Does Locality have to be Physical?

I was frustrated at many ends in attempting to complete this project... I had no car and a busy week. I wasn't too comfortable just walking away from ODU and getting lost... as I'm sure we're all aware it's not exactly the best neighborhood around here. And when I was honest, ODU's not really what I consider my locality. Yes, it's where I am now and I do truly love it... but when I think about home and where I belong, I can't even put a physical place to it. I grew up in Upper Arlington and really loved most things about living there, but if someone told me tomorrow that Arlington no longer existed, I would be okay. The only place that really felt like home, was surprisingly a vacation spot. Every year my entire extended family spends the summer in Kiawah Island, South Carolina. Obviously to drive eleven hours to get lost there was unreasonable and likely impossible to accomplish in the time I had, I began to get really frustrated. Where IS my locality? Where do I feel like I belong, that I'm home? And I realized that for me where I belong isn't necessarily physical... I began to think of the comfort and sense of familiarity I feel when I enter into prayer and when I am with my family. And so I decided to lose myself in prayer, in the Scriptures and to sit back and observe my family at a deeper level than I usually do.
Now I finally came to this realization at the eleventh hour last night (actually at 1 AM after multiple trips to the laundry and time spent thinking, rethinking, and maybe a bit of frustrated yelling!) and grabbed my Bible, my journal and headed downstairs to Christ the King chapel. Everyday when I pray I follow the same path, I read the readings for the day, I journal on them, I read a chapter or two from a spiritual book that I'm reading and journal on that and on my life in general. So last night, I had to throw all of that out of the window so that I could really 'get lost'.
It started a little slow, I kept wanting to reach back to the safety of the books that I loved and knew well, Romans, John, Song of Songs, certain Psalms, Isiaiah, Job, Hebrews, Hosea, Corinthians... but I kept pushing myself to dive into ones that I didn't know as well Amos, Micah, Habakkuk, Haggai, Philemon, Titus and on and on... and I really did lose myself in the stories, especially those of the Old Testament. I discovered a lot, words that affected me in a profound way, passages that defended beliefs that I held dear but wasn't sure about their Scriptural foundation and I was reminded of the beauty and oneness of God... that a text written thousands of years ago can still speak to the human heart today.
I'm also a Charismatic Catholic, that means that I have a profound appreciation for the spiritual gifts of the Holy Spirit, a love for community and I enjoy praying through music. As I was reading I realized how much our songs are taken straight from Scripture and so I just started singing up on the altar, allowing myself to forget about if people could hear me or what they would think, or just how awful my voice really was... but to lose myself in total praise and worship of God.
It was beautiful. When I finally 'found' myself again, I saw that it was almost four in the morning... I truly got so lost in prayer that I was completely unaware of the time.
I was really appreciative of this experience, as a theology/philosophy major I often approach prayer with a very studious attitude, I have a set plan for what I'm going to accomplish and I do! But, losing myself in prayer was so rewarding, brought me so much peace and rejuvenation. It's definitely something I will do again!
Bear with me, as I am hanging out with my family for the Super Bowl and will post on my observings of them after that!