In a meeting earlier this week here in church, I posed what I thought was a simple reflection question, based on our monthly spiritual theme of “Belonging.” I asked “Where are you most at home? Where do you feel you best belong?” The question brought up a lot of emotions for folks around the table, and the answers were wide-ranging. A couple folks talked about the place where they grew up and the family members they grew up with there. Others talked about feeling like they most belong out in nature. Some identified “being at home” with being with their spouse or partner. A couple of folks named this church as the place they feel they best belong. Reflecting on the answers to this question later that night, I realized that there’s a single thread that wove through all of the responses: We feel most at home where we feel most connected. Home, or the place where we best belong, is never in isolation. It’s always in relationship. Relationship with other people. Relationship with other beings, like the trees and the birds. Relationship with tender memories that make our eyes well up with tears when we bring them to mind. No one in that small sample on Thursday night said that they feel they best belong sitting in a room by themselves, alone in the dark.

In this month’s Soul Matters packet, Douglas Steer, a Quaker teacher, takes the question I asked the other night and, naming the truth of our longing to be connected with others, asks a slightly different question. He writes:

“The ancient question, ‘Who am I?’ inevitably leads to a deeper one: ‘Whose am I?’ – because there is no identity outside of relationship. You cannot be a person by yourself. To ask “Whose am I” is to extend the question far beyond the little self-absorbed self, and wonder: Who needs you?  Who loves you?  To whom are you accountable?  To whom do you answer?  Whose life is altered by your choices?  With whose life is your own bound up, inextricably, in obvious or invisible ways?’

“Whose am I?” “Whose are you?” Just asking that question, instead of that self-centered, isolating and perhaps even loneliness-inducing question “Who am I?”, makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. “Whose am I?” assumes connection and relationship. It reminds us of an essential part of our nature: that we’re never alone. But at the same time, this question of “Whose are we?” is a kind of challenge as well. Because, in asking it, in reminding us that we’re never alone, it also reminds us that what we do, what we say, how we behave matters. It matters not just to us, but to others. To all those to whom we’re connected. It reminds us that, because we’re part of an interconnected web of existence, when we set a strand of that web to vibrating, it resonates and rebounds and vibrates across that entire web. It’s like the so-called “Butterfly Effect,” which delivers the somewhat daunting news that when a butterfly flaps its wings here, it will cause a hurricane on the other side of the planet. Or, if you prefer, you can think of it as dropping a stone into a calm lake. Our actions are the stone, and when we do something it causes ripples and waves to spread out in all directions.

But there’s another element to this question “Whose are we?” that I’d like to take a little closer look at today. It’s not about where or how or on whom we have an impact, or who our actions affect. Douglas Steer asks: “To whom are we accountable? To whom do we answer?” In this question of responsibility and accountability I find the image of the pond and the stone and the ripples to be equally helpful. Because I picture the answer to this question as a series of concentric circles, spreading out from a center that is us.

First, I think we can all agree that we’re accountable to ourselves. That we are called each day to act in ways that are consistent with our values, whatever those values are. This means making choices that allow us to gain some sense of self-satisfaction, or at least allow us to live with ourselves. This alignment of our actions with our values is the very definition of integrity. We integrate our actions and our understanding of our sense of self. Picture integrity as the first ring, closest in to the center.

The next ring as we move out from the center is probably our family, however we might define that, biological or otherwise. We belong to and are accountable to those closest to us in ways personal and intimate, through vows we make, both explicit and implicit. As parents we are bound to our children. As partners and spouses, we promise to love and support each other. As children, we’re called to care for aging parents. As friends, we commit to showing up. And, hopefully, in turn, we’ll receive the benefit of reciprocity. We’re bound by biology, by love and by affection. By shared history and hope. By a deep knowing of each other. So, if the first ring is Integrity, I’ll call this second ring “Intimacy.”

Then there is what I’ll call our “tribal” belonging. We are held by and we are accountable to others with whom we’re in a community of choice. We may not know – in fact we won’t know – all of those in that community on a personal and intimate level, but with them we share a common sense of identity and purpose. Our church community is a good example of this third ring. We belong because we choose to belong, but in order to belong we need to agree to and abide by the covenants, the promises, the norms and the expectations of the larger group. If we choose, we can also see this ring as including accountability to the places we live. To entire towns, cities, counties or even countries, where we take responsibility for participating in societal structures that, in turn, support us. This is the ring where social contract resides.

The next ring out might be our accountability to the non-humans with which we share this planet, or even to the planet as a whole. We are held by, we are supported by, we are cared for by this fragile planet and all that are a part of it, and thus we are accountable to it. Whose are we? As The Everything Seed reminds us, we are part of all creation. I’d also place our belonging to future generations in this space. The “seven-generation” perspective that’s often attributed to native American teachings that tells us that we should evaluate all our actions by how they will impact our children seven generations from now. Similarly, we have been handed the gift of life by the generations that precede us. We are, as our hymn says, “our grandmother’s prayer, our grandfather’s dreaming.”

And here’s where it gets really interesting to me, on what is, in this metaphor, the outermost ring. The ring beyond creation itself. We start out, close in, with integrity and the intimate. The familial and the familiar. In these close-in rings, we can easily identify to whom we belong – whose we are – and to whom we’re accountable, because we’re in close contact with them. Close in, that accountability is easily enforceable and enforced. But as we move farther and farther out from the center, both the immediacy of our sense of belonging and the mechanisms of our accountability become vaguer, less defined. Our sense of belonging becomes attenuated. We cannot see beyond the horizon, so we don’t know how far the ripples extend. But far beyond our vision, well beyond ourselves, our loved ones, our family, our tribe, our community, our nation, our world – way out beyond our knowing – there’s something more. If close in we have the intimate, this is what I’ll call “The Ultimate.”  [Cue choir for “There is a Love”]

Now, I know that this is the area where we Unitarian Universalists can get a little squirrely. A little squirmy. “God-talk” can make us uncomfortable for a whole host of reasons. A lot of us, myself included, have a lot of baggage when it comes to talking about and thinking about God. We can try to substitute words like “Love” or “Universe,” but we often still get tripped up. Given that, here’s what I’ll ask you to do for the next few minutes: Stick with the metaphor of the pebble in the pond and the rings that spread out from the center. All I’m talking about here is a ring that is beyond our seeing, beyond our knowing, beyond even our naming. Because we know that the ripples don’t stop at the end of our vision, right? They keep going. So let’s think about the Ultimate as the outer-most ring of our belonging and our accountability, the ripples that extend far beyond our ability to see them.

So, what does it mean to belong to this outer ring? What does it mean to be accountable to it? To again use Douglas Steer’s language, to be “answerable to it?” Sticking with the imagery of the concentric circles, the first implication is that this outer-most ring is the ring that holds all the other rings within it. It encompasses all the other relationships that make up all those rings and it encompasses us as individuals. It means that everything is a part of it and it is a part of everything. In the words of the song that the choir sang, this outer-most ring “holds” us, and all that we know and love. And you know what that means, too, right? It means that we are never alone. Even if we’ve been abandoned or betrayed by those around us, by all that we know and all those we love, this outer ring is there, and we’re encompassed by it and held within it.

It also means that it is no less “real” than any of the other rings, the other relationships we have with ourselves, our loved ones, those we choose to associate with. Although we don’t experience it the same way we do the relationships on the closer-in rings, it’s just as real, just as present, just as vital. We belong to it and it belongs to us in ways that are indescribable and even invisible. Yet we do belong to it. It is a part of us.

What, then, does it mean to be accountable to this outer ring? To “answer to it?” I think the first thing asked of us is to learn to trust it. To trust that it’s there. To trust that it holds us. To “rest” in it, again to use the lyrics from the song. Maybe this starts with just being open to the possibility of its existence. Maybe it means that we allow ourselves to be open to experiencing it, to be not so quick in explaining away or rejecting what seems to be inexplicable. It means being willing to live with the mystery, the uncertainty, the not-knowing.

I think that, to be accountable to this outer ring, to answer to it, is also to work to break down false boundaries. To seek the unifying characteristics we all share. To see that we – all of us, human and other, non-human life forms – share a common fate, a common destiny, and that the things that divide us are far fewer than the things that unite us. Blessing our animals last week wasn’t just a cute gimmick that made us feel good. It was a reflection of this unifying vision, part of this commitment to our shared existence. To be answerable, to be accountable to this outer-most ring is not to fear some cosmic accounting that occurs at the end of our lives. It simply calls us to affirm that we are all a part of a larger, mysterious and magnificent whole that extends in all directions out from the center that is us, to the farthest reaches of the stars.

And once we do that, once we come to know and to trust that, just as The Everything Seed tells us, we are part and parcel of all creation, that the “Intimate” and the “Ultimate” are, at their core, one and the same, we find that there is no place, no space, and no time in which we do not belong. There is no place, no space, no time in which we’re not held. That there is no place, no space, no time in which we’re not loved. And this, in turn, calls us to hold it all, to love it all, to praise it all, to bless it all. And in so doing, to be held, to be loved, to be praised, to be blessed.

This day, and every day, I wish you peace. Amen.

Closing Words – Our closing words this morning are an excerpt from those written by Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker, Unitarian Universalist theologian and former President of Starr King School for the Ministry:

Choose to bless the world.

The choice to bless the world is more than an act of will,
a moving forward into the world
with the intention to do good.

It is an act of recognition,
a confession of surprise,
a grateful acknowledgment
that in the midst of a broken world
unspeakable beauty, grace and mystery abide.

There is an embrace of kindness
that encompasses all life, even yours.

The choice to bless the world can take you into solitude
to search for the sources
of power and grace;
native wisdom, healing, and liberation.

More, the choice will draw you into community,
the endeavor shared,
the heritage passed on,
the companionship of struggle,
the importance of keeping faith,

the life of ritual and praise,
the comfort of human friendship,
the company of earth
the chorus of life welcoming you.

None of us alone can save the world.
Together—that is another possibility, waiting.