COMMENTARY: Your hometown, up close and personal

Tom Ehrich

August 5, 2008 at 9:53 p.m. ET

For your next vacation, I recommend the “stay-cation,” exploring where you live. A warning, however: be prepared for disruption. Here in New York, we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and took in a Broadway show. By experiencing reality, rather than escaping it, I feel more connected to everything around me, both aggravations and delights. Human rudeness, for example, was pervasive, yet so were grace and mercy. When you see home more deeply, you see beauty, grace and charm; but you also see greed, arrogance and laziness. Things look different when you see them as they are.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus,” and the founder of the Church Wellness Project, http://www.churchwellness.com. His Web site is http://www.morningwalkmedia.com.)

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