What Belongs?

Posted on September 23, 2025 by admin

I’ve been looking around my home and thinking, maybe less would be more. This is a radical concept for me. Raised by a mother who collected antiques, I grew up in a home that resembled a page out of Country Living magazine. Consequently, I have many belongings. They remind me of happy and sad experiences, days and nights in my life, places I have visited and adventures I have had. Lately, though, they have begun to resemble clutter.

It makes me ask, what belongs within us? What do we allow within our inner sanctum, our heart or soul space? Undoubtedly, there is great competition in our culture for our mind’s attention. We are bombarded with unrelenting external messaging that can cause us to compromise the beauty of our interior lives. How do we construct a place for love to belong among all we hold on to? It’s an abstract thought, I know.

Sometimes my mind is overly eager to fill the spaces of my heart with things that are not conducive to building the love I want within me. It can be easy for me to talk myself into giving these natural human reactions some of my precious interior space. Then I have to ask myself do these feelings or thoughts belong here with love? If the answer is no, it’s time to let them go.

All this is a lot to think about, and so to avoid getting lost in an endless philosophical debate with myself, I have decided to re-examine my actual, physical home. It is time to question and sort what belongs and what doesn’t. I want to make space, within my home, within my heart, for what I truly treasure.

~Lisa Kiel

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Meet Me At the Corner

Posted on September 22, 2025 by admin

I think everyone knows by now that I love the poetry of Shel Silverstein and used his work often with my students while I was still teaching fulltime. This poem talks about imagination and childhood innocence. But for me the byline goes deeper. It speaks to me of what it means to belong to beloved UU communities. 

This author suffered some controversy when folks realized in his work there were tones of magic, death and dying, questioning authority, talking to animals, and images that were considered too graphic for children to see. 

For me this poem speaks to the value in imagining and questioning and challenging expected norms. It encourages one to look around and see ‘what else’ there might be to explore and discuss and perhaps push around until a new idea takes root. And at the end of ‘whatever’ we can begin again… and I think belonging to a community of faith where justice, equity, transformation, pluralism, interdependence, and generosity are lifted up is just the kind of community I’d like to meet around the corner..

~Lydia Patrick

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Coming and Going Along the Path of Change

Posted on September 19, 2025 by admin

Coming and going
My life is change
The religion of my childhood
Rearranged

Coming and going
My belief not clear
My questions need answers
Whispers sound near

Coming and going
Where is my song
Where do I fit
Will I ever belong

Coming and going
I hear all the voices
Religions surround me
So many choices

Coming and going
Time for some truth
Searching those answers
A regular sleuth

Coming and going 
Do I need to know
Or just keep on moving
Letting life flow

Coming and going
Searching is good
Questioning everything
That’s as I should

Coming and going
It’s the journey that counts
Not just the answers
That come out of my mouth

Coming and going
I hear the birds sing
And with them the rain clouds
They bring everything

Coming and going
The earth shouts her song
And here in MY journey
Is where I belong. 

~Lydia Patrick

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Where Do I Belong?

Posted on September 18, 2025 by admin

As I was growing up, I did not feel a sense of belonging anywhere. I was bullied at school for my sometimes odd and disruptive behavior. I was purposefully seeking the attention I
craved but did not always get at home. For people who have experienced the mental
illness of one or both parents, finding where they have a sense of belonging is a daunting task.

I had just a few friends in elementary school. I was lonely, and escaped with my neighborhood friends into the woods whenever I could. I talked to who I imagined was God in the woods; I felt safer there than anywhere else. I belonged among the trees, deer, birds, and water. Exploring the woods with my friends behind my house gave me a sense of presence I could not find anywhere else. When Ronald Reagan Pkwy was built, they took away most of my childhood woods. However, there are remnants of that same forest on the walking trail at Bethesda Park. Now I get to enjoy that remaining forest with friends I have met at UUCG and beyond.

I like being able to share my childhood woods with friends I have made as an adult. I feel accepted by the friends I share my childhood woods with. It feels like I’ve come full circle. For me, that is building belonging.

~Jen Garrison

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Who Doesn’t Belong?

Posted on September 17, 2025 by admin

A social media post from a talking head recently got me thinking: Who doesn’t belong? The post mentioned a trip to New York City and said, among other things, “So many people in the city who don’t belong.” What a statement! Usually, these musings occupy very little space in my mind, but this particular nugget stuck with me. Outside of the obvious bigotry of the statement, I’ve been mulling over how “not belonging” intersects with Unitarian Universalist values. It is serendipitous that our theme for the month is “Building Belonging.”

Does “not belonging” mean one belongs somewhere else? Is it a mutable quality, can one belong today and not tomorrow? Who decides who belongs? I don’t think it is easy to reconcile “not belonging” with Unitarian Universalist values. If we embrace the dignity and worthiness of all beings, if we fight for a just and equitable world, how do we accept that someone should be left out? We want to draw the circle of love wide, but can we have both an expansive (and expanding!) circle and one that is closed from certain people?

We often say, “No one is as bad as the worst thing they’ve ever done.” Living our values demands we seek to include the excluded, to welcome the outcast, perhaps even to forgive the unforgivable. We must strive to see and connect with the humanity in everyone. We must do this especially when it is hard. There are many ways to engage with this work both in your heart and in the world. I hope we can begin with recognizing the absurdity of claiming whole swaths of people “don’t belong” anywhere. Every single person belongs. Every single person deserves love. Even those who seek to exclude others. How’s that for irony?

~Ian Van Sice

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Please Don’t Stop The Music

Posted on September 16, 2025 by admin

One of my favorite dance songs is Rihanna’s “Please Don’t Stop the Music.” During the COVID pandemic, the music at UUCG almost stopped completely for a while. We had to use Zoom to talk to and see one another. Anyone familiar with Zoom who has tried to sing in a group chat knows how well that works (not)!

Just as much as I missed singing in choir, I missed playing my violin at Music Nights. Once we had COVID vaccines available and we gradually came back together in our church building,
we had someone who started visiting regularly named Ian. He mentioned at one point that he saw something on the website about music nights, but we didn’t have an active group at the time. I answered his inquiry that we used to get together before the pandemic, but had not restarted the group at that time. So we agreed upon a time, date and space to gather. That’s how the Sweet MUUsic band got its start. We are growing, with different types of instruments and skill levels. Everyone is welcome to join us, either with an instrument you play, or if you just want to come listen. Let me not forget the choir! We encourage anyone with any level of voice (soprano, alto, tenor or bass). If you are unsure where your voice fits in, we can help you figure that out!

For me, building belonging has been about sharing beautiful music with fellow musicians who share my values. And it’s a lot of fun! Fellowship with music feeds my soul. What types of creative fellowship feed your soul?

~Jen Garrison

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Belonging and Loneliness

Posted on September 15, 2025 by Bob Patrick

Somewhere, early in life, a longing rises up within us. We long to have a people who are our people, a language that is our language, places that we see and know immediately as our places, a philosophy of life that represents how we see things, that is our philosophy. We end up calling those things by a variety of popular tags:  our tribe, our bros, our lingo, home and ‘hood, ideology, politics or even brand. They are all potential elements of belonging. And yet. 

All of these potential elements of belonging can be twisted into something far less than true belonging. They can be turned into conditions of acceptance, dues to be paid for membership in the club, measures of who is in and who is out. 

Our longing for community is so powerful that it can drive us to join groups, relationships, or systems of belief that give a false impression of belonging. These places of false belonging grant us conditional membership, requiring us to cut parts of ourselves off in order to fit in.

Toko-Pa Turner

The words “longing” and “belonging” have the same root–long. The subtle implication there is the experience of going the distance with something, of a perpetual, ongoing experience of something. When we are growing up, and even well into our adult years, we will find this longing within us, this feeling of wanting, needing, yearning for something, someone, some ones, to go the distance with and who will go the distance with us. 

To me, the real challenge is to allow the longing that arises within us to open our hearts and minds to a community that centers love as the quality of belonging and to resist giving ourselves over to the first offer that comes along. And, if we are going to open our hearts to that kind of love-centered community, doesn’t it also become our call to be that kind of community for others? To build it. Together.

~Bob Patrick

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