Anam Cara

The Architecture of Belonging

A Canadian who recently visited Ireland for the first time remarked on landing at Shannon Airport how the patchwork of fields had human proportion. Our world is indeed addicted to the vast expanse, be it the World Wide Web or globalization. With this relentless extension, we are losing our sense of the humane proportion. When a thing becomes overextended, it loses its individuality and presence and the power to speak to us. The landscape in the West of Ireland partly owes its intensity and diversity of presence to the proportion of its fields. Each field has its own unique shape and personality. When the walls frame a piece of land, they bring all that is in that field into sharp and individual relief: the stones, the bushes, and the gradient of the field. Patrick Kavanagh speaks of “the undying difference in the corner of a field.” The corner is always where a wall is most intense. The walls focus the field as an individual countenance in the landscape. It is no wonder many of the fields have their own names and stories.

Where there is neither frame nor frontier, it is difficult to feel any presence. This is our human difficulty with air. It is invisible and always the same blank nothingness. The sky is a massive expanse but it is rarely the same blue all over; it is brindled with cloud and colour and framed by the horizon. The human mind loves proportion and texture. Though we are largely unaware of it, we always need a frame around an experience in order to feel and live it. When you reflect on all the things you have known and experienced, you begin to see how each of them had its own different frame. Think of the time you met your partner and fell in love. This event happened at a certain time, in a certain place, and at a very particular phase in your life. At any other time, it could not have happened in this way. In the landscape of memory there are many fields. Each experience belongs in its own field. This is what hurts and saddens us so profoundly about death. When we lose people to death, they literally disappear. They vanish into thin air and become invisible to us. Our hearts reach towards them, but their new presence has no frame and is now no longer to be located in any one place that we can know or visit. Our voices call to them, yet no echo returns.

All of human experience comes to expression in some kind of form or frame. It is literally impossible to have an experience that did not have a form. The frame focuses individuality and gathers presence. Without this frame, neither identity nor belonging would ever be possible. Belonging presumes warmth and intimacy. You cannot belong in a vast, nameless space. There is no belonging in the air except for birds who ride its currents. Belonging is equally difficult in the ocean; the vast expanse of water is anonymous. It has no face, and only sailors who know it well can identify a particular place in its endless sameness. Where there is anonymity, there can be no real belonging. Of the four elements, the earth is the one with the greatest stable presence and thereness. Clay loves shape and texture. Of all the elements, the earth forms naturally into individual shapes, each of which is different. It is no wonder that the human body, being made of clay, is capable of such longing and belonging. The human self is intimacy. When we choose to give our hearts to or belong with someone, we do it only when we find a like echo in the intimacy of the other. Belonging seeks out affinity that has a definite form and frame. We feel we can trust that which has its own contour and individual autonomy of shape. This trust enables belonging.

The structures of our world bring the architecture of belonging to expression. In order to be, we need to belong. At work or among people, your social mask is on. When you come home, you are back where you belong, in your safe, sheltering space. Outside in the world you have to temper your longing and obey convention. When you come back home, you can relax and be yourself. This recognition is caught in the old phrase “A man’s home is his castle.” At an exhibition in London some years ago, there was a minimalist Zen painting suggestive of great presence and shelter. Over the painting was the caption “All the holy man needs is a shelter over his head.” The shelter of home liberates creativity and spirituality. When a person has lived in institutional spaces, there is great joy in privacy and celebration in the shelter of belonging. In a world where privacy is being eradicated, it is wonderful that we still have the shelter of our own homes, though modern technology has punctured that privacy.

All belonging is an extension of the first and closest belonging of living in your own body. The body is a home which shelters you. All other forms of belonging continue this first belonging. You can see this continuity of belonging in the rooms you inhabit, the places you live, the office, the church, the shop, the pub, etc. Each one of these spaces presents a different style of presence in the diverse architecture of belonging through which our lives move. A different level of belonging is offered and required in each of these spaces. Different longings are met and mirrored in each of these different spaces. You always live in a space that frames your belonging but is yet unable to fully reflect your longing. This ambivalence gives such vitality and passion to human presence.