Quotes about Belonging

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.

So I practice the fifth Get: I get in touch with others. I tell my partner the truth about how crunchy I feel inside, how unevolved or vindictive. Or I pick up the three-hundred-pound phone and tell a close friend. Or I get in the car and head to where one of my precious communities has gathered. This might be a park, my church, my Sunday school room; with hikers, sober people, townsfolk.

We've gone from all of us being everyone to all of us being no one.

It should be called "a culture" or "this culture," because there is no universal culture, no "us" that defines all of us.

As we saw earlier, it takes only two things to turn a group of people into a tribe: • A shared interest • A way to communicate

Do not be afraid, for I have ransomed you. I have called you by name; you are mine. When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you. Isaiah 43:1—2