A Place to Belong

As we celebrate 15 years as a spiritual community, I find myself looking back. Those of us who created Sacred Journeys wanted something authentic and real. We were being strangled by the hypocrisy, exclusivism, patriarchalism, laws, and conservativism (if not outright fundamentalism at times) of the institutional church.  We wanted a spiritual community where we could breathe and be, question and seek, serve and welcome.

We envisioned many things for Sacred Journeys, but the first one that came to mind this week is that we envisioned a place where everyone belonged. Our Vision statement says it this way: Sacred Journeys Spiritual Community strives to embody the radical hospitality and unconditional love of Jesus.  

Radical hospitality looks like a certain kind of welcome – warm, accepting, non-judgmental. Radical hospitality means engaging others in conversation, showing care and concern, creating a safe space to be one’s self.

If anything is going to hold a church together, shouldn’t it be this? And, yet it often isn’t. I’d be willing to bet that we’ve all had inhospitable experiences at different churches. Part of the problem as I see it is that most churches use rules, doctrine, and belief systems as the “glue” to hold them together, but what we humans seek most is simply to belong, as we are, with all our quirks, idiosyncrasies, faults and failings. We want to be loved and to belong as we are, so that we can work on being better, more whole.

As Brene’ Brown says in her book Braving the Wilderness,

There [is] no question that a large part of the struggle for people seeking true belonging is spiritual. This is in no way a religious struggle around dogma and denominations, but is instead a wide-open, hard-scrabble effort to stay connected to what binds us as humans while navigating an increasingly divisive and cynical world.

Phillis Tickle, in her book, The Great Emergence, labels the traditional approach churches take to newcomers as the Believe – Behave – Belong method. She states, “It required adherence to certain rules of doctrinal belief and human conduct as prerequisites to membership in their ranks.” In other words, people need to believe a certain way, and behave a certain way, before they can become a member… before they can really, truly belong.

Sacred Journeys, among other more progressive churches, has tried to reverse that model to become: Belong – Behave – Believe. In this model, as soon as you walk in the door, you are welcome by the simple virtue of your humanity. Maybe that is as far as some folks want to go in this community experience, and that is fine, you still belong here. Or perhaps, as you experience Sacred Journeys, and our dedication to learn and grow, to outreach and mission, to social justice and compassion, you begin to desire more involvement. Perhaps you find yourself drawn into the values and spirituality of the community and find yourself behaving in similar ways to what is modeled and preached. In time, what you experience at Sacred Journeys may begin to shape your life and behavior. From there it also begins to shape your beliefs. But no one is forced to assimilate and conform, you have been included and seen and can choose where you’d like to go from there.

In the story of Zacchaeus (Luke 19) is a great example of this kind of radical hospitality. Zacchaeus was a tax collector. This was not the equivalent of an everyday accountant in ancient times. These were revenue agents for an oppressive empire working against their own people; working to squeeze as much wealth as possible out of the periphery of the empire to serve the center. This is the guy you absolutely did not want knocking at your door. This is the guy who will ruthlessly take the small amount of coins you have scrimped and saved to buy your daughter a piece of candy for her birthday. This is the guy who doesn’t care if you are in the middle of a draught and your crops are failing, empire wants its money. To add insult to injury, this is another Jew, supposedly one of your own, who seems to have no compassion for his own people.

For whatever reason, Zacchaeus is overwhelmingly curious about Jesus. But he is short, so he climbs a tree just to be able to get a good look at Jesus. I doubt he could’ve imagined what came next.

Jesus sees him up in that tree (really sees him), acknowledges him, and invites himself to Zacchaeus’ house. That easily. No bargaining, no judgment, no demand to think a certain way about Jesus, or God, no demand to change his shady tax-collector ways. Just radical acceptance and unconditional belonging. Just love, Jesus-style.

You know at the end of Matthew where Jesus supposedly commissions the disciples to go out into the world and make more disciples? Well, Jesus didn’t say go forth and create a church to worship him. Make disciples! A disciple was a student. Go out and make more students of love, Jesus-style. And this began with radical hospitality. Everyone belonged.

Nowhere in scripture does Jesus say to go out and indoctrinate people with a belief structure so they can get to heaven. Nor did he make sure everyone accepted him, Jesus Christ, as their personal Lord and Savior. Nor did you have to believe in the Virgin Birth, the inerrancy of Scripture, and that Jesus died for your sins. Heavens no.

Jesus essentially said, teach people what I taught you – love God and love your neighbor. Practice radical hospitality. When you do this we experience the kingdom of God (as opposed to the kingdom of Caesar). Everyone belongs, it is not a hierarchy of who is in and who is out.

Let me share a story from David Brooks’ book, The Second Mountain. A story about radical hospitality and love Jesus-style. I don’t know if this couple are Christian and it really doesn’t matter… the way they live (which was what Jesus was all about) exemplifies radical hospitality and love.

Kathy Fletcher and David Simpson have a son named Santi who went to public school in Washington, D.C. Santi had a friend named James who sometimes went to bed hungry, so Santi invited him to occasionally sleep over at his house. James had a friend and that kid had a friend and so on. Now, years later, if you go to Kathy and David’s house on any given Thursday night there will be about twenty-six kids sitting around the dinner table, and a whole bunch of Washington D.C. adults craving connection that the fast-paced world of politics can’t give.

David Brooks said he started going to their house early in 2014, invited by a mutual friend. When he walked in the door, he was met by Edd, a charismatic man with dreadlocks and soulful eyes. Brooks held out a hand to shake, but Edd said, “We don’t shake hands here. We hug here.” Brooks wasn’t a “huggy guy” but thus began many years of hugging.

The meal is always the same, spicy chicken and black rice. Cell phones are banned. And about a third of the way through the meal, they go around the table and everyone shares something – either something they are grateful for, something about their life at the moment, or something nobody knows about them. David writes, “There are frequent celebrations – somebody passed the GED exam, got a job, or graduated from barber school. People also throw more complicated things on the table, too. A seventeen-year-old is pregnant. Another young woman has a failing kidney, and Medicaid refuses to pay the cost for a new one. A young man announces he’s bisexual, and another admits he is depressed. One day a new arrival sat at the table and told them that, though she was now twenty-one, she hadn’t sat at a dinner table since she was eleven.”(61)

After the meal they head to the piano and people sing. But the power is around the dinner table. The power is in the relationships. It is relationships that transform people.

Keep in mind that belonging isn’t really a one-way street. Brene’ Brown reminds us that just joining a group won’t guarantee a sense of belonging. She says, “True belonging is not passive… It’s a practice that requires us to be vulnerable, get uncomfortable, and learn how to be present with people without sacrificing who we are. We want true belonging, but it takes tremendous courage to knowingly walk into hard moments.”

The people around this table learned to share themselves and in the spirit of love and belonging were accepted right where there were for who they were.

One young woman said to Kathy one night, “Thank you for seeing the light in me.”

David Brooks said he brought his daughter one day and as she walked out, she told him, “That is the warmest place I’ve ever been in my life.”

While they appear to be gathering around a table for food, the reality is that they are there for something deeper: a need to connect, to be seen, to belong.

Can you imagine what the world would look like if we practiced this more often? Can you imagine the feelings experienced around the table, feelings of support, solidarity, healing, joy? And it always has a ripple effect in people’s lives.

Distilled down, I believe this is the essence of why Sacred Journeys exists, to love Jesus-style: offering radical hospitality and belonging, letting this place and these relationships transform us. We aren’t perfect at it, but we will keep striving to be better. In the meantime we are slowly transformed… not by doctrine or a  belief system, but  first-hand connection with the divine experienced as belonging.

Love & Light!

Kaye