I enjoyed a cool glass of sparkling water with friends. Theirs is one of those rambling houses with plenty of doors, and comfy rooms with windows looking out into the garden. I came in the back door, without waiting to be let in. Our friendship comes with that benefit. I plopped into a kitchen chair and the conversation began. It did not let up until I had to leave for a sewing student who would soon arrive at my own back door, letting himself in without so much as a knock. 

The topic wandered into those arenas we sometimes keep the door closed on. 

"How do you get along with people you disagree with?" 

I am unsure whether my own mother explored such shadows. For Americans in the forties, things were obvious. Hitler was wrong. The Allies were right. At least that is the way she conveyed it to her half listening daughter. Such clarity did not also mean that life was easy. My father spent six months in Alaska, when he was twenty years younger than my son is, who is there now. Dad was rail thin, and perpetually sea sick. There was not the ream of photos that I am privy to, even before his grandson returns home. 

The women across the table nourished me. They spoke calmly of the bridges they have built that make discrepancies slide by beneath their feet. They find commonalities. Areas of solidarity. 

When you look into people's faces, there is not a "we" or a "they". At that moment, all of us are just human beings.

"... these differences would never happen if we considered love for the Lord and charity for our neighbor the chief concern of faith. If we did, those distinctions would simply be differences of opinion on the mysteries of faith. True Christians would leave such issues up to the individual and the individual's conscience. In their hearts they would say, "A person who lives as a Christian — who lives as the Lord teaches — is a real Christian." One church would come out of all the different churches, and all disagreement due to doctrine alone would vanish. Even the hatred of one denomination for another would melt away in a moment, and the Lord's kingdom would come on earth." Secrets of Heaven 1799, Emanuel Swedenborg