Secrets for Belonging with Michelle Medrano

[00:00:00] Welcome to our Mile Hi Church Podcast. This is Michelle Madrono and so happy that you're here.

[00:00:06] Have you ever heard of the Enneagram? It's one of those personality type systems where you learn

[00:00:12] about yourself and I'm getting certified in teaching it and doing a workshop at Mile Hi Church

[00:00:16] Friday night, June 7th from 6 to 9 p.m. And then all day Saturday, June 8th, and you can come to

[00:00:22] one or both of those, go to MileHiChurch.org to get registered and learn all about yourself

[00:00:27] through the eyes of the Enneagram. We're talking about being the authentic self. Today my message

[00:00:33] is titled, Secrets of Belonging. I have some secrets to offer though I suspect they won't be horrible

[00:00:40] deep dark secrets that any of you don't already know because you're pretty wise people. But I'd

[00:00:44] like to start out with our founder Dr. Ernest Holmes. He says, I believe that everything

[00:00:50] that exists is an expression of God, which is what we believe in this teaching. And that is why

[00:00:56] we are here. There is an inner something in us that belongs to the universe and we have to get rid

[00:01:04] of all that inhibits it, every sense of rejection and guilt and insecurity and anxiety. The security

[00:01:13] I'm talking about is the kind that not only warms the heart and makes glad the mind but also

[00:01:19] feeds the soul. We belong to God. There is that within us which will last forever. There is no

[00:01:28] other security. So it seems to me that just about every human being I've ever known,

[00:01:35] yearns for belonging. Yearns for a sense of I know where I belong. I know who I belong to and

[00:01:43] what serves me in being my authentic self. And it seems to me like this search for belonging

[00:01:51] is truly the core of some of the greatest searches of our lives because we don't quite know how to

[00:01:57] dance with it when we feel the lack of it. And when we've got it, we can feel a little insecure

[00:02:03] about it. Is it going to go away or can I keep it? And we are, we struggle with that,

[00:02:10] that sense of connection and anchored belonging to the universe, to our God, to ourselves and to

[00:02:20] the people that we share this life with. It can be very discombobulating. And I have a couple

[00:02:25] strange experiences that have informed me a little bit on this talk. I want to talk about

[00:02:31] Trader Joe's. Love the products that Trader Joe sells. They have really great stuff,

[00:02:38] really interesting stuff. But the first time I went into a Trader Joe's store was in Pacific

[00:02:43] Grove, California many years ago. And I went in to buy stuff and I am compelled to get the hell

[00:02:51] out of Trader Joe's as fast as I can whenever I go in there. I don't know why. Is it them?

[00:02:58] Is it me? What is it? And no matter what they do about how they rearrange the store or how

[00:03:05] modern the store is, I just can't, I can't take it. The last time I was there, I followed

[00:03:11] my husband around for as long as I could and then when I couldn't anymore, I said,

[00:03:14] I'm going to the car and I just bolted out of the store and he had to finish the purchases.

[00:03:20] So when I hear a friend go into Trader Joe's, I'm like, well, you pick this up for me

[00:03:23] because I just can't go in there. Conversely, the day I walked into Mile High Church back

[00:03:31] in the late seventies, sat down. It feels to me like before they played a note or said a word.

[00:03:39] I'm home. I felt that feeling of that recognition like, ah, this is my place.

[00:03:47] These are my people. I belong here. Was it them? Is it me? How is it that those experiences

[00:03:58] come to be? Because I'm going to guess that I'm not the only one who's ever walked into a

[00:04:03] organization or store or group and felt completely compulsed to get out of there,

[00:04:09] nor am I the only one who ever walked into some environment and felt that warm familiarity. We

[00:04:15] have that experience often as human beings. And sometimes it's not where we hope it will be.

[00:04:21] We go into one place hoping we'll feel a sense of belonging and we've got to get

[00:04:24] right out and go into places where we're not so sure and suddenly feel at home.

[00:04:28] It can be very confusing and discombobulating. So I invite us as we begin this message today

[00:04:33] to really reflect on our sense of belonging and have we felt it in different places or the

[00:04:40] lack of it in different places? And I ask us, what's that about? Is that about me or is that

[00:04:46] about them? Additionally, what I would suggest we consider is that most of the places where

[00:04:52] there is this ease and disruption in our culture, in our world, probably at the core of it,

[00:05:00] has to do with people who aren't feeling a sense of belonging. If they felt a sense of belonging,

[00:05:07] they might not reach out in anger towards each other. If they felt a sense of belonging,

[00:05:12] they might not feel so afraid to just walk on this beautiful planet. And so we have a belonging

[00:05:20] issue as a group of humans. We have belonging issues and we need to deal with them in order

[00:05:26] to experience greater healing and well-being on this planet. And I'm inviting us right here today

[00:05:33] to consider what we might be able to do to heal our sense of belonging and to deepen it

[00:05:40] and to acknowledge that core desire. Now, to do that, the first thing I suggest is that

[00:05:45] we have to look individually at our own belonging origin. We have to be willing to see and acknowledge

[00:05:54] that we might have grown up in an environment where we had something about us that was unacceptable,

[00:06:01] whether it was something we hid from people or something that others saw in us and told us

[00:06:07] was unacceptable, or maybe we were bullied because we looked different, spoke different,

[00:06:13] had something different about us than a lot of other people or were judged.

[00:06:16] Maybe it's that our family, we were this way and everyone else in our family was that way and

[00:06:22] we're thinking, am I adopted? I don't know. I mean, I don't feel like I belong in this family.

[00:06:27] How did I get here? So we might have had that core sense of a lack of belonging even in our own

[00:06:33] family of origin, which is why many people talk about finding their family of choice because

[00:06:38] they recognize that they just didn't have a sense of belonging with the people they came into this

[00:06:43] world with. And so there might be something there for us to take a look at. There is some

[00:06:48] evidence also that I find fascinating of generational psychology suggesting that we might

[00:06:55] be being influenced at an energetic level and even a genetic level by the people who came

[00:07:02] before us in our ancestry. And we know that people who have experienced some trauma and drama in their

[00:07:10] life, that trauma stays often in the energy and the consciousness of a family system until someone

[00:07:18] has the courage to stop it. Are we the people that no matter how it occurred, whether it's

[00:07:29] generation after generation of disconnect and a lack of belonging and a sense that I'm not good

[00:07:35] enough and I'm not enough? Are we the people who are going to perpetuate that belonging history or

[00:07:42] are we the people who are going to take a stand and say, enough? And it starts with us looking

[00:07:50] beautifully, consciously at our belonging origin and acknowledging it.

[00:07:58] One of the most modern voices for this is the great author, speaker, teacher, researcher, Brené

[00:08:05] Brown. And she says, belonging is the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us.

[00:08:12] Because this yearning is so primal, we often try to acquire it by fitting in and by seeking

[00:08:19] approval, which are not only hollow substitutes for belonging but often barriers to it.

[00:08:26] I bet there have been times when we've been tempted to say, I'll just pretend I'm a certain

[00:08:31] way so that I can feel a sense of belonging. But she's saying that will never work because

[00:08:37] it's a lie. It's not the truth and we're out of integrity when we're doing that and there's

[00:08:42] often nothing more painful than that lack of integrity. I'm pretending that I'm this way but

[00:08:49] I'm really not because I don't trust that if I really was who I am authentically and live that

[00:08:59] out in my life, that I could step forward and really have that sense of belonging. We see stories

[00:09:07] of it all over our culture in our world with our kids and our young adults and every age across the

[00:09:15] gamut, our elders. We yearn for belonging and there's nothing more joyous, more godly, more true than

[00:09:26] that moment when we say, this is who I am and I'm going to choose to belong. But it takes

[00:09:34] looking at that origin and it takes that willingness to heal that wound. I call these belong wounds.

[00:09:42] A lot of our belong wounds have to do with some part of us that thought at one point maybe that being

[00:09:50] normal was more important than being authentic. I've shared before my favorite definition of normal,

[00:09:57] it's a setting on a dryer. In case no one's told your beautiful soul this truth,

[00:10:08] there's no such thing as normal, no such thing at all. If we were to look at our earth from the

[00:10:17] standpoint of way, way high in the sky or I love stories of sci-fi stories about other worlds and

[00:10:25] Star Wars and Star Trek and all those sci-fi stories that postulate and theorize what if we

[00:10:30] did it this way and what if we did it that way and what if a group of people thought this was

[00:10:34] normal, it's normal to have green skin, it's normal to have gigantic ears, it's normal to whatever

[00:10:39] it might be. Normal is the setting on the dryer, it is not anything we can ever attain.

[00:10:48] Authenticity however is. The truth of our soul is something that we can attain but to have it

[00:10:58] you gotta give up your wundalogy. You gotta give up your stories about they didn't love me,

[00:11:04] they didn't accept me because what we acknowledge is that that has happened to just about every human

[00:11:10] being on this planet to some degree or another that is in our genetics as humans have struggled

[00:11:17] to find our way on this planet together in this diverse way that we exist and that we

[00:11:24] can take that wundalogy and begin to let go and forgive and accept that other people may have had

[00:11:35] their own wounds that caused us to not be able to accept us and that we can acknowledge that

[00:11:42] and we don't have to live with it other than we can set ourselves free from it by forgiving,

[00:11:49] by letting go, by choosing to move on, by choosing to move forward and find our place

[00:11:57] in this beautiful world and acknowledging that we do deserve to belong. We want to belong.

[00:12:05] Here's the thing I want to say about it my bottom line today when it comes to belonging,

[00:12:09] we need it, we crave it, we've got to brave it. We need it, we crave it, we've got to

[00:12:16] brave it and I say brave it because it's a brave bold act to live as your authentic self.

[00:12:23] It's a brave bold act to seek belonging and to cultivate it on this planet where there are

[00:12:31] lots of voices who want to try to define for us what is normal, who is normal, who's acceptable,

[00:12:37] who's not. Our authentic selves in their desire to innocently express themselves in ways that

[00:12:45] empower and bring forth the goodness that we are, express the light that we are, express the love

[00:12:51] and the unique creativity that we are can find places and people and tribes and groups

[00:12:58] to belong to but it involves us letting go of our old stories because what I noticed about my

[00:13:05] old story is that when I was in the midst of it I could walk into any group and someone would

[00:13:11] look at me wrong and I would say, oh well I don't belong here. They think I'm blah blah blah too,

[00:13:16] unacceptable too. I could totally live in my story. No one would even have to say it but I

[00:13:23] would say it to myself. I would say I would talk myself into not belonging because of my story

[00:13:30] but the more I let go of my story, the more I feel free of that story, the more I feel

[00:13:37] comfortable in my own beingness then I don't make up so much about other people and their stories

[00:13:44] about me. I let myself be me and that is called, I think, belonging integrity. When we give up our

[00:13:52] old stories and we step into the truth of who we are and if we need to check something out with

[00:13:57] someone we do so but there are places and people that I can belong to and I can be accepted

[00:14:04] no matter who I am in that beautiful expression of who I am that wants to give back and share my light,

[00:14:11] I know absolutely I would sign a guarantee today on paper with my own blood even that says

[00:14:20] I'm sure there is some place on this planet, some group, some tribe,

[00:14:28] somewhere where the good that we seek to express in the world belongs, each one of us.

[00:14:34] We may have to do some work to find it but I know it's there and our stories that say there's no

[00:14:41] one who's blood they're not true their lies we tell ourselves to further keep the woundedness alive

[00:14:51] whereas the story I can say is I don't know where they are but I know there's people

[00:14:56] who like to wear ginormous hats on Sunday and I'm going to find them or whatever it might be.

[00:15:03] I'm using very surface examples but there are deeper, deeper truths afoot here where we can and

[00:15:11] should I think seek out and find that sense for ourselves of belonging, recognize healing our

[00:15:20] wounds, moving forward and then allow ourselves to belong to things based on the authenticity

[00:15:28] of who we are. This is important Brené Brown goes on to say because true belonging only happens

[00:15:35] when we present our authentic imperfect selves to the world our sense of belonging can never

[00:15:41] be greater than our level of self-acceptance. Our sense of belonging can never be greater

[00:15:48] than our self-acceptance. What if our feeling a lack of belonging isn't so much about them

[00:15:58] as it is about the levels of our self-acceptance? We get to consider that and even when we've

[00:16:04] considered that and we've we've healed a lot of that and we step forward I just want to say

[00:16:10] full out there are still risks. There are still vulnerabilities to choosing to belong and that's

[00:16:18] why many of us isolate because it just feels safer doesn't it? There are risks. I don't know about

[00:16:25] you but have any of you ever noticed who've come to this church for a while that the people are

[00:16:30] really nice but every once in a while there is a curmudgeon around? There's somebody who

[00:16:37] isn't quite friendly or nice having a bad day maybe says something kind of stupid or crazy or

[00:16:45] is different than you expected them to be? I know sometimes when that has happened

[00:16:52] because I'm so afraid of what that means I will run even from the groups that I feel

[00:16:58] that authentic sense of belonging because that discomfort makes me want to run but true belonging

[00:17:06] whether it's with a key relationship that you want to continue to foster or a group of people

[00:17:14] requires that that belonging be nurtured even when it's difficult. I found this meme recently that I

[00:17:22] love when we avoid hard conversations we're not keeping the peace we're keeping the tension

[00:17:28] that's from Peter Bromber we're keeping the tension so true belonging in a good relationship

[00:17:34] the best of friendships requires challenging conversations when our feelings get hurt or

[00:17:41] it didn't go the way we hoped it would go or we're feeling judged or we're feeling a lack of

[00:17:46] belonging it requires us to really continue to foster connection and that's not always easy

[00:17:54] and yet when we see it in action it's amazing I've been paying attention to a story of a man

[00:18:01] lately that has really touched my heart and helped me to see especially in this political climate

[00:18:07] the possibilities of not standing apart but standing together and this is a picture of

[00:18:14] Darrell Davis he's the beautiful black man on the left and look at he's shaking the hands of

[00:18:19] shaking the hands of a Ku Klux Klan wizard Darrell Davis is a jazz blues jazz musician who was playing

[00:18:28] in a bar and one night he began talking to a fellow at the bar and discovered that that fellow was

[00:18:34] a member of the Ku Klux Klan they became friends good friends began have dinner have conversation

[00:18:44] and eventually his friend who was part of the clan left the clan he was the grand wizard and he

[00:18:52] left the clan and he gave Darrell his robe as a symbol of his willingness to change and to be

[00:18:59] a different person and this inspired mr. Davis who said he realized that he could possibly

[00:19:07] through through this this conversation create more and more opportunities to end racial division

[00:19:15] as of this date mr. Davis has had over 200 Ku Klux Klan members surrender their robes to him

[00:19:24] yeah he says that that he began to chip away at their ideology just by having conversation

[00:19:39] he says because when two enemies are talking they're not fighting it's when the talking ceases

[00:19:45] that the ground becomes fertile for violence if you spend five minutes with your worst enemy it

[00:19:50] doesn't have to be about race it could be about anything you will find that you both have something

[00:19:55] in common as you build upon those commonalities you're forming a relationship that as you build

[00:20:01] that relationship you find you're forming a friendship that's what would happen and I love

[00:20:07] what he says here I didn't convert anybody they saw the light and converted themselves

[00:20:14] yeah beautiful beautiful story and he does his work now reaching out thinking his philosophy is

[00:20:24] how can you hate me when you don't even know me and I really invite us to consider that when it

[00:20:31] comes to belonging as you think about the people right now that you judge in various groups

[00:20:38] and maybe even hate how can you hate them when you don't even know them

[00:20:43] and how is it that we benefit ourselves by continuing to behave this way in any way shape or

[00:20:50] form so belonging also means that we create belonging support by standing for others like

[00:21:00] mr. Darryl Davis did we become willing in our personal relationships and with the broad groups

[00:21:06] of people who we are tempted to hate whom we don't even know by standing for belonging and

[00:21:16] making the ties that can help us feel connected be born out of friendship and connection and

[00:21:23] allowance I'm grateful for our graduates who are graduating graduating tonight and and I get

[00:21:30] to be the dean of our ministerial school and so I've gotten to be with our five graduates and

[00:21:36] one of our graduates is Christine Renee monks and she is has been a member of our community for a

[00:21:41] long time she's a practitioner in our community she is a board member just completing her three

[00:21:47] year term and she's graduating and from ministerial school tonight and going to be starting her own

[00:21:52] ministry she also has been serving our centers for spiritual living on our diversity and equity

[00:21:58] teams and fostering these important conversations about diversity all over our planet and she spoke

[00:22:06] in a class I was teaching a while back and she really taught me more about a concept that I've

[00:22:11] heard about that I think is so important it's the concept of other ring it's the concept of

[00:22:18] othering people and creating separation between us and other groups of people by othering them

[00:22:25] that they are other than us and really working hard in our minds and hearts to separate ourselves

[00:22:32] because they do this and I don't do that and othering is a an activity that's habitual in our minds

[00:22:39] and hearts and she brought forth the beautiful voice of Sean Jyn Wright an author who talks about

[00:22:44] a session he was in teaching students about othering and he says he explained to the group

[00:22:49] this process of othering which is assigning negative attributes to groups unlike your own

[00:22:55] which is very different that mr. Davis said I knew that even though those groups were different than

[00:23:00] me we had something in common we shared something in common and it allowed him to stop othering

[00:23:06] those members of the clan to begin to have relevant conversations and then the practice

[00:23:11] of belonging Mr. Jyn Wright says is cultivating the capacity to see the humanity in groups

[00:23:18] unlike our own seeing that they have the human desires to belong just like we do

[00:23:24] and its consequences for our collective effort for social change I described that our real work as

[00:23:29] leaders if we really want to create a healing centered world is to recognize how the process

[00:23:36] of othering leads to separation and ultimately dehumanization I explained that we all need

[00:23:42] to find some way to embrace the humanity among those groups that we find most unlike us

[00:23:48] that's what we do through our own experience in wundology we other ourselves and then we get

[00:23:54] about othering other people and then we have a crisis of belonging and I say that this whole

[00:24:02] process gets reversed when we stop othering ourselves and choose to belong to ourselves

[00:24:09] choose to belong to God choose to belong to the authentic soulful energy of ourselves

[00:24:15] and then choose to bring ourselves with integrity out into the world to belong and then choose

[00:24:22] consciously to stop othering other people and allow them to belong where they belong

[00:24:27] I am a committed member of Mile High Church and I am a highly passionate science of mind and spirit

[00:24:36] minister but I love it that people belong to whatever faith tradition they resonate with

[00:24:42] and I want people to feel that belonging I have places and things that I belong to passionately

[00:24:48] and I want other people to feel that they have places where they belong and they resonate because

[00:24:53] I recognize that as we all have that sense of belonging even if I don't agree with where they

[00:24:59] belong what if that is what brings forth the kingdom of heaven on earth not that we're

[00:25:05] all the same all going in the same direction other than love and other than belonging

[00:25:12] and everyone having a place to be this to me is the secret of belonging

[00:25:20] and I invite us to join together in prayer now I'm going to read a poem as we begin our prayer

[00:25:26] to contemplate a prayer called belonging by Rosemary Watola Tromer and I invite our

[00:25:32] practitioners and ministers to stand with me in prayer as we take a stand together in the

[00:25:37] transformation of this planet and of each heart into belonging Rosemary says and if it's true we

[00:25:45] are alone we are alone together the way blades of grass are alone but exist as a field sometimes I

[00:25:53] feel it the green fuse that ignites us the wild thrum that unites us an inner hum that

[00:26:00] reminds us of our shared humanity just as 35 trillion red blood cells join in one body to

[00:26:08] become one blood just as 136 000 notes make up one symphony alone as we are our small voices weave

[00:26:18] into the one big conversation our actions are essential to the one infinite story of what it

[00:26:25] is to be alive when we feel alone we belong to the grand communion of those who sometimes feel alone

[00:26:33] we are the dust the dust that hopes a rising of dust a thrill of dust the dust that dances in

[00:26:42] the light with all other dust the dust that makes the world and so we choose today to accept

[00:26:52] that divine sense of belonging to recognize the belonging that we have to this universe each one

[00:27:00] of us each soul a unique expression of divine energy perfect in its presence and we honor these

[00:27:10] divine ways that we choose to express our greater good our creativity our aliveness our wholeness

[00:27:16] our love our joy our peace our abundance our wellness in this world we choose to lean into it

[00:27:25] and I accept and affirm in this standing together in this way that each one of us finds expresses

[00:27:33] and makes way for greater belonging for ourselves and all others in these coming days that we

[00:27:42] allow ourselves to be made whole by releasing our stories of not belonging letting them go

[00:27:50] forgiving allowing spirit to fill that space with an awareness that many many times what felt

[00:28:00] like rejection was redirection an invitation into a greater truth of who we are and we celebrate

[00:28:10] that this day and allow that to be our guide in love and gratitude I claim this is the truth of us

[00:28:17] now and I let it be the truth as we let go let God and simply let it be so and so it is amen.

[00:28:42] Milehighchurch.org