Sermon for 3 December 2006, 1^st Unitarian Church of Alton, Illinois

 

BELONGING

Ronald J. Glossop

 

I.   Introduction

    A.   One of our greatest human needs is to belong, and consequently one of our greatest discomforts and fears is to be all alone.   

    B.   One of the severest penalties in our legal system, reserved for those prisoners who are particularly defiant and unrepetant, is solitary confinement.

    C.   Of course, it is possible to feel lonely even in a crowd and to feel intensely that we belong even if we are physically all alone.   Belonging is by no means merely a physical thing.  

    D. Nevertheless there usually is, at least at some time, a physical component to belonging, and something is lacking when we are separated physically from those with whom we feel we belong.

 

II.   Belonging means being part of-- and feeling that we are part of--some group, some community of others.

    A.   The most basic group to which we belong is our family.   This is where "home" is and where our sense of belonging has to begin, even if later in life there may come to be others besides our biological family that we feel more at home with, more at one with.  

    B.  Beyond the family into which we are born, there later usually is also that second family we form when we marry and have children.  And sometimes there can even be a third family when there is a second marriage, although family identity issues can then become a bit complicated.

    C.  Also even in childhood we become accustomed to belonging to other groups, at school, at church, playmates in the neighborhood, and in organizations such as the scouts or sports teams or hobby groups.  And some of these groups will be much more important to us than other groups to which we also belong.

    D.  Other groups into which we are born (and thus have no choice in whether we belong to them or not) are those persons of the same age, those of the same gender, those of the same race, those of the same economic class, and those born in the same country.  The importance of belonging to such groups can change as we grow older, but the fact of having been born into these groups cannot be changed.   We are what we are.

 

III. One kind of group that tends to be very important in our current period of human history is what nation we belong to.     

    A.  For the most part, people tend to remain in the nation where they were born, but more and more in our modern world people become part of another nation, sometimes by choice, sometimes as a result of factors over which they have no control. 

    B.   Nationalism, the feeling that we belong to a particular nation, is an important part of the lives of most people, largely because there are deliberate efforts to encourage this feeling in our schools and in public life.   All nations have their historical heroes, their national language and the national culture based on it, their national flag, their national anthem, their national military forces, and so on.

        1.  This is true for us in the United States, but it is true for other nations too.   We belong to our country and are proud of its accomplishments, but the same is true for the British, the Germans, the French, the Irish, the Russians, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Vietnamese, Mexicans, Canadians, Venezuelans, Egyptians, Ghanians, and so on. 

        2.  The feeling of belonging to the nation, of identifying with it, becomes especially intense when there is a popular war against another nation.  It then becomes a matter of us against them and a struggle to determine which nation will be able to stand and/or prevail and which will suffer the humiliation of defeat and subordination.

        3.  But the sense of belonging to the nation and identifying with it is not limited to wartime.  Think of sport contests such as the Olympic Games or competition for the World Cup in soccer.   Think of the competition among nations for national cultural pre-eminence with regard to Nobel Prizes.

        4.  Think of what happens when we travel to another country and are asked to identify ourselves.  "I am an American" we say.  And it is not only we who identify ourselves this way.  The others also say, "They are Americans." 

        5.  For most of us, an important part of our belongingness is tied to our country.  Think of what a loss it would be if something totally unimaginable happened and the United States of America no longer existed.   A very important part of us would be gone.

 

IV.   Another area of belongingness, one even older and perhaps even more significant than the nation to which we belong, is the religious or ideological community to which we belong.

    A.  As with nationalism, most people tend to remain in the religious community into which they were born and raised, but more and more in our modern world people are choosing to switch to a different religious community, especially in those regions of the world where free and open inquiry is encouraged.

    B.  Religious or ideological identity is often even more important than national identity, especially when it is the result of choice.

    C.  As with national identity, religious identity is intensified when there is violent conflict between one religious group and another for dominance in any situation where there isn't much tolerance for minorities.  As in the case of nationalism, there is a real danger that the defeated religious group will be humiliated and harassed for a long time.  Wars over religion are as ancient and maybe even more vicious than wars due to nationalism.

    D. And as with nationalism, the competition is not limited to wars but also goes on with regard to other kinds of accomplishments such as which religion has the most glorious buildings or vestments or the most believers or the most edifying scriptures.

    E.  What is true of religion is also true of non-religious ideologies.  For many people the most important part of their belongingness or identity has been or even still is to the Communist Party, the Fabian Society, the Socialist Party, the Fascists in Spain or Italy, the Nazi Party, the Klu Klux Klan, the Liberal Party, the Libertarian Party, the Ethical Society, the Humanist Association, the Rationalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the World Federalist Association, or whatever.

    F.   I think that for many of us here our being members of this church and thus also of the larger Unitarian-Universalist Association is a very important part of our belongingness and our identity .  This is especially true for the many of us who belong to this religious community by choice rather than as a result of being brought up in it.  If something were to cause this church and the UUA to go out of existence, a very important part of us would be gone.

 

V.   There are other even larger groups to which we belong.   For example, we belong not only to our families, other interest groups, our nation and our religious community   but also to that great community of all humans, those who are part of that community now and those who have been in the past and those not yet born who will be part of our human community in the future.

    A.  In fact, some of us believe that being part of this community of all humans is even more important than being part of our limited national community or part of our limited religious or ideological communities.   As we say in our UUA statement of principles, we "affirm and promote the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all."

    B.  And going beyond the human community we also belong to the group of all living things and even of all things in that make up the universe past, present, and future.  As it is worded in our UUA statement of principles, "we affirm and promote respect for the inter-dependent web of all existence of which we are a part."

 

VI.   At the beginning of this sermon, I talked about our very human need to belong and our very human fear of being all alone.

    A.  As we grow older, we lose some members of the groups to which we belong.   We lose members of our families, persons in interest groups to which we belong, citizens of our nation, individuals in our religious community, members of our human community, and some animals and plants which are part of our community of all living things.

    B.  Will we someday be left all alone?  In some cases where the group is smaller we may be the last person of the family or the last person of our interest group.   In such cases the feeling of belonging to that group has usually already been lost.

    C. But where the group is larger as with the nation and the religious community and the community of all humans and the community of all living things we can be confident that the community to which we belong will continue even when we ourselves pass on and are no longer part of it.   We as individuals may die, but that group to which we have belonged, that community which has been part of our identity, will go on.

D.  These ongoing communities to which we belong and the efforts we put into them are a very important part of our lives. They provide us with a sense of meaning and purpose, with a feeling that we are part of something beyond our own individual self.   They provide us a kind of immortality even when we are no longer alive to be part of them.

 

VII.   So let us reaffirm our belongingness, especially to this religious community and to the larger community of all humans of which we are a part.