#belonging — Public Fediverse posts

You notice you're part of a harmony when another voice enters and everything rearranges.

Further reading: https://emotusoperandi.medium.com/your-self-care-action-items-f1c98bcedca6

#RMaurice #LifeboatAcademy #StayHuman #Belonging #Practice

we leave so that now

we leave so that now 
and then, we will be able to 
dream about what it 

would have taken for us to stay 
in the place where we belonged
.
20260819:2218
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A BetTER Day

Independence has its day,
when o’er the skies fireworks display,
and dependence, too, is good,
as every tender spirit should

learn the grace of being held,
when pride is hushed, and fear is quelled.
But methinks we need another name,
a deeper word, a wider frame.

It happens after we let one IN,
past the surface, past the skin,
past the guarded gates we keep,
past the places where hurt runs deep.

In the space before DEPEND,
we see the other as vital friend,
all as branches from one tree,
as the grains of sand receive the sea.

Then add three letters, soft but true,
TER arrives and makes it new.
Not just me and not just thee,
but something born between the three.

In-TER-dependence names the art
of hand in hand and heart to heart,
while I am I, and you are you,
something sacred binds us too.

Independence stands alone,
dependence leans on flesh and bone,
but interdependence humbly sings:
we rise by sharing roots and wings.

July 4, 2015 (updated June 2026)

Authoritarianism doesn’t begin only with bad leaders, dangerous ideologies, or manipulated information.

It also grows in emptiness: in closed youth centres, underfunded libraries, commercialised public squares, and feeds that replace conversation with performance.

https://associationredefine.substack.com/p/where-do-we-gather-the-geography?r=6l8ed8

#CivicIntelligence #Democracy #PublicSpace #Belonging #DigitalDemocracy #AIAndSociety #SocialInfrastructure #DemocraticResilience

Outside the Default Path: A Pagan Reading of the Federal “Anti-Christian Bias” Report

https://pagangrove.wordpress.com/2026/05/11/outside-the-default-path-a-pagan-reading-of-the-federal-anti-christian-bias-report/

Light for My Path (Christian Music) = Share in the joy ❤️ of this new worship song! - #God #Jesus #TheLord #Praise #ChristianMusic #Bible #Music #Song #Faith #Hope #Trust #Light #Path #Guidance #Strength #Journey #Purpose #Truth #Love #Devotion #Praise #Worship #Discipleship #InnerPeace #SpiritualGrowth #Community #Unity #Belonging #Transformation #Uplift #Grace #Mercy #Salvation - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WI3kWyEhp8

Excommunicate Me

Excommunicate me, then.
Ring the bell if you have one. Draw the line in ash. Nail the notice to the chapel door. Speak my name in the flat voice reserved for weather, death, and disappointment. Tell the saints to avert their eyes. Tell the children not to ask questions. Tell the old women in the kitchen to lower their voices when I pass. I have grown used to doors closing with the gentleness of those who think themselves righteous.

Excommunicate me for loving too widely, for asking where the missing ones went, for lingering too long at the edge of the map where the heretics, addicts, doubters, dissidents, and queer-eyed prophets make their fires at night. Excommunicate me for saying that Christ still wanders there, coat smelling of smoke, hands warm from other people’s wounds. Excommunicate me for suspecting that the kingdom keeps being born in places your committees have not approved.

Cast me out for refusing to confuse your fences with holiness.
Cast me out for noticing how often your purity is purchased with somebody else’s loneliness.
Cast me out for believing that a table is still a table even when the wrong people find bread there first.

I know how this works. First comes the sorrowful meeting. Then the careful language. Then the phrases dressed in prayer like soldiers dressed in hymnals. We say discernment when we mean fear. We say order when we mean control. We say peace when we mean silence from those already bruised. We say love while measuring who may enter it. We say truth with our arms folded.

Excommunicate me because I cannot keep pretending that the wound in the Body is healed by cutting off another limb.

I have seen too much of the outside to fear it now. I have seen the banished making soup for one another. I have seen the condemned share coats in winter. I have seen those denied the sacraments become sacraments for each other: bread in famine, oil in sickness, a hand on the shoulder in the long vestibule of grief. I have heard better theology whispered on back steps than shouted from polished pulpits. I have watched the Spirit climb out the stained-glass window and go where she is not expected.

Excommunicate me, and I will go down among the unclaimed.
I will kneel beside the ones your footnotes could not save.
I will keep company with the mothers whose prayers embarrassed you, the children whose questions outgrew your answers, the men who wept when they were told to be strong, the women who spoke and were called dangerous, the wanderers who could not make your narrow gate into a home.

And if you shut me out from your sanctuary, I will make a sanctuary of the road.
If you deny me your blessing, I will learn the blessing of crows at morning, of rain on rusted tin, of strangers who still know how to share fire.
If you call me lost, I will answer that some of us were never meant to be found by empires.

Do not threaten me with the outer dark.
I have met God there.

Not the tidy god of minutes and motions, not the well-behaved deity who always sides with the CEO, but the God who haunts the threshold, who leaves the ninety-nine to go where the crying is, who touches the unclean and is not diminished, who slips through locked doors and still carries wounds, who keeps raising what the pious have buried.

Excommunicate me for this: I no longer believe belonging is yours to ration.
I no longer believe grace requires your seal.
I no longer believe heaven trembles when your vote is taken.
The veil was torn without your permission, and it has never been properly mended.

So do it.
Write me out.
Strike my name from the roll.
Erase me from the minutes.
Tell yourselves the garden is safer now that one more wild thing has been removed.

But listen: roots work in secret. Seeds pass through the beaks of birds and are planted in their shit. Wind ignores decrees. What you cast out does not always die. Sometimes it takes hold beyond the wall and flowers in the rubble, and those passing by say, I did not know beauty could grow here.

Excommunicate me, then.
I will go with Christ among the cast out.
I will go where the lepers still ring their bells, where the scapegoats stagger into the wilderness, where the rejected stone waits in the dust.
And when at last you come looking for God, breathless with your censures, your keys jangling at your side, do not be surprised to find us already inside the feast, the doors flung wide, the music loud, the wounded laughing, and every empty place at the table set for one more.

Equality gives everyone shoes.
Equity makes sure they fit.
Belonging lets you rock your Crocs without drama 😂💚

Systemic change starts with comfort + respect ✊🏽
Not conformity. Not performance. Not silence.

#Equity #Belonging #SystemicChange #LiberationNotTolerance #CommunityJustice #RadicalEmpathy #InclusionMatters #SocialJusticeMeme #PoliticalEducation

👇 Tell me: what’s YOUR “shoe” in life you wish people understood? 🗣️

JUN-KAN PERMACULTURE IS ON A MISSION OF REPAIR

Just off Notre-Dame Rd. in Petersburg, Ontario is the Jun-kan Permaculture Garden. The garden sits on one of 20 acres in the Petersburg Community Garden, and volunteers tend permaculture food forests and annual vegetable terraces.   

The garden was started in 2022 when the land’s owner, Daryl Dore decided he no longer wanted to rent his fields to cash-cropping commercial farmers. Dore contacted Doug Jones of the Waterloo Regional Community Garden Network and proposed that his land be available to individuals, especially new Canadians.  

While the proposal was eagerly accepted, years of cash cropping and heavy pesticide use had left the soil damaged.  

“In a word, this soil was dead. And poisoned,” Barbara Hankins, one of Jun-kan’s volunteers, said.  

Permaculture gardening operates on the basis of symbiosis and diversity. A wide array of individual species are planted in cooperative guilds to work in concert with each other and the environment. Together, they thrive and improve the quality of the land they are growing on.   

This is where the name Jun-kan comes from. The garden’s website explains, it is a Japanese word that translates roughly to “the universe,” or “the cycle of life”. In accordance with the principles of permaculture, Jun-kan’s first step was to plant swaths of five distinct cover crops: clover, alfalfa, buckwheat, field peas, and rye. Quickly, the earth began to heal and the gardeners started producing food, still with permaculture in mind.  

“[We ask ourselves,] ‘what does the ground need? What do the plants need? How can I give to them because they are giving to me?’,” Hankins said.  

In turn, the land gives back to its farmers, not just in food, but in a more existential way as well. This is especially helpful at Jun-kan, where many of the volunteers are new Canadians and do not own their own land. People are given the opportunity to form a relationship with the land they may not otherwise have been able to. This is crucial for a sense of belonging.  

“This garden supports a huge diversity of growers from around the world, and it’s nourishing to see how the diversity of culturally relevant foods, approaches, skills, stories…the diversity enhances our resilience as a community of gardeners,” Nikola Barsoum, one of Jun-kan’s founding volunteers, said.  

The ethos of repair and repurposing extends beyond physical gardening and the dignity of the volunteers as well. In 2023, ongoing war in Lebanon put Hankins’ family in danger, and here in KW, her house burned down. The garden provided the family with relief, repairing them in the wake of the tragedies. The bricks from their home were salvaged and used to cobble Jun-kan’s community fire pit.  

“We went through so much that year. This was my therapy. Coming out here, and just being with the land, with the earth, with the butterflies, and feeding the insects and the birds… Watching things grow is very therapeutic,” Hankins said.  

Restoring the land, offering a dignified community for newcomers and a sanctuary for its volunteers, Jun-Kan is on a mission of repair. For more information, the garden can be found on Instagram @junkanpermaculture, or on their website. 

#agriculture #BarbaraHankins #belonging #dougJones #Gardening #junKan #nikolaBarsoum #Ontario #permaculture #Petersburg #RandyMoore #waterlooRegionalCommunityGarden #ZackMason

#Indian #IT #companies are #leadingtheway in march towards #inclusive #workplaces: #Report

#ManpowerGroup #study suggests that #promoting #women ‘#allyship’, leveraging internal #talentmarketplace, #upskilling and #reskilling, #flexible #benefits, and #supporting #diversity and #belonging could be some key ways to engage more #women

#Women #Transgender #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA #India #Technology #Representation #Culture

https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/corporate/story/indian-it-companies-are-leading-the-way-in-march-towards-inclusive-workplaces-report-431232-2024-05-28

We invite #scholars from various disciplines, #Practitioners #filmmakers #artists and #activists to present and discuss papers (or other contributions) exploring the conference theme and related topics around (but not limited to) #migration #mobility #ecocrisis #eco-social #Justice #transnationalism #populism #Safety #belonging #displacement #racialization #intersectionality and #HumanRights and #MinorityRights

Your routine reminder that #DEIB is not a free license to bully individual people.

It's a strategy for dismantling discriminatory structures in institutions.

It's a way of ensuring that otherwise-silenced voices have an opportunity to be heard.

It's not a pretty stick to hit your coworkers or classmates with.

#diversity #equity #inclusion #belonging

So far, I have rarely found anyone outside of academia speaking about #equity, #inclusion, #belonging, #organizationalchange, #TransformationalLeadership or #InclusiveLeadership. Where are you folx?

A friend of mine tagged me on a recent #LinkedIn post about White-identifying #EDI practitioners not doing enough as opposed to us who are from the #GlobalMajority. We have been doing this work for a while now and it never seems to be enough to #organizational leaders. Something has to give. If you haven't seen the post, here it is.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/saleha-khan-5b12263_dei-gaslighting-toxicpositivity-activity-7009226295511322624-tYdP

#DEI #DEIB #equity #inclusion #justice #belonging #inclusiveleadership #leadership #culturalintelligence #transformationalleadership

More random hashtags to tell you a little bit about me:

#epistemology
#capacitybuilding
#networkweaving
#onlinecommunity
#ursulakleguin
#loismcmasterbujold
#massachusetts
#foodie
#earlymusic
#progressivepolitics
#anthonytrollope
#walking
#aginginplace
#meditation
#studyofreligion
#disorganizedreligion
#valleygirl
#davidbowie
#nonprofit
#kindness
#compassion
#margaretoliphant
#equity
#inclusion
#belonging
#checkyourprivilege
#smashthepatriarchy
#donoharmbuttakenoshit
#beyondbelief

Hello #Mastodon! I too have undergone my #TwitterMigration. Thrilled to be here - and still there too. Me: Scientist, Executive, NED | Director, STEM Careers Strategy, Australian Academy of Technological Sciences & Engineering | Cofounder, Women in STEMM Australia | at the interface of industry, academia, education, government | She/Her #ElevateSTEM #IMNIS #STELR #STEMCareers #womeninSTEM #womeninSTEMM #Diversity #Inclusion #Belonging #Allyship 👋🏻👋🏾👋🏼