PASTOR DAVE’S MUSINGS FROM THE HEARTLAND

June 2, 2021

LOVE WHERE YOU LIVE

Introduction

How can you love the place where you live?  Perhaps, you already love where you live and could enumerate the reasons why.  Perhaps, you are not happy with your present situation and would like to move somewhere you could feel more at home.  Perhaps, you are indifferent with where you live and think it’s as good as any other place you might live.  How we feel about where we live can have a dramatic impact on our emotional, physical, relational, and spiritual health.

In her book, This Is Where You Belong: Finding Home Wherever You Are, Melody Warnick shares out of her own experiences how one might go about learning to love the place where one presently lives.  The Plymouth Public Library has chosen Warnick’s book for its “One Book, One City” program this June.  There will a variety of settings in which the book will be the focus, climaxing with a P-Town Block Party which sounds like fun.

When Melody moved to Blacksburg, Virginia, where her husband had taken a new teaching position, she took the opportunity to reflect on her five previous moves.  In the past, she had seen each move as an opportunity to start over.  Things would definitely be better in each new situation.  Unfortunately, after a couple of years in the new place, she found herself once again ready to move.  Why would the move to Blacksburg, Virginia, be any different?

Warnick concluded that her stay in Blacksburg would be just as disappointing as her previous stays if she did not do something to make the outcome different.  Therefore, Melody made a conscience choice to find how she could make Blacksburg her home, a place where she really belonged.  In her book she tells what she discovered and what she did to learn to love Blacksburg.

For Melody one of the keys to feeling a sense of belonging is the power of attachment. “Humans are instinctively driven to form connections with places.” (This is Where You Belong, p. 16)  Eventually Warnick distilled her research concerning place attachment into the following “master list of ten basic place attachment behaviors that were relatively doable and potentially enjoyable and that (she) hoped would help (her) put down roots.” (This Is Where You Belong, p. 22)

1. Walk more
2. Buy local.
3. Get to know my neighbors.
4. Do fun stuff.
5. Explore nature.
6. Volunteer
7. Eat local.
8. Become more political.
9. Create something new.
10. Stay loyal through hard times.

I have lived in seventeen different places.  Eight of my moves were when I was appointed to a new church by my United Methodist bishop.  As I read Melody’s book I realized that I had done a number of her suggestions with each of my moves.  There were several it would have been good to try.

There were also a few I found helpful which she did not address.

Over the next ten weeks I would like to look at each of Melody’s place attachment behaviors.  Following a short summary of the behavior I will be sharing my own experience putting the behavior into practice.  Then I will share some examples of putting the behavior into practice in specific places. There will be a summary of the series on August 18.

If you have just moved to a new location or have only been in your present situation for a short time, hopefully these musings will help you make choices which will help you to learn to love where you live.  If you have lived where you are for a long time, perhaps these musings will help you to become reacquainted with your situation and will deepen your attachment with it.

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