Our hunger to belong is the longing to find a bridge across the distance from isolation to intimacy. Every one longs for intimacy and dreams of a nest of belonging in which one is embraced, seen, and loved. Something within each of us cries out for belonging. We can have all the world has to offer in terms of status, achievement, and possessions. Yet without a sense of belonging it all seems empty and pointless. Like the tree that puts roots deep into the clay, each of us needs the anchor of belonging in order to bend with the storms and reach towards the light. Like the ocean that returns each time to the same shore, a sense of belonging liberates us to trust fully the rhythm of loss and longing; it also shelters us from the loneliness of life. Though we may not reflect too frequently on the vast infinity that surrounds us, something within us is always aware of it. Such infinity can be anonymous and threatening; it makes us feel inconsequential and tiny. Unknown to us this intensifies our hunger to belong. The universe is too big for us; we long for a sure nest to shelter. The sense of belonging also shelters us from the inner infinity which each of us secretly carries. There is a huge abyss within every mind. When we belong, we have an outside mooring to prevent us from falling into ourselves.
Each one of us journeys alone to this world and it is our nature to seek out belonging. Each of us carries a unique world within our hearts. Each soul is a different shape. No one feels your life as you do; no one experiences things the way you do. Your life is a totally unique story and only you really know it from within. No one knows what your experience is like. The experience of each of us is opaque and inaccessible to outsiders. Yet no individual is sealed off or hermetically self-enclosed. Though each soul is individual and unique, by its very nature the soul cannot cut itself off from the world. The deepest nature of the soul is relationship. Consequently, it is your soul that longs to belong; it is also your soul that makes all belonging possible. No soul is private or merely mortal. As well as being the vital principle of your individual life, your soul is also ancient and eternal and weaves you into the great tapestry of spirit that connects everything everywhere. There is a lovely balance at the heart of our nature: each of us is utterly unique and yet we live in the most intimate kinship with everyone and everything else. Belonging is not merely shelter from being separate and different. Its more profound intention is the awakening of the Great Belonging which embraces everything. Our hunger to belong is the desire to awaken this hidden affinity. Then we know that we are not outsiders cut off from everything, but rather participants at the heart of creation. Each of us brings something alive in the world that no one else can. There is a profound necessity at the heart of individuality. When your life awakens and you begin to sense the destiny that brought you here, you endeavour to live a life that is generous and worthy of the blessing and invitation that is always calling you.
In post-modern culture there is a deep hunger to belong. An increasing majority of people feel isolated and marginalised. Experience is haunted by fragmentation. Many of the traditional shelters are in ruins. Society is losing the art of fostering community. Consumerism is now propelling life towards the lonely isolation of individualism. Technology pretends to unite us, yet more often than not all it delivers are simulated images. The “global village” has no roads or neighbours; it is a faceless limbo from which all individuality has been abstracted. Politics seems devoid of the imagination that calls forth vision and ideals; it is becoming ever more synonymous with the functionalism of economic pragmatism. Many of the keepers of the great religious traditions now seem to be frightened functionaries; in a more uniform culture, their management skills would be efficient and successful. In a pluralistic and deeply fragmented culture, they seem unable to converse with the complexities and hungers of our longing. From this perspective, it seems that we are in the midst of a huge crisis of belonging. When the outer cultural shelters are in ruins, we need to explore and reawaken the depths of belonging in the human mind and soul; perhaps, the recognition of the depth of our hunger to belong may gradually assist us in awakening new and unexpected possibilities of community and friendship.
In a universe of absolute stillness, there would be no question about belonging. Everything would be at one in the same eternal still life. The sway of nature and the swerve of thought means that space and distance are alive with longing. No thing can be itself completely without the other. No one can be herself without the other sisters and brothers. The one who dreamed the universe loved circles and created everything with such beautiful incompletion that we need the others to complete the circles of identity, belonging, and creativity. Life is full of magnetic interims that call what is separate and different to become one, to enter into the art and presence of belonging.
Our world is suffused with beauty. There are landscapes, oceans, paintings, and music whose beauty awakens in our hearts a sense of the eternal. Yet nowhere do we feel so deeply encountered as we do in the presence of another human being. There is something in another human presence that is equal to our longing and soul. The human heart is a theater of longing. One of our deepest longings is to find love and friendship. In the Celtic tradition there was the beautiful notion of the Anam-Cara. Anam is the Irish word for “soul” and Cara is the word for “friend.” In the Anam-Cara friendship, you were joined in an ancient way with the friend of your soul. This was a bond that neither space nor time could damage. The friendship awakened an eternal echo in the hearts of the friends; they entered into a circle of intimate belonging with each other. The Anam-Cara friendship afforded a spiritual space to all the other longings of the human heart.
There is a divine restlessness in the human heart. Though our bodies maintain an outer stability and consistency, the heart is an eternal nomad. No circle of belonging can ever contain all the longings of the human heart. As Shakespeare said, we have “immortal longings.” All human creativity issues from the urgency of longing. Literally and physically, each of us is a child of longing—conceived in the passionate desire of our parents for each other. All growth is the desire of the soul to refine and enlarge its presence. The human body is a temple of sensuous spirit. In every moment our senses reach out in longing to engage the world. Movement, colour, and shape engage the affections of the eye; tone, sound, and silence call continually to our hearing; touch, fragrance, and taste also bring us into intimacy with the world. Our sensuous longing is inevitably immediate and passionate: the caress on the skin, the twilight that enthrals your seeing, Fauré’s Requiem which suffuses the depths of your hearing, the unexpected fragrance of a perfume, the icon of the face that you love. As long as we live in the temple of the senses, longing will eternally call us.