Everyone Belongs

Every Thanksgiving we travel back to my husband’s home state of Arkansas where the national time of feasting coincides with the opening day of duck hunting season. In a cozy cabin on acres upon acres of flooded woodlands, some combination of our immediate family, followed by his extended family, descends upon the rural landscape.

The closest grocery store is 30 minutes away and it’s a drive I sometimes make daily. It’s a beautiful one with miles and miles of flooded fields where some of the world’s largest migrations of waterfowl make a pitstop while traveling from Canada to Mexico. I’m also an introvert and it’s a small cabin so a brief respite in the car never hurts.

During COVID, we lived here for six weeks with our then-younger children. It’s strangely some of our fondest memories, despite such a bizarre time. The soundtrack of our lives that Spring was The Highwomen album (by Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby, Maren Morris, and Amanda Shires), so it’s always my go-to on my drives.

This week while driving into town, this line from A Crowded Table, which I’ve listened to hundreds of times, grabbed me in a new way, “Everyone’s a little broken and everyone belongs.” I started to think about how true it is of my own friends and family and then about the greater plight of this thing called being human. As I’ve shared before, the holidays often bring for me – despite loving all of the same festivity as the next person – an overwhelming sadness. And certainly not of my own warm, well-fed, all-needs-met experience of them but rather how glaring it becomes that that’s not the case for millions and millions of people. The needs of the world, the sadness of the world, and in this week particularly, the hunger of the world can, if I allow it, become too much for me.

As I listened to the words of a Crowded Table, tears filled my eyes. But then, in that moment, the geese outside became louder than the music. (This is common in these parts as over 1,000,000 white-fronted geese descend into the fields in November alone.) Immediately I thought of the poem by Mary Oliver, and the truth of its beauty-amidst suffering-drowned out any sadness.

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

To you and yours, however beautiful or painful that may be, you belong and I wish you a very
Happy Thanksgiving.

~Katie