To Belong or Not to Belong
If I had a do-over on this morning’s sermon title, I’d choose Not All Belonging is Salve. That profound truth comes from NYTimes bestselling author of Black Liturgies, Cole Arthur Riley who wrote:
"I'm beginning to think alienation and rejection are the two great persuaders of our own unloveliness. The cunning will wield them against you so that you acquiesce to the systems of a community in order to retain membership in it. Perhaps you know what it's like to need to believe a certain doctrine or creed so that you can belong in a spiritual space, or to vote a certain way to belong at the dinner table. When someone places your very belonging at stake, they are prodding an ancient wound. Not all belonging is salve."
Not all belonging is salve. Congregational ministers aren’t supposed to say things like that. We’re supposed to encourage belonging–to our congregations and to small groups within the congregation. We’re supposed to say belonging matters. It adds depth and meaning to our lives. It holds us in care and love through all the seasons of life and all the chances and changes of fate. It strengthens our individual efforts toward justice building. It allows us to give and receive so many more of life’s gifts than we could or would all on our own. Belonging is good for us, we social creatures. That’s what we’re supposed to say. And I often do. Nevertheless, not all belonging is salve.
Consider the sit-com episode, you know the one, in which one character desperately wants to be admitted into some exclusive group–a fraternal organization, a country club, or a high society committee. The character begs a second, reluctant, character into applying for membership along with them. Perhaps they’ve been told by the selection committee that their application will be considered only if the second character applies, too. Or maybe they simply want their friend along for the ride. Either way, even if you haven’t seen the episode of Designing Women or the Andy Griffin Show or some other sitcom produced in the past forty years, you know how it turns out. After the interviews and the meet and greets, Reluctant Second Character is invited to join the coveted, exclusive group but First Character is not. And of course, whether it is Julia Sugarbaker defending her baby sister Suzanne, or Andy watching out for Barney, Second Character turns down the invitation to membership. If the group won’t accept their beloved, they won’t have anything to do with the group. Belonging isn’t a salve under these circumstances. Belonging in these circumstances is an irritant, a queasy stomach, an uneasy conscience.
It’s easy, because we all want to be good friends and partners and family members to those we love, to imagine ourselves being Second Character. The one who doesn’t want to belong to any club that won’t have their friend as a member. Perhaps we have even been in that situation. Leaving a group of friends when members begin to speak disparagingly of a race or class or group of people you hold dear; resigning membership in an organization after it has issued public statements or enacted policies that denigrate or disenfranchise or refuse admittance to the LGBTQIA community or people of color or immigrants or women.
Many of the friends, colleagues, classmates I follow on Facebook, case in point, have been shedding friends or inviting followers and friends to shed/unfriend/unfollow them. They’re doing so publicly, explaining that they no longer can accept as friends those who spew hatred toward trans/immigrant/black/brown folks or who vocally support expressions of such hatred from public figures and elected officials. If you’re on social media you may have noticed a similar trend or participated in the practice yourself. Lots of people seem to be choosing not to belong in relationships, even social media-based relationships, that wouldn’t welcome the belonging of whole groups of people based on one aspect of identity, not on lived experience or personal encounter with the people they are excluding.
It’s easy–or easy-ish–to recognize that belonging to such organizations or friendship or social media circles is not salve, even if we’re deeply lonely and longing for connection. But what about a club or organization, friendship circle or church that won’t have us–in our holy wholeness–as a member? Are we then both prepared and able to say, ‘if you don’t want all of me, I don’t want to belong.”
What about a Unitarian Universalist church that welcomes our belonging as long as we never admit to missing the Eucharist or leaning conservative in our politics? What about the school system that says “Your education, experience, references are all top rate. We'd love to hire you. Just never let a hint of your sexual orientation reach your students, their parents, or your colleagues”? What about the family that says “We’ll love you and support you and include you as long as you keep your relationship with that person hidden and unacknowledged and far away from our dinner table”?
Surely belonging isn’t salve in those situations. Surely it is slow poison. But loneliness is epidemic in our society. Sometimes, if the choice is between isolation and belonging somewhere we have to deny or bury or mask parts of ourselves, we might well choose partial belonging over not belonging at all. I think we’ve all probably made that decision at least once in our life–whether joining a clique in middle school or remaining in a relationship with a primary partner who denigrates our ethnic identity slyly, subtly, but regularly, or when going along to get along means closing our ears and our hearts to frequent microaggressions from a best friend’s new spouse. When the alternative is health-destroying, spirit-destroying loneliness, choosing to belong at the expense of our whole authentic self can feel like the better of two bad options.
I haven’t entered last week’s fish comments into a word cloud generator yet, but I can tell you that when I do, the largest word will be connection. Many of us named some version of it– fellowship, friends, beloveds– as the thing we look for/forward to when we come to church on Sundays. Knowing the statistics, that even before the COVIED shutdown, one in two adults in the US reported loneliness, I’m grateful that belonging to this congregation seems to be salve for great numbers of you.
The world outside these doors is more determined than ever, in the words of Cole Arthur Riley, to wield alienation and rejection against us, convincing us over and over again of our unloveliness in order to keep us acquiescing to systems that serve forces of control, division, and greed. Whether we’ve been here thirty years or six weeks, we’re here because we’ve come to know this to be a place that recognizes and celebrates our loveliness, a place to bathe our spirits in the salve of belonging. We're at church, most of us, only an hour or two, one day a week, however. So, because in today’s world such places and hours as this are rare, we need that salve of belonging here to be potent, fragrant and melodic, soothing and invigorating.
Ten new people have signed our membership book in the past month. Our neighbors, our friends, like we ourselves, yearn to be able to choose belonging over not belonging, secure in the knowledge that when they do so, they will belong in their magnificent and particularly wholeness, and it will be as a salve to their parched spirits and chaffed souls.
That’s why we’re talking every single week about what it means to live with Love at the Center. That’s why we’re creating a new covenant together. That’s why we’re gathering your thoughts and ideas about what you’re looking for when you come to church and what you promise to and expect from the church. That’s why we’re starting a new covenant group or two.
We’re doing everything we can to deepen and broaden an expansive and welcoming experience of belonging here at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Savannah, not simply that we might surrender ourselves into its embrace for a time on Sunday mornings, but that we might carry it forth with us as an antidote against loneliness for ourselves and all whom we encounter throughout the week. And thus may this congregation be a salve, a blessing even unto those we never enter our doors. Amen.
