Eric Barreto
Belonging matters because, in my mind, you cannot conceive of salvation, the incarnation, the cross, and the resurrection apart from the ways those moments and ideas transform human relationships to one another, the land, ancestors and those who will follow us. That is, belonging is not a result of salvation or the incarnation but ingredient to our understanding and experience of both. Belonging is not secondary or tertiary in the work of the cross but at its heart. For me, too, the stories of the NT revolve around in a sophisticated, complex, and faithful way with questions of difference, community, and belonging. To belong to one another is to reflect God’s transformative grace in a fundamental way.
Dustin D. Benac
Belonging is a way of life that impacts all of our lives.
We are all searching for a way of life that can nourish meaning and purpose, nurture the next generation , and create space for connection and care. Amid the shifting structures that surround our lives, we feel this transition in our individual and collective bodies, and it leaves us feeling anxious, restless, and tired. For communities of faith and their leaders–which is where I spend most of my days–belonging draws us into this holy work, but the shifting structures now leave many of us feeling like we’re serving no shifting ground.
Belonging matters because it beckons us into a way of life, one marked by connection, care, and curiosity, so that we, together as the people of God, can offer our lives and words in service to others.
Angela Gorrell
Belonging matters because it is integral to so many other needs in the human heart: to be seen, heard, affirmed, included, chosen. In fact, belonging is vital not just for thriving but for surviving. Failed belongingness is a key component of suicidal ideation. To belong is to believe we are inextricably bound to others (in the spirit of Ubuntu) so belonging nurtures the recognition that my well-being is caught up in yours. Giving birth to belonging is necessary for so many other aspects of human flourishing: curiosity, creativity, courage, compassion.
Christian Peele
God is love, and love is expressed in connection. Exploring belonging matters because the nature and character of what it means to be together is foundational for all topics related to life, living, and worship. In addition, the way people and communities over the course of history have expressed the longing to belong signals how deeply rooted said belonging is within the human experience and the search for the divine. At best, understanding more about the desire to be while being connected might help us all be more connected to God and each other – and that would be good for the world.
Patrick B. Reyes
Belonging is my grandma calling me mijo.
Belonging to my Chicano and Indigenous roots is knowing and loving the land, the human, and the non-human that inhabit this space. I belong to the ancestral lineages I come from and the descendants I am responsible for who may never know my name. Belonging to and being in relationship with this world, to those on the spiritual plane, and to the world of the future, directs and guides my habits and actions. We belong, therefore we are.
The stakes are high. Without belonging, we cease to live. Without belonging to this world, we destroy it. Without belonging to the future, we destroy our loved one's ability to find who, what, where, and when they belong.
Erin Weber-Johnson
Belonging is both an act and a state of being.
Belonging is impacted by what we believe God thinks about those that have money and those without. Money becomes both a condition and a barrier for belonging in faith communities wrestling with their own money narratives and theologies. How one views our bodies, as vehicles for productivity, as estimable by hourly wage or as beloved impacts the ability to engage in belonging or view God’s movements in the world.
Our body’s worth, with roots from our nation’s history of slavery and the selling of bodies, translates to current fears of being replaceable, disposable, or not of worth in the pursuit of belonging.
Belonging matters as a way of upending this view. Within belonging, people matter not for their productivity. Belonging, the act and state of being, is a manifestation of an alternative economy; a different way of being with and for each other.