We are not of different faiths or different religions — we are Christians, all of us. We are not in different churches; we are in the same Church on different parts of the pew. Some of us are looking mostly through this window or that one, while some of us are on our way to have a look into a window from which the view of the Mystery that we cannot name looks a little different.
The walls that have been built between us — the ones built out of fear or pride or ignorance — can be taken down. And we who sit on this pew must do exactly that. We are the ones who can stop the daily dividing up of the Body of Christ into pieces and, instead, make it more possible for the Christ to be seen in our world.
We must seek out the things that we have in common and at the same time learn to honor the things that make us different. We must learn to take the things that we hold dear — our sense of community, our love for the scriptures, our hunger for prayer, our capacity for worship — and work to make them wide enough and deep enough to include others rather than keep them at a distance.
We must be willing to cultivate humility along with certainty, to practice toleration along with devotion, to seek patience along with piety.
We must learn to seek the face of Christ in those who are different as readily as we do in the faces of those who are like us.
We must learn to love one another.
— Robert Benson, The Body Broken