Belonging
August 16th, 2011
In the course of researching an article for the Church Times on small groups I read an interesting book, "The Search to Belong: Rethinking intimacy, community and small groups" by Joseph R. Myers. His thesis owes a lot to the work of Edward T. Hall, a sociologist who identified four spaces in which we develop personalities, culture and communication, each relating to a distance:
Public: 12+ feet
Social: 4 to 12 feet
Personal: 18 inches to 4 feet
Intimate: 0 to 18 inches
Myers contends that churches encourage all relationships into the intimate space, and communicate that this space is found in a housegroup. He thinks this is a mistake. A sense of belonging and community can be found in each space.
I can see this turning into a bit of an essay, so let me cut myself off at the pass and just say this: maybe sometimes we feel more isolated and alone than we are, because we overlook or undervalue some of the vital networks we belong to, thinking that it is only the intimate relationships that count. Depression can talk you into thinking you are all alone in the world, but it is very unlikely that you are. Look around you. When I look around me, these are the places I belong:
my church, my neighbourhood, my daughter's preschool and soon to be school, my family, England, the Tiny Tots committee, Slimming World in Beaconsfield, my housegroup, my Regent friends, my university friends, my facebook friends, A Rocha... and that is just a beginning.
Do you feel you belong? And if you do, does this help you fight off the blues?
Leave your comment
Your comments
Martin~ August 16th, 2011 ~ 13:08Hi! This is something that was touched on at a Christian men's conference I went to - specifically thinking about how churches try to usher men straight into 'intimate' spaces, which many men are not comfortable with, preferring to meet in social spaces such as a pub or sporting event.
As for me, I have no problem with personal or intimate spaces, but even without those, I feel I belong in my social circle. I haven't attended a church for a while, but I (half)joked recently that the pub I go to is my 'church' - that's where I meet my friends and the people I love. It's where we share time and catch up. Since finding this 'community', it has definitely helped me deal with the blues a lot better! It's good to know that there is usually someone around if I don't want to be alone, even if we only meet in a public or social space. :)
paula
~ August 21st, 2011 ~ 20:08I think there also has to be a degree of acceptance within the community before we can feel we 'belong'. We may attend a toddler group, but if I am a single parent and the toddler group is full of yummy mummies who don't accept me; I don't feel I belong, or vice versa a professional working mother going to a toddler group on a housing estate full of unemployed people may feel uneasy. Same with styles of church, if I am a quiet deep thinking intellectual and attend a 10 minute preaching all happy clappy charismatic church I may not feel I belong; if I am an emotional exhuberant demonstrative person who attends a reformed presbyterian church and raises my hands and claps during the songs - I again may not feel I belong.
I am sure that feeling you belong goes a LONG way to beating the blues - but belonging doesn't come automatically because you have something in common with the rest of the group... if you know what I mean!
for multiple comparisons. Furthermore, if personal
experience is the trump card in an argument, then we will forever be at an
impasse. SEFLab is now setting out to establish how the quality of organisations’ software code affects their energy consumption.
Cherry isn’t being anti-American, he’s being pro-Ontario.
Here are my thoughts.
A perfect snowy day in Portsmouth New Hampshire.
Could you send your current mailing address to me as soon as possible?
Their mechanics of writing would horrify a second grade teacher.
On a road in Amritsar, you will find: cows and other animals,
rickshaws, auto rickshaws, cars, buses, trucks, motorbikes, dumpsters, rubbish,
obstructions, traffic police and it is not far fetched to find tractors or
animals pulling carts! People in my family still make
jokes about that day from time to time.
bh cosmetics store
~ April 9th, 2013 ~ 10:04He doesn’t want to see Americans clinging to helicopter skids on the last flight out of Kabul.
By accessing any information beyond this page, you agree
to abide by the Privacy Policy / Your California Privacy Rights and Terms of
Use . I fall down a lot but somehow I always get up unhurt and keep walking.
Isn’t the decline of organized (Christian) religions just a consequence of the broader erosion of faith in our institutions and the growing cynicism of our society?
Work there will start soon.
Ar avea o sansă IMENSĂ! BW shouldn't wait for imaginable stages to update half of the game at once. These examples serve to underscore Sharpie’s proliferation in diverse areas from politics to sports and entertainment. This space provides the ability to design your own pen based on your specific needs, a guide to Sharpie best practices (yes, that exists) and a social media-enabled login area with the ability to upload original content and interact with fellow Sharpie appreciators. スピックス�...
bh cosmetics round stippling brush~ April 10th, 2013 ~ 01:04Obviously, producing plants on site eliminates these costs entirely—producing them off site
a few miles away, under control of the retailer, reduces them substantially;
and still has the side benefit of allowing for better control of one’s
inventory vs. Satyavira on Thu, 03/01/2012 - 11:43am.
I have seen this happen over and over with horses. That all suggests
that prices should stay high. ‘Quoof’’s rhyming pattern of abcddbca efgegf and ‘The Sightseers’’
of abcd bcca bcb adds a further disorientation to the mix,
allowing Muldoon to escape the “troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming” (Milton) [21] .
For 2013, Jackson’s $3.6 million becomes fully guaranteed if he’s on the roster on the third day of next year’s waiver period, which starts the day after the Super Bowl.
ist eine interessante Band aus der innovativen Kopenhagener Electronic-Independent-Szene.
I agree with your views and respect your talent. I think that’s kinda backwards–he’s suffering
from the high expectations we HAD for him when he first went to Europe.
ARIZONA DIAMONDBACKS: So Arizona stormed in last year and pulled off the biggest surprise division win in the National League last year, aided largely by the fact that their closest
rival chose not to field an offense for a large portion of their games.
bh cosmetics empty palette
~ April 10th, 2013 ~ 01:0425 at Dart. When we experience sound in real life, it always has a spatial component—i.
e., different sounds come from different directions.
I'd like to know what they were. Everything worked fine. Ich mag es nicht wenn so Stolze Geister wie du, nicht glücklich sind.
The deadline to submit your application to the UTA Summer Study Abroad Program
in Cuernavaca 2012, has been extended till Friday,
March 30th. Given the slow down in developed countries,
emerging economies are trying to boost domestic demand to sustain growth
— and this is particularly the case in China .
Your New York school of minimalism is much more grid-like and insistent on the hard edges of
its utilitarian explorations down avenues of granite. This is a key point for the
Democrats supporting her, for if Fluke did happen to read Georgetown’s insurance
policy before coming and decide to come anyway, that would, at best,
undermine her spokeswoman status. Providing contraceptive services, abortifacients, and
sterilization… is a violation of our conscience .
bh cosmetics zoeva
~ April 10th, 2013 ~ 01:04What ever Doctor slapped his ass to get him started should be thrashed severly about
the neck and ears with a wet noodle:-) He has never said anything
positive yet. This web-site's functionality may be crippled unless you turn JavaScript for your browser on again. I kept four stories from my thesis, and threw the rest out after graduation. Open Innovation has improved time to market, new product features, cost, technology scouting, and line additions. They can just age into a solid grown-up rock band, like Hanson did and the Jonases might still.
Actually, the numbers are $860.30 for January which included your
neat purchases at Quartzsite, $404.95 for Feb. Breitbart was a racist scumbag and his
children are better off without him. I genuinely wish you all the luck
in the world making that a success. They have too many holes.
Host label-owner Allon Kaye likens the results almost to a chemical process – the adding of some kind of catalyst to a liquid
test tube specimen, the mixture dissipating into something skeletal, crystalline and beautiful
– and it really doesn’t get more accurate than that.
bh cosmetics and coastal scents
~ April 10th, 2013 ~ 15:04Also, the first week of high school football games in Virginia often occur
before school starts as a result of the Kings’ Dominion
law. SLAC released these demands and issued
a petition to raise student awareness last
December, wrote SLAC representative Laurel Fish ‘14 in an
email to the Daily. We do not undertake to update any of these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that occur after the date hereof.
Fired from shore, the Sunburn will punch a room-sized
hole through any ship in the Strait of Hormuz in a fraction of a second.
So here please enjoy this scrumptious breakfast that I made
just for you!!!!
bh cosmetics 3rd edition review
~ April 10th, 2013 ~ 15:04Sorry ikonia I don't know what AD is? Hun har en familie hun er veldig glad i, en spennende karriere, hun bor akkurat der hun vil. Kay Norwood of Charlotte, a retired executive from Wells Fargo’s Evergreen Investments, also mentored the students in past years. Their free trial and brought significantly more visitors to my site. The second thing is, I am a pretty hard taskmaster – I do push, and every now and then I do have to throw a hug back.
bh cosmetics 88 matte palette review~ April 10th, 2013 ~ 15:04Exposure to these materials injured the plaintiffs.
The loma prieta operator of 1989 either revamped some carbon to
authorities of the food, toaster. Meet at the ... Their own income is generally spent on property, food, along with entertainment.
and other than few Ohioian's give a rip enough about MSNBC to even bother watching..
Murray is much more mobile than Del Potro, and if his serve remains in good order, he has a more than
even chance. Either the Mormons are right about their theology, or
they’re wrong. But, oh man, what an exhausting trip.
©2013 LA Weekly, LP, All rights reserved. “Ever since I’ve had these guys,” he said, “we’ve swung wood in the
offseason.
bh cosmetics gel liner swatches
~ April 10th, 2013 ~ 20:04Boots Day just posted what I was going to say. Ponsel ini memberi
sinyal positif atas strategi Nokia setelah terpuruk akibat kerasnya
persaingan pasar ponsel pintar. © Honjii Li and Honjii's Harangues, 2012. Through everything the industry has proven to be powerful, resilient along with dynamic, locating new tips on how to deal with misfortune. In the same report above, ABS-CBNews stated as its lead sentence, “ The curse word “ gago ” was the last straw for the prosecution.
Donc, il est fort probable qu’il n’a rien passé en Juin.
I don’t anymore. No matter what trouble that wretched cinder girl gets them into.
Francesco Verusio, chief prosecutor of Grosseto, arrives at
the Moderno Theatre during the opening pre-trial hearing for the
cruise liner Costa Concordia disaster in Grosseto March 3, 2012.
All the interested parties had agreed at the appointments.
Erika “can go all the way,” he says, surprising us
a bit. At the outset, Unofficially Yours, a 2011 romantic comedy release (directed by Garcia-Molina) seemed to have succeeded in its light hearted summoning of the unconventional, but gradually failed in constructing a vigorous frame of values underlying such arrangements.
Andf yes, na generator sure pass! This would be a little more suspenseful if Adam weren’t Heejun’s competition.
Faster than light transportation may be dangerous.
I watched "The Brady Bunch" religously on Friday nights and remember this episode well.
Does anyone other than Congress think every child at every grade level will test above average by date-certain if federal law
mandates it? Il feretro è stato scortato da due motociclette dei carabinieri.
Our customers are large and small system integrators, high-tech companies, institutions and agencies.
[02/05/12 - 02:57 PM] Video: "Cougar Town" Season 3 Highlight Reel Check out a 10-minute sizzle reel from the new season,
due Tuesday, February 14 at 8:30/7:30c.
Take note of the word “deliberate”. Crossings at Ross Landing were
equally brutal: The first company sent down the river .
Section G.1.g allows for alternate testing without including sufficient QA/QC requirements to
demonstrate compliance. It’s just a hassle to constantly retrain yourself for a single event.
LET ME SAY IT IN EVERYDAY LANGUAGE , WE HAVE NO FACTORYS , NO
CAR PLANTS ,NO TRUCK PLANTS , NO OIL PLANTS , SO WE-Z GETZ US A
BIG OLD CHUUURCH SO WE-Z CAN BE-Z LIKES THE EUROPEANS.
