A New Kind of We
Some days weave golden, silver, and crimson threads right through so that by the end, the day is a fine, radiant tapestry. Today those threads were empathy, inclusion, and belonging.
Derick Carter and I co-hosted a Gathering for San Joaquin County’s DCSS, exploring empathy with them, discovering our common humanity and beautiful possibilities in differences. They shared stories of inclusion or exclusion, they noted compassionate actions that mend and called out that we need both inclusion to be welcomed and belonging to be a member. Both are important at different times. It is such a privilege to witness teams dive into truly human work together, the work of the heart.
Then tonight I listened to Krista Tippett on The On Being Project podcast interview Tracy K. Smith and Michael Kleber-Diggs who respectively edited and contributed to the book, “There’s a Revolution Outside, My Love: Letters from a Crisis.”
At 23 minutes and 30 seconds+ Krista refers to our need to all come together in “that larger ‘we” that we must make real in a completely new way, that includes all of us…”
Tracy K. Smith responds with kind, quiet wisdom, that implies the belonging needed, rather than inclusion, as the path forward for our society.
She said, “If ‘we’ is all of us, it’s not what you’ve thought it was all this time.”
She's calling us to something much more than we've ever been to be sure, perhaps something more than we've ever conceived. A profound shift from inclusion to belonging, where we all belong to something wholly new. Smith points out, this is exciting, and yet frightening for some.
But we, who might be frightened, must be brave to face that edge, to let go of what is, because it is serving no one. No one.
And because we can’t go back.
Only forward to a “we” where everyone isn’t just included but where everyone belongs to the new "we" that we create together.
Derick and I ended the San Joaquin County Gathering with this poem. I'm ending this day with it too and share it with you.
“A Sense of Belonging” by Bhavya
We belong in our belongingness.
When conversations run deep,
deep and then deeper until words become echos and echos transform to a healing silence.
When music brings us lyrics,
lyrics that stir the strings of our beings
in a rhythm that resonates, sometimes piercingly, sometimes gently, healing unfailingly.
We belong in that belongingness.
When you acknowledge me in you and I acknowledge you in me.
When barriers turn into bridges,
When we help each other evolve.
When ego dissolves,
When love surrounds and peace engulfs,
When there is nothing to prove but a yearning to piece up the scattered blocks of the puzzle to see the whole picture.
We belong in our belongingness.
When you and I dissolve and a greater we evolves.
