The spiritual life of the family also spans the generations. Beyond the threshold of the door through which the ever changing life of the family passes, is the hallway. Like the corridors in a medieval castle, the walls of the hallway are lined with the family's heraldry. Here the family identity is expressed in the dozens of faces that peer from photographs or painted portraits: a picture of the bride and groom, a snapshot of the first child in the arms of her aunt, a protrait with all the family members formally posed wearing their Sunday best, a picture of the high school prom, a college graduate in solemn black robes, grandparents standing in front of the farm back home, an uncle in military dress who died in a long-ago war.

The spiritual life of the family encompasses all these faces. An intertwining of destiny, of shared gifts, of collectively suffered pain makes the family a profoundly interdependent entity.

Wendy M. Wright, Sacred Dwelling