The Spiritual Child. The American writer Bruce Filer recently published a best-selling book

entitled The Secrets of Happy Families. It's an engaging work that uses research largely drawn

from fields like team building, problem solving and conflict resolution, showing how management

techniques can be used at home also to help make

families cohesive units that make space for personal growth. At the end, however, he makes a very

striking and unexpected point. The single most important thing you can do for your family

may be the simplest of all, develop a strong family narrative.

He quotes a study from Emory University that the more children know about their family's story,

the stronger their sense of control over their lives, the higher their self-esteem,

the more successfully they believe their family functions. A family narrative

connects children to something larger than themselves. It helps them make sense of how they fit

into the world that existed before they were born. It gives them the starting point of an identity.

That in turn becomes the basis of confidence. It enables children to say, this is who I am.

This is the story of which I am a part.

These are the people who came before me and whose descendant I am.

These are the roots of which I am the stem, reaching upward toward the sun.

Nowhere was this point made more dramatically than by Moses in this week's parisher.

The tenth plague is about to strike.

Moses knows that this will be the last.

Pharaoh will not merely let the people go.

He will urge them to leave.

So on God's command, he prepares the people for freedom, but he does so in a way that's unique.

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