Becoming a Citizen ,What Does it Mean to Belong.

Becoming a Citizen: What Does It Mean to Belong?

This week, after 23 years of living in this beautiful country of Aotearoa New Zealand, I became a New Zealand citizen.

There was something unexpectedly  thought provoking about saying the words, taking the oath, and receiving the certificate.

I arrived here carrying the accent, memories, stories and landscape of another country within me. And now Aotearoa New Zealand is not simply the place where I live.

It is home. At least, I think it is.

Because home has always been a strange concept for me. The idea of belonging has never been straightforward.

Perhaps for some, home is obvious — the place where their story began, the streets they know instinctively, the landscape that feels familiar.

But what happens when you have one place of origin with much complicated history in it’s name -Northern Ireland, Ulster, Britain, Eire, The North of Ireland- 

And then I move to another.

Can we belong to more than one place?

And perhaps the deeper question is:

What does it actually mean to belong?

Belonging isn’t the same as fitting in.

Brené Brown makes a distinction I love:

"Fitting in is changing who we are to be accepted; true belonging asks us to remain ourselves."

How much of our lives is spent learning to fit in?

We read the room. We learn what makes us acceptable. We become good at adapting, sometimes losing touch with the question:

Who am I when I don’t need to fit anywhere?

As a counsellor, I see how deeply the longing for belonging runs.

We can be surrounded by people and still feel alone.

We can belong to families, churches, workplaces and communities and still wonder whether we are truly accepted.

Sometimes we become the version of ourselves we think others will welcome. But when belonging requires us to abandon parts of ourselves, it isn’t really belonging.

Perhaps true belonging begins with learning to belong to ourselves.

My understanding of this concept with in faith has also changed.

I once experienced Christianity as something where belonging could feel conditional — dependent on believing the right things, behaving the right way and staying within certain boundaries.

But I have come to wonder whether God is much less interested in our conformity than we sometimes imagine. I somehow doubt God is standing at the entrance to belonging asking whether we’ve got everything right.

Richard Rohr’s writing about the True Self has helped me here. He describes the spiritual journey as discovering the self beneath the layers of fear, expectation and the identities we construct — the self already held in Divine Love.

Perhaps spiritual maturity isn’t becoming someone else. Perhaps it is becoming more fully who we already are. 

Pema Chödrön speaks about the uncertainty and groundlessness of life — the reality that we cannot create permanent security for ourselves. Everything changes: relationships, families, bodies, beliefs and identities.

Perhaps belonging doesn’t mean finally arriving somewhere where everything feels certain. Perhaps it means being able to say:

I don’t know exactly where I’m going, but I can stay here with myself .

So what does it mean to become a citizen of a country?

Practically, citizenship brings rights, responsibilities and formal recognition that I belong here.

But emotionally, it’s bigger than the paperwork.

Citizenship must be like a marker in a much longer story.

It says:

You have lived here. You are contributing  here. You have made relationships here. You have loved, worked and built a life here.

You have become part of this place.

And perhaps citizenship isn’t so much about being given belonging as recognising that belonging has already been happening.

In friendships, family, community, work, cups of coffee and ordinary daily life.

Perhaps belonging happens gradually, until one day we look around and realise:

“Ah…I’m home”

But I don’t want citizenship to become a boundary that says these people are mine and those people are not.

If anything, becoming a citizen makes me think more deeply about what kind of citizen I want to be. How I want this to look in my day to day life 

If the Christian story is ultimately about reconciliation, hospitality and radical love,It is also about citizenship. Surely the church should be a place where people don’t have to perform their worthiness before they are welcomed.

Jesus continually moved towards people who had been pushed to the edges. He expanded the circle. This is what our faith should do.

It doesn’t make the circle smaller.It makes the circle larger.

Maybe that is why becoming a citizen feels significant. I have spent much of my life wondering who I am, where I belong, what I believe and where home might be.

And perhaps I am beginning to understand that belonging isn’t a destination.

It is a practice.

It is something we learn, receive and offer to others. 

Brené Brown reminds me that true belonging asks us not to abandon ourselves.

And perhaps this idea helps me

I belong because I’m okay being me.

This week I became a citizen of Aotearoa New Zealand. After 23 years, I was formally welcomed into somewhere I have slowly become part of.

I am aware that the word belonging still carries some tenderness for me.

Perhaps that’s okay.

And perhaps the deepest homecoming is not finally finding the one place where we perfectly fit.

Perhaps it is discovering that I no longer need to fit.

I simply need to arrive as myself.

Home may be less a place we find, and more a place within ourselves — where we finally stop asking, “Do I belong?” and believe , “I am here.”