On this day of your life

I believe God wants you to know ...

... that all families have troubles in them. Problem-free families do not exist.

Indeed, the challenges in families are family's greatest gifts.

How else could we be healed of all the false notions we have

about what it means to be human? How else could we learn of

real love, and of true compassion, and of total acceptance?

There is, of course, nothing to learn. There is only

for us to remember what we have always known.

And families give us the greatest opportunity to do that.

Therefore, don't condemn "Uncle Charlie" or "Aunt Matilda".

Rather, embrace them even more fully,

and show them what it means to be fully human...

so that they can find their way

back home.