Brett's Two Cents

Hello, everyone. This weekend I’m talking about that deep-down hunger we all have to belong, which is a manifestation of the very purpose for which God created us: to be His sons and daughters; brothers and sisters to one another.

Along with truth and beauty, goodness and justice, belonging (or friendship or communion) is one of those fundamental heart-hungers that point us back to God, for whom we’re made.  I’ve used this quote before, but it bears repeating, as Fr. Rolheiser says it so well:
 

“There is an old legend which says that before being born, each soul is kissed by God and then goes through life always, in some dark way, remembering that kiss and measuring everything it experiences in relation to that original sweetness… Within each of us, at that place where all that is most precious within us takes its root, there is the inchoate sense of having once been touched, caressed, loved, and valued in a way that is beyond anything we have ever consciously experienced. In fact, all the goodness, love, value, and tenderness we experience in life falls short precisely because we already know something deeper. When we feel frustrated, angry, betrayed, violated, or enraged it is in fact because our outside experience is so different from what we already hold dear inside…
 
The image of God inside us is energy, fire, memory—especially the memory of a touch so tender and loving that its goodness and truth become the energy and prism through which we see everything. Thus we recognize goodness and truth outside us precisely because they resonate with something… inside.  Things “touch our hearts” when they touch us here….”

—Fr. Ron Rolheiser, Faith Today: The Struggle, the Invitation