We're all related

Today my best friend since kindergarten emailed me that we may be related, since she saw on some gravestones in Stonebridge, MA, that some of her ancestors married some people with my maiden name (and my grandfather is from that area). That was cool to think about, in addition to the facts that
- she and I have the same first name, the same color hair and eyes
- we were born 10 days apart, the same year
- our fathers have the same first name
- we each have a brother with the same first name as our father
- we attended school together from kindergarten through 12th grade
- our dads both went to the same college
- our moms both went to the same college
- she went to our dads' alma mater, and I to our moms'
- we both grew up in Switzerland, went to college in Massachusetts and then stayed in the U.S. after college

Being related would be a cool thing to add to the list, and unexpected after knowing each other almost 30 years.

At Christmas my sister-in-law was reading The Five People You Meet in Heaven. She liked it, I think. I like being related to her, since she married my brother. She's kind and gentle and thoughtful and a great mom.

I haven't read the book, but I liked this quote from it that I saw via cow pi:

Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know. (p. 49)

I would have to agree with that. So my sister-in-law was already family before she married in, and my friend from Geneva is family whether the geneaologies reveal it or not...we all share the same Creator and come from the same dust.

This also means the homeless man I saw wandering on the street today scratching his back is family. What am I going to do about that?