Be longing
Excerpted from “The Sacred Dictionary,” which highlights the living meaning carried by a single word
“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” - Mother Teresa
bilangen (Old High English, Old High German)
bi = thoroughly + longen = go along with, dependent on, appropriate to
yearn = gjarn (Old Icelandic) eager, willing
desire = de + sideris, ‘of the stars’
We all come into the world with longings. Longing to belong is a primal craving that includes both love and survival. We long to be part of a community that accepts and cares for us, that we can depend upon. Yet when our belonging comes into question, our longing to belong takes precedence over our innate yearnings to discover our gifts and share them.
Trauma, often the result of harm incurred at the hands of a loved one - can wreak havoc with our sense of belonging to Life. When those who are responsible for raising us lower us, our sense of belonging becomes upended. Dreams take a back seat to the focus of finding our place, when in reality our place is with our dreams. We lose sight of the vast forest while stuck in our individual family tree, trying to garner approval, pleasing by appeasing family members whose thwarted dreams have infiltrated our own. Enmeshed with what has been left unresolved, we lose our muse, emotionally exiled from our desires. We learn not to yearn.
And yet longing is where aliveness lives, like breath that naturally knows where to go when uninterrupted, undisrupted by unsolicited input. When we acknowledge that our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents course through our blood, but that Life is the Greater Force that infuses our circulation, we extend the Circle of belonging for our Selves.
Life generates the generations we belong to. Life bestows the flow of our Nature even if it isn’t nurtured by our family. To belong is greater than the sum of the parts we play for each other, the roles we fulfill or fail to fill in for an other. Belonging is an unearned innate state given to every One. By dint of being human. Every body belongs. To the human race. To Life. Life wanted All of Us! Eager and willing to receive the wishes that stars move through you.