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By Ellen Dee Davidson

Belonging


We all long to belong, and we all do belong.

We belong to the moment of our birth, to the planets and stars, to the wind swept skies. We belong to the rivers and seas. We belong to the Earth where we took our first steps. We belong to the people who raised and nurtured us. We belong to our friends and families. We belong to the entire community of Life.

So how did so many of us end up feeling slightly left out, or like someone else belongs more so that we strive and strive for something we already have? It makes me think – we’ve been duped!

Post Industrial Revolution, our culture reified the world, turning everything into a dead “thing” and us into producers and consumers busily gobbling the world, instead of belonging to her. We were taught that we are separate from nature. But that’s just a delusion, not a truth.

The truth is life. Myriad, amazing, miraculous LIFE. So many brilliant forms exist that we haven’t even discovered all the species. Our response is awe, wonder, reverence, gratitude and, naturally, belonging, because we are clearly part of life.

Clare Dubois, founder of Tree Sisters, recently received a teaching on belonging from the Kogi elders. The Kogi elders are an indigenous people from Colombia who see themselves as “Elder Brothers.” They have been working to keep the energy of the Earth in balance. After centuries of seclusion, they came out in a BBC film in 1992, From the Heart of the World, to warn us “Younger Brothers” that we need to care for the Earth before it is too late.

While Clare was with the Kogi, they taught her that when we are born, we belong to our own unique Mother and Father parts of the land, such as a particular tree, mountain or river. They believe that, to keep the balance, we need to make offerings to these places, which they call payments.

It’s an amazing concept to think that we actually belong to the places where we are born. I think we also belong to the places where we live. And it’s time to make our offerings of love and care.

We are heard. We are seen. We are held. We are loved. Life is alive, conscious, aware, present, and just waiting for us to realize WE BELONG.

*** Tree Sisters is a UK charity devoted to nature based feminine leadership and reforesting the tropics. For more information, check out www.treesisters.org

A Portrait of a Koguis Tribeswoman and child on one of the terraces at Ciudad Perdida, Columbia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kogi_people

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