more research in belonging

polyphonic singers

Last weekend while holding a wiggling child and watching a group of miraculous polyphonic folk singers, I surprised myself. My eyes welled up and I settled myself into the ground a little bit overcome.

I felt something that has been kind of elusive for me since we all stayed home for COVID. I felt a little bit of ease, some freedom and recognition of being in a big group of people while some of them were singing.

It was strange because the emotions came, surprise, gratitude, some longing, but I also felt something less easy to describe in my body, my hips. Something soft and familiar. And then this week it got me thinking about what this was, it felt like belonging.

I have for many years been interested in belonging, where we find it for ourselves, how we hold it for each other, what stories we weave around it.

This research, this on-going investigation has led me here and I want to know from you how you do this, how you hold this, how you belong.

For me belonging comes in a few ways, it becomes as a recognition of existing. The fluff of the cottowood belongs whether it is here early this year or not. It is there, floating along, being and existing. Easy, not simple, but straightforward. We’re here, we belong.

Belonging is contigent, created, and imagined together. When we devote ourselves to things whether they be ideas, places, or people…we make relationships real and imagined. In these no matter the container there is belonging because it is negotiated relationally. I am noticing this so acutely as I watch for the eagles return to the pond by my house to catch baby ducks and know.

It is spring. The fledgeling eagles are learning to hunt, there are the frogs singing love songs, my children who love the light stop sleeping. I get to know my location, my belonging because of these other animals, changes in light, children existing.

Belonging is storied and re-storied. We look for places to know ourselves out in the world. We look for our faces on the internet, in articles, movies, poems. We wonder where the other ones who are us are out there. This is important always and now because in this we need to see the faces who are also not us to find ourselves. We look to be represented in our ages, the colors of our skin, our sizes, our genders, our interests, our cultural lineages. We find ourselves in tiny flecks sometimes and get clues about how to remember or become in our belonging. We also see and negotiate difference and that too lets us belong.

And in this we get to exist together, we get to look and be looked at. It is messy, layered, and often hard. The moments like the one I described above with the singers sneak up on me, often just for a flash and remind me to pay attention. This belonging is complex and pulsing. It is alive. And so are you.