To be intentional. To be deliberate. To live here. To root here. To bloom here. To flourish here.

That’s the assignment and the art of living locally. To deliberately plant my roots and care how my living makes the locale better at the same time it makes my life better.

This becomes the Peace I can make. This becomes the Peace I can live in — because I know it. Or maybe those sentences should be reversed. I can begin to understand what Peace this Valley needs when I pay close attention to it.

And when I go away from it, as much as I love to travel, I long to know what’s happening back here at home. And extrovert that I am… home often means community. Not always but often.

A friend posited when I was younger, that I could always travel because I had such a good and healthy center in my family. Now, many of the people who formed that center are gone. Now I that I’m building my own healthy center, it’s harder to leave and sweeter to return. Sweet Wonder. Sweet Peace. Sweet Home.