On the day after the election, Delores Handy, a commentator on WBUR, began her reflection, "Never. I never expected this in my lifetime." She continued with remembrances of growing up in the Jim Crow South, of white and African American drinking fountains and restrooms, of separate places to sit in movie theaters.

"Now," she said, "for many Americans there is no you, and there is no us. Our children play together. We work together. It all began when we started going to school together, getting to know each other, learning to respect and trust each other. A black man running for president - that's a direct consequence of us knowing each other."

I, too, spent part of my childhood in the pre-Civil Rights South, but there was a big difference. I was white. It was that experience that first opened my eyes to the injury and injustice of how prejudice (pre-judgment) limits our capacity to know and understand one another.

When my one of my daughters was 3 or 4, she surprised me by announcing firmly, "I hate so and so!" (a new person in her play group.) Taken aback, I asked, "Do you know her?" "Well, no," she said. Out of nowhere or somewhere, I responded, "Honey, sometimes we hate what we don't know - someone new or different. It makes us feel safe, when maybe what we really feel is a little afraid." Even at her very young age I think she could begin to understand that her hate/fear was coming from unfamiliarity with someone who looked or seemed different.

There are so many differences that potentially can divide us, and keep us from knowing one another - first among them, our religious beliefs. One of the wonderful benefits of the Area Interfaith Group is its commitment to listening deeply to one another, and learning. It is sometimes hard to do, to listen non-reactively, non-judgmentally to wide differences of belief. What is wonderful and so hopeful is that this is so possible. Listening to and learning from diverse voices is foundational to my Unitarian Universalist faith, which calls me to a wide and inclusive love, and an understanding that difference can be enriching, and not threatening. Again and again, I discover that through understanding others' beliefs, one comes to understand one's own faith more deeply.

The Sacred Scriptures of all the major world religions caution about humankind's almost instinctive suspicion of what is perceived as "other," caution humanity about being quick to judge.

In Buddhist scripture we read, "The fault of others is easily perceived, but that of oneself is difficult to perceive; a man winnows his neighbor's faults like chaff, but his own fault he hides, as a cheat hides the bad die from the gambler," (The Dhammapada.) In Christian scripture we read, "Why do you see the speck in your brother's eye, but fail to notice the beam in your own eye?" (Matthew 7:3).

One of the most hopeful qualities of human beings is our capacity to change, to continue to grow and deepen our understanding of the world, ourselves and others. On this journey, I have found that one must always be alert to those times when that almost instinctive impulse to judge is a first response. When that happens, it is likely that I will be less open to understanding the truth of another's reality.

There are tales the world over that remind us of how fears and suspicions prejudice our perspective: There is the tale about a farmer who lost his ax and suspected his neighbor's son had stolen it. The farmer watched the youth closely and his suspicion increased.

"Why," he thought, "He walks like a thief, he talks like a thief and he even looks like a thief."

But a few days later the farmer discovered his ax in a distant field, just where he'd left it some days before. When he returned home, he noticed his neighbor's son at work in the yard. "Amazing," he thought. "The boy no longer walks like a thief, talks like one, nor looks like a thief." He looked like any other boy."

At the end of her piece on NPR Delores Handy said, "Attitudes have and are changing. While it's clear they have a long way to go we now recognize that acceptance is directly proportional to how much we've gotten to know each other."

One of the most important ways of living religiously in the world of diversity that surrounds us in this 21st century is to live with respect for the worth and dignity of every person. It is to respect our diverse paths toward wholeness and holiness; and to understand our various understandings of God not as a threat, but as a rich and colorful celebration of spiritual diversity.

The Rev. Sandra D. Fitz-Henry is the minister of Murray Unitarian Universalist Church in Attleboro, and is in her 13th year of ministry with that church. She previously served congregations in New York and Pennsylvania, and loves working in this parish, sharing the ministry with so many strong lay leaders. She is the mother of three grown children, and has one grandchild. A Boston native, she grew up in New York, Nashville and Los Angeles and lived in Denmark, Spain and England. She was an artist, religious educator and hospital chaplain, before entering parish ministry full time.