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Bruce Anderson's avatar

I was thinking about each of these three kinds of place as being in relationship to belonging....as on-going interactions, feelings of acceptance, and a longing to engage.

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Anna-Marie Swan's avatar

Yes! I think the lens of 'belonging' is very deeply entangled within the different meanings of place as explored here.

Rereading the first section of this essay after reading your comment, I notice that I feel grief and frustration but also hope in relation to place as social location, because I don't feel a strong sense of belonging related to my ancestral line but I have a growing sense of belonging to 'home'.

I'm curious if you notice a difference in that sense of belonging related to different meanings of place Bruce?

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Bruce Anderson's avatar

For me, with your wonderful descriptions of different kinds of place, this is when callings become urgent. A chosen tree to sit under, a person to share certain stories with, an ancestral memory driving down a particular lane. Each of them evokes a felt sense of both home and belonging. These can be cumulative or singular in a geographic location, but also energetically felt sitting on a train in a foreign place.

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Anna-Marie Swan's avatar

Beautiful.

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