by Rev. Thomas Disrud

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

One morning last week I was walking home from the park with my dog, Lucy, and her friend Lorenzo. Lorenzo was going to spend the day at our house. As we were walking along we come upon a big old black dog. He was a Labrador with graying jowls and he walked kind of slowly. He was not on a leash and there were no humans who seemed to be with him, which seemed a little unusual for the neighborhood. I didn’t think too much of it—I figured he was not far from home and just getting a little exercise. He, Lorenzo and Lucy performed the rituals of greeting that dogs are known to do. When they were finished we continued on our way. The big black dog came right along. I figured he would turn around at some point but he didn’t. He followed us all the way home and when I opened the front door he came right inside.

When we got home I looked at his tags. His name was Tuck and the address was in north Portland, quite a ways from my house. I called the number and after a couple hours somebody came to pick him up. His owner, it turns out, was back east and Tuck was staying in the neighborhood. Tuck didn’t seem to mind being away from home. He made himself right at home until they came to take him. I’m not sure what he was looking for but apparently we fit the bill.

As Tuck slowly walked out to the car, I thought to myself that we all have a need to belong somewhere.

From what I have been able to observe from dogs, I think they may have an easier time of it than many of us humans. Dogs quickly figure out the social order and get down to business. There seems to be a lot more that gets in the way for us.

Belonging is right up there among our most basic needs. First comes the need for survival: shelter, warmth, food, drink. Next comes the need for safety and security, including freedom from danger and absence of threat. Once safety has been assured, belonging and love, usually found within families, friendships, groups, churches—community—then becomes a priority. Maslow stressed that only when we are anchored in community do we develop self-esteem, the need to assure ourselves of our own worth as individuals.

So the need to belong is deep within us.

My earliest and most formative experience with community came in the town where I grew up. Part of me will always belong in this place. The town is named Hollandale in southwestern Wisconsin. This was a place where everyone there, on some level, belonged. The town had 256 people, two churches—a Lutheran and a Catholic—one grocery store, two gas stations and four taverns. Most people were either Norwegian or Irish or German.

It is a place where everybody knew everybody else’s business and also a place where everybody looked out for everybody else, especially in times of need.

But there were distinctions within the town. You had to be there for quite a number of years—maybe even a generation or two to really be part of the place. And memory lasts a long time there—if your family was ever on the dole, if there was something that was shameful—it will take a long time for that to be forgotten. You could go away and win the Nobel Prize, but going back to Hollandale, if you weren’t in good standing, if there is something that’s remembered, don’t think that something like the Nobel Prize is going to do much for you.

I was aware of some of these distinctions growing up, but it was not until I had been away for some time, and looked back on that place that I realized that there was more going on than I was aware of. There was one black man who lived on the outskirts of town. Early in my life I got the message that I was to be nice and respectful to this man—but not to have too much to do with him.

Now I look back and I realize that the two women who lived down the street from my aunt Helen were partners. They weren’t just roommates, they were partners. Everybody knew that, I expect, but nobody talked about it. It was just the way that it was.

Interesting thing: This is probably why, on some level, I knew that I would not stay in that place. Early on it was a sense of my own differentness—that as a gay man I would not really thrive there. Part of me would be welcome there but so much of me would not. I could survive, but I probably wouldn’t thrive. I look back and understand that it may have been my first lesson in the fact that too often there are limits to how much we can really belong.

No matter what our setting, we get messages about who belongs and who doesn’t belong. We figure out where we fit and where we don’t fit. We make our way in the world.

Each person here has their stories of belonging and not belonging. Those stories are very much formative in how we see things around us and how we are connected—or not connected. There are those who seem to fit in just about anywhere they go. And there are those who always seem to be just a little outside the group.

But hopefully we each find our way through, to one degree or another. Part of our identity is that we are outside, but still have a place. We all need a place to belong.

I don’t say that lightly, because so often it is not easy. We live in a culture that makes belonging—and being connected—a big challenge. We get isolated from others and in that find it more difficult to find connection and belonging.

In his book Bowling Alone Robert Putnam argued that civil society was breaking down as Americans became more disconnected from their families, neighbors, communities, and the republic itself. The organizations that gave life to democracy were fraying. Years ago, he wrote, thousands of people belonged to bowling leagues. Today, however, we’re more likely to be bowling alone (hence the name of the book).

Putnam wrote his book five years ago; just this month he has another piece in the New Republic that is titled “American Idle: Four Years after 9-11, We’re Still Bowling Alone.” He says that we have become so focused on the individual that we have forgotten the importance of community for the future of our country. During an event like World War II, the country was brought together and the role of voluntary associations and rights movements were enhanced. But that has not happened post 9-11. The focus on the individual and away from civic institutions is the same. It is no wonder that more people live alone in our country that just about anywhere else. It is no wonder we get so isolated.

All our stuff can keep us secure from everyone else. I see images to remind me of this all the time. This past week, when once again there were the photos of all the vehicles lined up on the freeways evacuating places in the line of the latest hurricane, there were all those SUVs, one after another after another. Two images came to mind when I saw that photo—that we are all in our little tanks getting away from the world, protecting us from the danger that is out there. My next thought was about all the people who don’t have an SUV—who couldn’t imagine having an SUV—where they were at the time and how they were getting out of there.

We have more stuff than people in most other countries and certainly that is one of the things that keep us from other people. We get the message over and over again that we are what we consume. We are what we have. Want fulfillment and happiness? This is what you need to buy to get it. This pervades our culture in so many ways. We spend more time acquiring things. We have more stuff than we need and tending all of our stuff takes time. In the end we learn that having more stuff doesn’t add up to being more fulfilled in life.

But those messages can be hard to shake. If we are—on some level—the sum of what we consume, it can happen that we lose sight of what is most essentially meaningful in our lives. Think about those VISA commercials. You know the ones that list the cost of this and that only to get around to what is priceless? We do in fact learn that some things are priceless, but we also get the message that just about everything else is possible with our VISA card.

What does this have to do with community and belonging? I think we come to see everything coming at a price. And when everything has a price, we come to see ourselves, too—our worth and value—as coming at a price. The relationship somehow becomes secondary to the transaction.

And if relationship, if community, just comes down to one more thing that we consume, something is lost. True community, true connection, that sense of belonging, is something that doesn’t come with a price. It is not so much about what we get, but what possibilities might lay in the relationship itself.

I want to talk now about the church, a very important community in many of our lives. I’ve noticed over the years that there are many ways that people articulate what it is they are looking for in the church. One of the ways I see more and more is to talk about the church as what it is that I want to have, what I want to receive. It is talked about in the same way that we talk about wanting this object or that object. It is one more thing that we consume. We become customers, just like we are in so many other places.

But of course a church is a different kind of beast. It is hard to quantify the value of a covenant, a sacred promise that people together in community make.

Belonging needs to transcend our individual selves and our individual needs. We are looking to be connected to something that is larger than any one of us. It is a fundamental longing. How a body of people lives out a mission in the world is something kind of mysterious. A church is a very human institution, it is the sum of all the people in it. What is it that calls us out of our isolation and how do we move out of that isolation? We are looking to belong somewhere, to know others, to do good work in the world and to be called out of our isolation and into community.

It is when we open ourselves, when we put ourselves with others, that are called out of our isolation.

A story. A little boy was riding the bus into New York, seated between two women, one dressed in grey, and the other in red. During the trip, he leaned in against the woman in grey until, by the end, he was resting entirely on her, with his feet stretched out toward the woman in red. The woman in red asked the woman in grey to please ask her son not to put his feet up on the seat; he was getting her dress dirty. The woman in grey responded, “He isn’t mine. I’ve never even seen him before.”

Incredulous, the woman in red put her face down near his, and asked, “Are you traveling all alone?” “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Sorry about your dress.” She asked him where his home was. “Well,” he replied, “I live with my Aunt Mildred, but Aunt Mildred says I should spend more time with Aunt Clara; that’s where I’m going now. When Aunt Clara gets tired of me, she’ll put me on another bus and send me back to Aunt Mildred.”

The woman in red was devastated by his matter-of-factness. “You’re awfully young to be traveling alone. You’re a brave boy,” she said. And he answered, “Well, I’ve never gotten lost, but sometimes I get lonely. So I pick out someone I’d like to belong to, and kind of snuggle up and pretend I belong to them.”

I can see many of us in that child. We’re not really lost, but we don’t quite belong, either. But in the end, it is important to remember that all of us are on that bus together.  I’m amazed when I look out and see all of you on Sunday mornings. On a beautiful chilly morning like this, what’s to keep us from staying in bed? What’s to keep us from just reading the paper? We have to get dressed, we get ourselves here on the bus or we get into our cars. It may or may not be easy to find parking. And once we get here we may find that even though we like to sit quietly and listen to the music before or after the service only to sit next to someone who likes to chat with their neighbor.

But the good news is that we come. Something brings us here and we come. And, hopefully, we find a place where we belong. Hopefully the sermon might have something to say, and even if it doesn’t hopefully the music is there. And if not, hopefully there will be a good conversation in the social hour. And hopefully, more than anything else, we feel we have a place here.

Our church is in a time of great importance in its history. We are in a time of making space for the people who want to come here. We are making space that our voice might be stronger and stronger in this city, in this state, in our association.

Last night I was proud to see so many people from our church standing on one of the Portland bridges and lighting a candle and witnessing for peace. I’m always amazed at all the people who have found a place here at our church.

But there are a lot of people out there who would like to belong here. They may not even know that yet, just like many of us didn’t know this was what we were looking for. But now that we are here, perhaps can’t quite imagine life without it.

We belong, and hopefully we find our way in the world. We come together, despite all that stands in the way, and know that we are not alone.

Prayer

Spirit of life, hear our prayer this day. We give thanks for our lives, we give thanks for this community. May it be a welcoming place, a place for all to belong. Call us out of our isolation and into relatedness. May its voice be strong, calling for justice, calling for love, calling for hope in the world. Amen.

Benediction

May you find yourself planted in fertile soil and may you grow and thrive in that place. Go in love and in peace this day. Amen.