Belonging: Remembering Ourselves home

By honouring what is out of reach, we preserve our own wonder. And it is this wonder that keeps us responsible to the things under our stewardship. This slow kind of learning requires us to stay put, to live many seasons in relationship with a place so that we may come to know its fragrances and particularities, preferences, and gifts. In this way,

What we really want is a relationship, a dialogue, a conversation with that place within us which always remains essentially mysterious.

as we succumbed to the spell of rationalism, the living bridge between the worlds fell into disrepair.

how might we practice belonging ourselves back to the ecosystem?

I felt as if my deepest longing was being answered. And isn’t it so for us all? When things fall into place, we begin to feel part of a larger coherence, as if nature itself is communicating with us, bringing us into its rhythms.

We work in tandem with mystery, feeling its rhythms awaken in our bone-memory. As the hands work, the mind is stilled and a greater listening is engaged as we drop down into the deep rhythm of devotion, where the whole world is in communion. The ferns unfurl, the daffodils trumpet, the rosebuds fatten, and the song of creation can be heard.

And yet you may feel, as so many of us do, the ache of a life orphaned from belonging.

At first it was sweet to live in the home of this loving and thoughtful couple, but after a few weeks I began to hit my capacity to receive their generosity. Though they hadn’t given me any overt reason to worry, I was nonetheless coming to feel like an intrusion. I tried to be of greater service, buying all the groceries, cooking the meals, cleani

Friends remind us, simply by bearing witness, that we have become something new and, with the corroborative power of gathering in ceremony, we can never wholly unbecome it.