Wonderful New Jersey

This Christmas Eve morning the front page of my local paper, The Star-Ledger, proclaimed, "It's New Jersey's wonderful story."   It turns out that the story on which the Christmas film, It's a Wonderful Life, is based was written by New Jerseyan Philip Van Doren Stern, and set in the small New Jersey town of Califon, in Hunterdon County.  It's a wonderful state!

But this time of year we also miss our dear departed -- and we've just added to that list Joe Thomasberger, a wonderful minister, friend, leader, consoler, and husband to Becky Doggett.  It seems to me the movie has a lesson for our mourning -- to appreciate all that happened because they were alive and to open our hearts to the satisfaction of a wonderful life.  Can you imagine how much darker life would have been without each of them?  Without my son Bobby, for example, I never would have appreciated the color Orange the way I do, and I say that having gown up in Orange, NJ.  For those of us who are grieving this holiday, it's a lovely thing to imagine and to feel gratitude!