Belonging

 

In his new book, "Cherished Belonging", Father Gregory Boyle describes a way to healing and wholeness through communities of radical care and compassion. His beloved community is Homeboy Industries a place he founded where former gang members can find jobs, tattoo removal, and a way towards wholeness and repair through belonging.  When we are cherished by another, by a community, by a commitment, we can find our way to inner acceptance, repair, and compassion. 

We all need cherished belonging to thrive, places where we are loved and accepted for who we are, with all our flaws and disappointments with people who are patient and generous.   In belonging, our hearts  find rest and are restored in the knowing that we will not be abandoned even when we make mistakes, again.  

We can find belonging in families and with friends but also with those with whom we share an affinity like knitting, hiking, music.  There is belonging in our places of worship, in our civic institutions, in our care of our neighborhoods and wider communities. These outer containers of belonging while necessary are not sufficient.  We all know the experience of being in our communities of belonging but not feeling as if we belong. Not because we are not being given what we need to belong - although this can happen as we change and our communities change - but because we are cut off from our inner belovedness. The love from outside can't get in. This requires the belonging we allow for ourselves and that comes from the innermost self.  Our trauma and woundeness can cut us off from our knowing our own belovedness and goodness and this can make us feel abandoneded even in the midst of a cherishing community of others.  

But over time, with grace, faith, prayer, when the outer container remains steady, and our hearts begin to release the armor of self-hatred and negativity allowing the cherish of the community to seeps in.  Our own hearts begin to pave the way into the outer containers of belonging. And then our own love flows out connecting us to our belonging to others, to this life, to ourselves.