As some of you know, my grandmother passed away with cancer this week. The past few days have been a time for Laura and me to grieve, to cry, to laugh, and to rejoice. We have felt the physical distance from home but also the nearness of heart with family.

There are too many things to say about grandmom. She made really great chocolate chip cookies. She knew exactly when to take them out of the oven. I can’t recall hearing her complain. She and granddad never missed one of our sporting events. She convinced my friends to eat apple pie with a slice of cheese on the top. I was never able to leave her house without taking something…a coke, a bag of cookies, a magazine, a handful of pictures. When grandmom got startled she would let out a big “whoop!” She gave us a particularly good “whoop” while playing cards at the beach many years ago. 50% of the time she called me “Tommy” or “Gary” (my dad’s name and my uncle’s name). I always liked that. She loved to help and to serve; and this is what stands out the most to me. I was always amazed with this.

Grandmom was a woman who put her faith in Jesus. Even now I can imagine her saying these words from Psalm 84:1-2, “What a beautiful home, God of the Angel Armies! I’ve always longed to live in a place like this, always dreamed of a room in Your house, where I could sing for joy to God—alive!”

I want to say “thanks” to all of you who have encouraged us with your words, your presence and your prayers.

What makes a family strong? What makes a family work well? What do strong families have in common?

In a 1995 article in Heart and Mind, Carla Dahl wrote some great thoughts related to this. There are no perfect families, but there seem to be some common characteristics of strong, thriving, and well connected families. The following are some modified quotes from Carla Dahl.

1) Strong Communication skills: Healthy families talk to one another clearly, directly and openly–especially about troublesome or hurtful issues and about values and guidelines for decisions members must make. Two integral components of good communication are our ability to be truthful about ourselves, and our ability to listen to one another without making premature assumptions.

2) Commitment to one another and to the family: In a healthy family, individuals are able and willing to balance personal preferences with family well-being, individual growth with family growth, independence with interdependence.

3) Ability to manage stress: Strong families are able to draw upon resources (faith, friends, time, information, money) at their disposal and articulate a shared, realistic perception of stresses. Through this shared process, stresses become meaningful and manageable.

4) Spiritual well-being: Many strong families take time to cultivate their values, identity, and beliefs, and to blend these core realities with their world.

5) Appreciation and affection: Strong families value and respect the unique contributions each member brings, and they are able to express that appropriately.

6) Time together: Time must be the arena in which the five other strengths are lived out. Healthy families use time to laugh, play, be spontaneous, and celebrate. This is quantity and quality.

In case you haven’t heard, Bono was invited to give the speech at the National Day of Prayer breakfast. This was one speech which I was eager to read. He delivered a great message, and I think many of us resonate with it. If you would like to read the whole speech, visit Sojourners here. There might be a free registration required, which is not a big deal.

Here’s some excerpts from different parts of his speech:

“Yes, it’s odd, having a rock star here - but maybe it’s odder for me than for you. You see, I avoided religious people most of my life. Maybe it had something to do with having a father who was Protestant and a mother who was Catholic in a country where the line between the two was, quite literally, a battle line. Where the line between church and state was…well, a little blurry, and hard to see.

I remember how my mother would bring us to chapel on Sundays… and my father used to wait outside. One of the things that I picked up from my father and my mother was the sense that religion often gets in the way of God.

Look, whatever thoughts you have about God, who He is or if He exists, most will agree that if there is a God, He has a special place for the poor. In fact, the poor are where God lives.

God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.

It’s not a coincidence that in the scriptures, poverty is mentioned more than 2,100 times. It’s not an accident.

And finally, it’s not about charity after all, is it? It’s about justice…..And that’s too bad. Because you’re good at charity. Americans, like the Irish, are good at it. We like to give, and we give a lot, even those who can’t afford it. But justice is a higher standard.”

“I do not find in myself the power to be happy merely by doing what I like. On the contrary, if I do nothing except what pleases my own fancy I will be miserable almost all the time. This would never be so if my will had not been created to use its own freedom in the love of others.” -Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island

You may recall from our New Year post that a goal for Laura and me in 2006 is to read through the Bible together. I’ll occassionally write something about this…something that we’re learning and are thinking about. We’re in the middle of Genesis now, and I’ve been learning some things from Abraham’s life.

When Abraham and Sarai were very old, too old to have children, God told them that they were going to have a baby. And they laughed. And I probably would too. (Genesis 17:17; 18:12) I’ve been thinking about how faith begins and grows. And I’ve enjoyed the following thoughts from F. Buechner about this laughter:

“Why did the two old crocks laugh? They laughed because they knew only a fool would believe that a woman with one foot in the grave was soon going to have her other foot in the maternity ward. They laughed because God expected them to believe it anyway. They laughed because God seemed to believe it. They laughed because they half-believed it themselves. They laughed because laughing felt better than crying. They laughed because if by some crazy chance it just happened to come true, they would really have something to laugh about, and in the meanwhile it helped keep them going.” (Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking)

Today is epiphany, and my friend Tom wrote some nice thoughts about this day on his blog.

“All desires but one can fail. The only desire that is infallibly fulfilled is the desire to be loved by God. We cannot desire this efficaciously without at the same time desiring to love Him, and the desire to love Him is a desire that cannot fail. Merely by desiring to love Him, we are beginning to do that which we desire. Freedom is perfect when no other love can impede our desire to love God.” -Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island

“If we are too anxious to find absolute perfection in created things we cease to look for perfection where alone it can be found: in God. The secret of the imperfection of all things, of their inconsistancy, their fragility, their falling into nothingness, is that they are only a shadowy expression of the one Being from Whom they receive their being.

If we are too eager to have everything, we will almost certainly miss even the one thing we need. Happiness consists in finding out precisely what the “one thing necessary” may be, in our lives, and in gladly relinquishing all the rest.”

-Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island, chapter 7