A sense of belonging, how is this sense of belonging accomplished? I live in a picturesque Texas community with beautiful old buildings surrounding a magnificent courthouse adorned with large oak and pecan trees. I have a strong sense of belonging to this town and to the people who live here. I do not personally know each resident of Athens nor do I have a direct knowledge of how each person believes morally or otherwise. Yet, I feel a responsibility with my actions and behaviors of those that surround me.
My home is located deep within dense acreage. My nearest neighbor lives across the back north forty, through a patch of woods, across a stream, and yet another gated pasture filled with cattle. I do not know this neighbor well, but my grandmother mended fences between his grandfathers pasture and shared expenses of new repairs as did my father did with his father before he and I began this tradition. When a grass fire threatened my home, he and his sons were the first to cross the pasture to come to my aid. When his cattle break out me and my sons and daughters are the first to come to his aid. When the event is over we thank one another and cross back into our own territories. We do not share dinners together nor do we attend church together, we are strangers who share core values and are comfortable in our occasional meetings. Our core values have been instilled in us through our parents and our grandparents. The way in which we treat one another even though we may not have contact with one another for many years. There is a standard that we were taught at an early age and it yields a sense of security that the neighbor on the other side of the border will come to your aid when necessity arises. “A defining feature of community psychology is that it makes explicit reference to its underlying core values (Schneider et al., 2002).” These core values are shared and are taught to future generations.
While sameness may help a sense of community, diversity, in my experience has been difficult to overcome the cohesive sense of community. Twenty years ago a new pastor came to town and was installed in “The” First Baptist Church, a great red brick building one block off our town square with a steeple that reaches high into the sky. This church had a reputation throughout the county as being rather snobbish and exclusive. I did not think this pastor would last. I felt that his ideals would soon be snuffed out by the powers that be and felt very embarrassed at the reception he soon received once his ideas of tolerance and acceptance were made known. Twenty years later, and several bruises later, “The” Baptist Church is just as well known as it was before but for something very different, for acceptance of all. I admire the courage this pastor and his family had in bringing about change and still feel the pains of the bruises he and his family felt while trying to bring about this change, but the change brought about less division and more inclusion. Even in small towns there is division and a sense of loneliness for those who do not have a sense of belonging. Like this minister and his family, we may experience a few bumps along the way but the outcome of stepping out on a limb and instilling a sense of sameness through diversity and popular education can bring a unity in the sense of completeness instead of unity through exclusion.
I enjoyed your post very much. I think it goes along with the popular saying that the earliest of teachings are learned from home. Things like acceptance of your neighbor, racism, and prejudice are instilled in us at a very young age by the very people that raise us. The more involved and accepted in our communities our parents are, the more likely we are to form the same relationships and hold their morals and ideals throughout life. I appreciated your second example about the minister and his reputation as the church first began, this is an example of the judgement you had to make yourself because it was a church that you hadn’t grown up with.