Quotes about Belonging

I marvel again at the nakedness of men's lives: the showers right out in the open, the body exposed for inspection and comparison, the public display of privates. What is it for? What purposes of reassurance does it serve? The flashing of a badge, look, everyone, all is in order, I belong here. Why don't women have to prove to one another that they are women? Some form of unbuttoning, some split-crotch routine, just as casual. A doglike sniffing.

I've forgotten about these things all winter, but here they are again, and when I see them I remember them, I know them, I greet them as if they are home.

Having someone wonder where you are when you don't come home at night is a very old human need.

A person can be lonely even if he is loved by many people, because he is still not the One and Only to anyone.

Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there.

Teenagers who do not go to church are adored by God, but they don't get to meet some of the people who love God back.

For twenty years I have ached to go back home, when there was nobody there to whom I could return.

Prayer is taking a chance that against all odds and past history, we are loved and chosen, and do not have to get it together before we show up.

One of the immutable laws of being human is that the people who show up are the right people.

When we agree to (or get tricked into) being part of something bigger than our own wired, fixated minds, we are saved. When we search for something larger than our own selves to hook into, we can come through whatever life throws at us.

Writing can be a pretty desperate endeavor, because it is about some of our deepest needs: our need to be visible, to be heard, our need to make sense of our lives, to wake up and grow and belong.

It turns out that welcome is solidarity. We're glad you're here, and we're with you. This whole project called you being alive, you finding joy? Well, we're in on that.