Secrets For Belonging

Most humans appear to want a sense of belonging to family, friends, and community. Yet some of our deepest pain is triggered when we feel like we don’t belong. How do we avoid and overcome our belonging wounds? This is a talk by Michelle Medrano.

Transcript

We're talking about being the authentic self.

Today my message is titled Secrets of Belonging.

I have some secrets to offer,

Though I suspect they won't be horrible,

Deep,

Dark secrets that any of you don't already know because you're pretty wise people.

But I'd like to start out with our founder,

Dr.

Ernest Holmes.

He says,

I believe that everything that exists is an expression of God,

Which is what we believe in this teaching.

And that is why we are here.

There is an inner something in us that belongs to the universe.

And we have to get rid of all that inhibits it.

Every sense of rejection and guilt and insecurity and anxiety.

The security I'm talking about is the kind that not only warms the heart and makes glad the mind,

But also feeds the soul.

We belong to God.

There is that within us which will last forever.

There is no other security.

So it seems to me that just about every human being I've ever known yearns for belonging.

Yearns for a sense of I know where I belong.

I know who I belong to and and what serves me in being my authentic self.

And it seems to me like this search for belonging is truly the core of some of the greatest searches of our lives.

Because we don't quite know how to dance with it when we feel the lack of it.

And when we've got it,

We can feel a little insecure about it.

Is it going to go away?

Or can I keep it?

And we are we struggle with that that sense of connection and anchored belonging to the universe,

To our God,

To ourselves,

And to the people that we share this life with.

It can be very discombobulating.

And I have a couple strange experiences that have informed me a little bit on this talk.

I want to talk about Trader Joe's.

I love the products that Trader Joe's sells.

They have really great stuff.

Really interesting stuff.

But the first time I went into a Trader Joe's store was in Pacific Grove,

California many years ago.

And I went in to buy stuff and I am compelled to get the hell out of Trader Joe's as fast as I can whenever I go in there.

I don't know why.

Is it them?

Is it me?

What is it?

And no matter what they do about how they rearrange the store or how modern the store is,

I just can't take it.

The last time I was there,

I followed my husband around for as long as I could.

And then when I couldn't anymore,

I said,

I'm going to the car.

And I just bolted out of the store.

And he had to finish the purchases.

So when I hear a friend going to Trader Joe's,

I'm like,

Will you pick this up for me?

Because I just can't go in there.

Conversely,

The day I walked into Mile High Church back in the late 70s,

Sat down,

It feels to me like before they played a note or said a word,

I'm home.

I felt that feeling of that recognition like,

This is my place.

These are my people.

I belong here.

Was it them?

Is it me?

How is it that those experiences come to be?

Because I'm going to guess that I'm not the only one who's ever walked into an organization or a store or a group and felt completely compulsed to get out of there.

Nor am I the only one who ever walked into some environment and felt that warm familiarity.

We have that experience often as human beings.

And sometimes it's not where we hope it will be.

We go into one place hoping we'll feel a sense of belonging and we got to get right out and go into places where we're not so sure and suddenly feel at home.

It can be very confusing and discombobulating.

So I invite us as we begin this message today to really reflect on our sense of belonging.

And have we felt it in different places or the lack of it in different places?

And I ask us,

What's that about?

Is that me or is that about them?

Additionally,

What I would suggest we consider is that most of the places where there is dis-ease and disruption in our culture and our world,

Probably at the core of it has to do with people who aren't feeling a sense of belonging.

If they felt a sense of belonging,

They might not reach out in anger towards each other.

If they felt a sense of belonging,

They might not feel so afraid to just walk on this beautiful planet.

And so we have a belonging issue as a group of humans.

We have belonging issues and we need to deal with them in order to experience greater healing and well-being on this planet.

And I'm inviting us right here today to consider what we might be able to do to heal our sense of belonging and to deepen it and to acknowledge that core desire.

Now to do that,

The first thing I suggest is that we have to look individually at our own belonging origin.

We have to be willing to see and acknowledge that we might have grown up in an environment where we had something about us that was unacceptable.

Whether it was something we hid from people or something that others saw in us and told us was unacceptable.

Or maybe we were bullied because we looked different,

Spoke different,

Had something different about us than a lot of other people or were judged.

Maybe it's that our family,

We were this way and everyone else in our family was that way and we're thinking,

Am I adopted?

I don't know.

I mean,

I don't feel like I belong in this family.

How did I get here?

And so we might have had that core sense of a lack of belonging,

Even in our own family of origin,

Which is why many people talk about finding their family of choice because they recognize that they just didn't have a sense of belonging with the people they came into this world with.

And so there might be something there for us to take a look at.

There is some evidence also that I find fascinating of generational psychology suggesting that we might be being influenced at an energetic level and even a genetic level by the people who came before us in our ancestry.

And we know that people who have experienced some trauma and drama in their life,

That trauma stays often in the energy and the consciousness of a family system until someone has the courage to stop it.

Are we the people that no matter how it occurred,

Whether it's a generation after generation of disconnect and a lack of belonging and a sense that I'm not good enough and I'm not enough,

Are we the people who are going to perpetuate that belonging history or are we the people who are going to take a stand and say,

Enough?

And it starts with us looking beautifully,

Consciously at our belonging origin and acknowledging it.

One of the most modern voices for this is the great author,

Speaker,

Teacher,

Researcher Brené Brown.

And she says,

Belonging is the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us.

Because this yearning is so primal,

We often try to acquire it by fitting in and by seeking approval,

Which are not only hollow substitutes for belonging but often barriers to it.

I bet there have been times when we've been tempted to say,

I'll just pretend I'm a certain way so that I can feel a sense of belonging.

But she's saying that will never work because it's a lie.

It's not the truth and we're out of integrity when we're doing that.

And there's often nothing more painful than that lack of integrity.

I'm pretending that I'm this way but I'm really not.

Because I don't trust that if I really was who I am authentically and lived that out in my life,

That I could step forward and really have that sense of belonging.

We see stories of it all over our culture and our world with our kids and our young adults and every age across the gamut.

Our elders,

We yearn for belonging and there's nothing more joyous,

More godly,

More true than that moment when we say,

This is who I am and I'm going to choose to belong.

But it takes looking at that origin and it takes that willingness to heal that wound.

I call these belong wounds.

A lot of our belong wounds have to do with some part of us that thought at one point maybe that being normal was more important than being authentic.

I've shared before my favorite definition of normal.

It's a setting on a dryer.

In case no one's told your beautiful soul this truth,

There's no such thing as normal.

No such thing at all.

If we were to look at our earth from the standpoint of way,

Way high in the sky or I love stories of sci-fi stories about other worlds and Star Wars and Star Trek and all those sci-fi stories that postulate and theorize.

What if we did it this way and what if we did it that way and what if a group of people thought this was normal.

It's normal to have green skin.

It's normal to have gigantic ears.

It's normal to whatever it might be.

Normal is the setting on the dryer is not anything we can ever attain.

Authenticity,

However,

Is the truth of our soul is something that we can attain,

But to have it,

You got to give up your woundology.

You got to give up your stories about they didn't love me.

They didn't accept me because what we acknowledge is that that has happened to just about every human being on this planet to some degree or another that is in our genetics as humans have struggled to find our way on this planet together in this diverse way that we exist and that we can take that woundology and begin to let go and forgive and accept that other people may have had their own wounds that caused us to not be able to accept us and that we can acknowledge that and we don't have to to live with it other than we can set ourselves free from it by forgiving by letting go by choosing to move on by choosing to move forward and find our place in this beautiful world and acknowledging that we we do deserve to belong.

We want to belong.

Here's the thing I want to say about it.

My bottom line today when it comes to belonging,

We need it.

We crave it.

We've got to brave it.

We need it.

We crave it.

We've got to brave it and I say brave it because it's a brave,

Bold act to live as your authentic self.

It's a brave,

Bold act to seek belonging and to cultivate it on this planet where there are lots of voices who want to try to define for us what is normal,

Who is normal,

Who's acceptable,

Who's not.

Our authentic selves in their desire to innocently express themselves in ways that empower and bring forth the goodness that we are,

Express the light that we are,

Express the love and the unique creativity that we are,

Can find places and people and tribes and groups to belong to but it involves us letting go of our old stories because what I noticed about my old story is that when I was in the midst of it,

I could walk into any group and someone would look at me wrong and I would say,

Oh well I don't belong here.

They think I'm blah blah blah too.

Unacceptable too.

I could totally live in my story.

No one would even have to say it but I would say it to myself.

I would say,

I would talk myself into not belonging because of my story but the more I let go of my story,

The more I feel free of that story,

The more I feel comfortable in my own beingness,

Then I don't make up so much about other people and their stories about me.

I let myself be me and that is called,

I think,

Belonging integrity.

When we give up our old stories and we step into the truth of who we are and if we need to check something out with someone,

We do so but there are places and people that I can belong to and I can be accepted no matter who I am.

In that beautiful expression of who I am that wants to give back and share my light,

I know absolutely I would sign a guarantee today on paper,

With my own blood even,

That says I'm sure there is someplace on this planet,

Some group,

Some tribe,

Somewhere where the good that we seek to express in the world belongs,

Each one of us.

We may have to do some work to find it but I know it's there and our stories that say there's no one who knows,

They're not true.

They're lies we tell ourselves to further keep the woundedness alive.

Whereas the story I can say is,

I don't know where they are but I know there's people who like to wear ginormous hats on Sunday and I'm going to find them or whatever it might be.

I'm using very surface examples but there are deeper,

Deeper truths afoot here where we can and should,

I think,

Seek out and find that sense for ourselves of belonging.

Recognize healing our wounds,

Moving forward and then allow ourselves to belong to things based on the authenticity of who we are.

This is important.

Brené Brown goes on to say,

Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic,

Imperfect selves to the world.

Our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.

Our sense of belonging can never be greater than our self-acceptance.

What if our feeling a lack of belonging isn't so much about them as it is about the levels of our self-acceptance?

We get to consider that and even when we've considered that and we've healed a lot of that and we step forward,

I just want to say full out there are still risks.

There are still vulnerabilities to choosing to belong and that's why many of us isolate because it just feels safer,

Doesn't it?

There are risks.

I don't know about you but have any of you ever noticed you've come to this church for a while that the people are really nice but every once in a while there is a curmudgeon around?

There's somebody who isn't quite friendly or nice,

Having a bad day,

Maybe says something kind of stupid or crazy or is different than you expected them to be.

I know sometimes when that has happened because I'm so afraid of what that means,

I will run even from the groups that I feel that authentic sense of belonging because that discomfort makes me want to run.

But true belonging,

Whether it's with a key relationship that you want to continue to foster or a group of people,

Requires that that belonging be nurtured even when it's difficult.

I found this meme recently that I love.

When we avoid hard conversations,

We're not keeping the peace,

We're keeping the tension.

That's from Peter Bromberg.

We're keeping the tension.

So true belonging in a good relationship,

The best of friendships,

Requires challenging conversations when our feelings get hurt or it didn't go the way we hoped it would go or we're feeling judged or we're feeling a lack of belonging.

It requires us to really continue to foster connection and that's not always easy and yet when we see it in action,

It's amazing.

I've been paying attention to a story of a man lately that has really touched my heart and helped me to see,

Especially in this political climate,

The possibilities of not standing apart but standing together and this is a picture of Daryl Davis.

He's the beautiful black man on the left and look he's shaking the hands of a Ku Klux Klan wizard.

Daryl Davis is a blues jazz musician who was playing in a bar and one night he began talking to a fellow at the bar and discovered that that fellow was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

They became friends,

Good friends,

Began to have dinner,

Have conversation and eventually his friend who was part of the Klan left the Klan.

He was the grand wizard and he left the Klan and he gave Daryl his robe as a symbol of his willingness to change and to be a different person and this inspired Mr.

Davis who said he realized that he could possibly through this conversation create more and more opportunities to end racial division.

As of this date,

Mr.

Davis has had over 200 Ku Klux Klan members surrender their robes to him.

Yeah.

He says that he began to chip away at their ideology just by having conversation.

He says because when two enemies are talking,

They're not fighting.

It's when the talking ceases that the ground becomes fertile for violence.

If you spend five minutes with your worst enemy,

It doesn't have to be about race.

It could be about anything.

You will find that you both have something in common.

As you build upon those commonalities,

You're forming a relationship that as you build that relationship,

You find you're forming a friendship.

That's what would happen and I love what he says here.

I didn't convert anybody.

They saw the light and converted themselves.

Yeah.

Beautiful,

Beautiful story.

And he does his work now reaching out thinking his philosophy is how can you hate me when you don't even know me?

And I really invite us to consider that when it comes to belonging.

As you think about the people right now that you judge in various groups and maybe even hate,

How can you hate them when you don't even know them?

And how is it that we benefit ourselves by continuing to behave this way in any way,

Shape,

Or form?

So belonging also means that we create belonging support by standing for others like Mr.

Daryl Davis did.

We become willing in our personal relationships and with the broad groups of people who we are tempted to hate whom we don't even know by standing for belonging and making the ties that can help us feel connected be born out of friendship and connection and allowance.

I'm grateful for our graduates who are graduating tonight and I get to be the dean of our ministerial school and so I've gotten to be with our five graduates.

And one of our graduates is Christine Renee Monks and she has been a member of our community for a long time.

She's a practitioner in our community.

She is a board member just completing her three-year term and she's graduating from ministerial school tonight and going to be starting her own ministry.

She also has been serving our Centers for Spiritual Living on our diversity and equity teams and fostering these important conversations about diversity all over our planet.

And she spoke in a class I was teaching a while back and she really taught me more about a concept that I've heard about that I think is so important.

It's the concept of othering.

It's the concept of othering people and creating separation between us and other groups of people by othering them.

That they are other than us and really working hard in our minds and hearts to separate ourselves because they do this and I don't do that.

And othering is an activity that's habitual in our minds and hearts.

And she brought forth the beautiful voice of Sean Ginwright,

An author who talks about a session he was in teaching students about othering and he says he explained to the group this process of othering,

Which is assigning negative attributes to groups unlike your own,

Which is very different.

That Mr.

Davis said,

I knew that even though those groups were different than me,

We had something in common.

We shared something in common.

And it allowed him to stop othering those members of the clan to begin to have relevant conversations.

And then the practice of belonging,

Mr.

Ginwright says,

Is cultivating the capacity to see the humanity in groups unlike our own.

Seeing that they have the human desires to belong just like we do.

And its consequences for our collective effort for social change.

I described that our real work as leaders,

If we really want to create a healing centered world,

Is to recognize how the process of othering leads to separation and ultimately dehumanization.

I explained that we all need to find some way to embrace the humanity among those groups that we find most unlike us.

That's what we do.

Through our own experience in Woundology,

We other ourselves.

And then we get about othering other people.

And then we have a crisis of belonging.

And I say that this whole process gets reversed when we stop othering ourselves and choose to belong to ourselves.

Choose to belong to God.

Choose to belong to the authentic,

Soulful energy of ourselves.

And then choose to bring ourselves with integrity out into the world to belong.

And then choose consciously to stop othering other people and allow them to belong where they belong.

I am a committed member of Mile High Church.

And I am a highly passionate science of mind and spirit minister.

But I love it that people belong to whatever faith tradition they resonate with.

And I want people to feel that belonging.

I have places and things that I belong to passionately.

And I want other people to feel that they have places where they belong and they resonate.

Because I recognize that as we all have that sense of belonging,

Even if I don't agree with where they belong,

What if that is what brings forth the kingdom of heaven on earth?

Not that we're all the same,

All going in the same direction,

Other than love.

And other than belonging.

And everyone having a place to be.

This to me is the secret of belonging.

And I invite us to join together in prayer now.

I'm going to read a poem as we begin our prayer to contemplate.

A prayer called Belonging by Rosemary Watola Tromer.

And I invite our practitioners and ministers to stand with me in prayer as we take a stand together in the transformation of this planet and of each heart into belonging.

Rosemary says,

And if it's true we are alone,

We are alone together,

The way blades of grass are alone but exist as a field.

Sometimes I feel it,

The green fuse that ignites us,

The wild thrum that unites us,

An inner hum that reminds us of our shared humanity.

Just as 35 trillion red blood cells join in one body to become one blood,

Just as 136,

000 notes make up one symphony,

Alone as we are,

Our small voices weave into the one big conversation.

Our actions are essential to the one infinite story of what it is to be alive.

When we feel alone,

We belong to the grand communion of those who sometimes feel alone.

We are the dust,

The dust that hopes,

A rising of dust,

A thrill of dust,

The dust that dances in the light with all other dust,

The dust that makes the world.

And so we choose today to accept that divine sense of belonging,

To recognize the belonging that we have to this universe,

Each one of us,

Each soul,

A unique expression of divine energy,

Perfect in its presence.

And we honor these divine ways that we choose to express our greater good,

Our creativity,

Our aliveness,

Our wholeness,

Our love,

Our joy,

Our peace,

Our abundance,

Our wellness in this world.

We choose to lean into it.

And I accept and affirm in this standing together in this way that each one of us finds,

Expresses,

And makes way for greater belonging for ourselves and all others in these coming days,

That we allow ourselves to be made whole by releasing our stories of not belonging,

Letting them go,

Forgiving,

Allowing spirit to fill that space with an awareness that many,

Many times what felt like rejection was redirection,

An invitation into a greater truth of who we are.

And we celebrate that this day and allow that to be our guide in love and gratitude.

I claim this is the truth of us now,

And I let it be the truth as we let go,

Let God,

And simply let it be so.

And so it is.

Amen.