Quotes About Belonging

Silent solitude makes true speech possible and personal. If I am not in touch with my own belovedness, then I cannot touch the sacredness of others. If I am estranged from myself, I am likewise a stranger to others.

If you should find yourself in a place that is indifferent to you and there is someone there that your spirit stretches to, then that person is kin.

I guess when you're not awake, you're not awake. Waking up to the suffering of people who are different from us is a long process, and has a whole lot to do with what community we belong to and whose consciousness and life experiences impact our own on a daily basis. I have a hunch I'm going to be waking up until the moment I die.

I grew here; you flew here.

Ben ik voorgoed een vreemde in het land van mijn geboorte, op de grond vanwaar ik niet verplant wil zijn?

Ik ga naar huis, hier dicht bij, naar wie ik liefheb, naar de mensen, met wie ik verbonden wil zijn. Jawel, mevrouw, die 'liaisons', altijd veranderend van kleur en inhoud, zijn de zin van mijn bestaan.

All ceremonial events such as initiation (baptism) and incorporation, signs of communal membership, signify in the final analysis the renunciation of the intimate sphere of the person, if not emotionally, as in the bond of a biological blood-based kinship, then nevertheless spiritually, ideationally, and symbolically.

Our exile organizations have been our way of replacing the cities and villages we have lost.

A woman would have never been able to live in a house with no pictures of her family

Perché tutti quelli che vengono in africa devono sempre giustificarsi? .. Persino chi è nato qui dice di essere solo in visita

Ihminen voi elää juurettomana. Mutta kuolla ei voi tietämättä, mihin työntää viimeiset ja kaikkein arvokkaimmat juurensa.

Being a refugee meant being lonely. This was something that was true for them all, regardless of what country they had come from or what circumstances had forced them to flee.

It is my growing conviction that my life belongs to others just as much as it belongs to myself and that what is experienced as most unique often proves to be most solidly embedded in the common condition of being human.

Not being welcome is your greatest fear. It connects with your birth fear, your fear of not being welcome in this life, and your death fear, your fear of not being welcome in the life after this. It is the deep-seated fear that it would have been better if you had not lived.

Remember, you are held safe. You are loved. You are protected. You are in communion with God and with those whom God has sent you. What is of God will last. It belongs to the eternal life. Choose it, and it will be yours.

There are many elder sons and elder daughters who are lost while still at home.

Those you have deeply loved become part of you. The longer you live, there will always be more people to be loved by you and to become part of your inner community. The wider your inner community becomes, the more easily you will recognize your own brothers and sisters in the strangers around you.

Your true identity is as a child of God. This is the identity you have to accept. Once you have claimed it and settled in it, you can live in a world that gives you much joy as well as pain. You can receive the praise as well as the blame that comes to you as an opportunity for strengthening your basic identity, because the identity that makes you free is anchored beyond all human praise and blame. You belong to God, and it is as a child of God that you are sent into the world.

God is looking for you. He will go anywhere to find you. He loves you, he wants you home, he cannot rest unless he has you with him.

now I realize that the real sin is to deny God's first love for me, to ignore my original goodness. Because without claiming that first love and that original goodness for myself, I lose touch with my true self and embark on the destructive search among the wrong people and in the wrong places for what can only be found in the house of my Father.

Every time you feel hurt, offended, or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: "These feelings, strong as they may be, are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God's eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity, and held safe in an everlasting embrace.

The world is evil only when you become its slave. The world has a lot to offer—just as Egypt did for the children of Jacob—as long as you don't feel bound to obey it. The great struggle facing you is not to leave the world, to reject your ambitions and aspirations, or to despise money, prestige, or success, but to claim your spiritual truth and to live in the world as someone who doesn't belong to it.

Boredom, resentment, and depression are all sentiments of disconnectedness. They present life to us as a broken connection. They give us a sense of not-belonging. In interpersonal relations, this disconnectedness is experienced as loneliness. When we are lonely we perceive ourselves as isolated individuals surrounded, perhaps, by many people, but not really part of any supporting or nurturing community.

Community has little to do with mutual compatibility. Similarities in educational background, psychological make-up, or social status can bring us together, but they can never be the basis for community. Community is grounded in God, who calls us together, and not in the attractiveness of people to each other. There