Belonging to your place

I love this passage from Gail Straub's book, Circle of Compassion: Meditations for Caring for Our Self and Our World and I use it in my Eco-Spirituality course:

We have forgotten what we can count on. The natural world provides refuge.... Each of us harbors a homeland, a landscape we naturally comprehend. By understanding the dependability of place, we can anchor ourselves as trees. —Terry Tempest Williams

• I put down deep roots where I live. I belong to my place, this is the very grounding for my rhythm of compassion. This helps me belong to myself. 
• To create my sense of place I begin by becoming intimate with the particulars of my home landscape: the plants, creatures, stones, trees, buildings, landmarks, and people.
• I create my sense of place as I walk every inch of my surroundings, feed the birds, or plant indigenous herb gardens.
• Today I practice mindful intimacy with my place as I stop and notice the subtle details of the sounds, sights, smells, and textures that surround me.
• This week I study the maps and history of my region. I am falling in love with my place. I write a love poem to my home landscape.
• Over time I fall in love with the light and shadow of the days and the cycles of the seasons. As I learn to live in harmony with the cycles of my place, I begin to live in harmony with my own seasons and my own light and shadow.
• Today I focus on Terry Tempest William’s wise words about place, “Each of us harbors a homeland, a landscape we naturally comprehend. By understanding the dependability of place, we can anchor ourselves as trees.”
• There are few things in life as steadfast as my place. It is my ground for meaning. As I belong to my place, I belong to myself. I am rooted in my rhythm knowing when to pay attention to myself, and when to focus on the world.