In high school I often played basketball with a friend in physical education class, the final class in my school day. This day, a group gathered to pick for teams. Two persons were assigned to choose four boys to be on the respective teams. There were about fourteen in all. So, not all would be picked. I waited anxiously, much wanting to be esteemed good enough a player to be chosen. Boy after boy was chosen. I, dispirited, was one of the un-chosen. I felt bereft, the cause was not principally not being esteemed good enough to be chosen, but simply that I was not chosen. I felt again a familiar feeling, one most of us, if not all, know and become acquainted with early in life ~ the feeling of being left out, not esteemed worthy of being included, being a not-belonger longing to belong.
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A danger in this sense of not-belonging, is our longing to belong can take us in false directions, into false attachments. We will come to have faith in these false belongings, become vulnerable to those offering promises that cannot lead us to Truth and fulfillment. If one fails, we find another. We may find several at a time. A false direction always leads us from belonging to ourselves. And true belonging is always an expression of this intimacy of belonging with who I am here, now. But a child or youth is often vulnerable to misreading "I am not included" to mean "I do not belong," "I am not worthy," and this can remain as a belief for years, or a lifetime. When we embrace and celebrate our worthiness apart from the esteem of others, we are less vulnerable to these false byways.
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Possibly, the episode in high school, and others like it in my early life, sensitized me to empathize for and act on behalf of other not-belongers, left-outers. Certainly, when a Christian pastor, I got into trouble much for opening my arms too wide, inviting all to belong in the fellowship of Christians, even non-Christians to share in and be the life of the church. This was beyond the idea many had of Christians being the only chosen, the only belongers in the eyes of God. I innately knew, not merely in head but heart, that being Christian was more than being one of the chosen ones, that the arms of Grace was as welcome to a Muslim or Buddhist or Hindu as to a Christian, to an atheist as to a theist, to a homosexual as to heterosexual as to a bisexual, as to a black as to a white as to a yellow as to a red as to any combination of color, race, ethnicity, ... Grace unites, I knew. I do not know how I came to know that, I seem to have been born knowing it-I was, we are, then we are taught to forget.
Continued...
