our body produces stress hormones and adrenaline more easily. Our “fight or flight” response gets turned on more often. And that leads to rage and fear. It leads to the kinds of behaviors that can cause tragedies and create pain. Pain begets more pain when we have no sense of belonging because we no longer have a community that can hold that pain with us. When we don’t belong, we don’t feel known. And when we don’t feel known, we have no sense of our own worth or value.

But even in the bleakest times of isolation and finding that feeling of belonging scarce, Psalm 139 reminds us of God who “fearfully and wonderfully” made us. The psalmist wrote, “You know when I set down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away…it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” (Psalm 139 NRSVUE)

Before we belong any community, friendship, or family, we belong to God.

We are God’s and we belong to God. And there is nothing we can think or do or feel that would change that. Being in community helps us know that more deeply for the sense of belonging that community gives us is an echo of the belonging all of us have with God.

But in those times of bleak hardship when there doesn’t seem to be anyone to turn to, in those times where you can’t find any one to share meaning and purpose with, in those times… remember that you are God’s. And in doing so, I pray you find some peace.