belonging

“To belong” originally meant to go with something, to be with it as you move forward through life. The connotation of ownership came later.

Two of my favorite poems about belonging find its source in love. “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves,” writes Mary Oliver, for the world to “announce your place in the family of things.” There is an element of listening, too. We already belong in this world, if we would only listen and hear its call.

David Whyte says a bit more is expected of us, that we must learn to love the parts of this world to which we belong.

“Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Excerpt from “The House of Belonging” by David Whyte

This is the bright home
in which I live,
this is where
I ask
my friends
to come,
this is where I want
to love all the things
it has taken me so long
to learn to love.

This is the temple
of my adult aloneness
and I belong
to that aloneness
as I belong to my life.

There is no house
like the house of belonging.