It is not just about the need to identify victims of specific events and the experience but to also accept that this includes many others who consider themselves victims too. We urgently need the mechanisms to deal with the differences as they emerge because we want to progress together.

Instead of ignoring our differences, we need to accept and transcend them.

You know, if you and I would really want to make a real difference in this world today, to make a real difference for God and good, all we need to do is to learn how, and to begin to discipline ourselves, to treat our neighbors just the way we treat ourselves, would want to be treated. It's that simple and it's that difficult.

We need not agree on everything, but we must find a way to handle our differences so that they do not become divisive.

Differences are not intended to separate, to alienate. We are different precisely in order to realize our need of one another.

Since whatever we do has to be part of a team, part of a community, we have to attempt to bring together those who have the same conviction, see the same things. Then it becomes a matter of time, when one or the other will prevail. Fortunately, there is all this diversity, and if not for that, problems would not be solved.

When we come together, we try to search for a collective effort in spite of our differences. We are split and scattered by the ocean, but we must find ways to tackle our issues.

[W]e can have progress together, but we have to acknowledge the wrongs of the past and we have to work hard to make things better together.

… a moral consideration of the utmost importance for us: we must respect individual differences, yet we must coordinate, work together, and act as one.

In these downbeat times, we need as much hope and courage as we do vision and analysis; we must accent the best of each other even as we point out the vicious effects of our racial divide and pernicious consequences of our maldistribution of wealth and power. We simply cannot enter the twenty-first century at each other's throats, even as we acknowledge the weighty forces of racism, patriarchy, economic inequality, homophobia, and ecological abuse on our necks. We are at a crucial crossroad in the history of this nation — and we either hang together by combating these forces that divide and degrade us or we hang separately. Do we have the intelligence, humor, imagination, courage, tolerance, love, respect, and will to meet the challenge? Time will tell. None of us alone can save the nation or world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so.

We have to heal the divides in our country. Not just on guns. But on race. Immigration. And more. That starts with listening to each other. Hearing each other. Trying, as best we can, to walk in each other's shoes.

In these downbeat times, we need as much hope and courage as we do vision and analysis; we must accent the best of each other even as we point out the vicious effects of our racial divide and pernicious consequences of our maldistribution of wealth and power. We simply cannot enter the twenty-first century at each other's throats, even as we acknowledge the weighty forces of racism, patriarchy, economic inequality, homophobia, and ecological abuse on our necks. We are at a crucial crossroad in the history of this nation--and we either hang together by combating these forces that divide and degrade us or we hang separately. Do we have the intelligence, humor, imagination, courage, tolerance, love, respect, and will to meet the challenge? Time will tell. None of us alone can save the nation or world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so. (p 109)

We need to bring issues together because we need to bring people together to build the power necessary to create change. (page 140)

You gotta make a change. Its time for us as a people to start making some changes, lets change the way we eat, lets change the way we live, and lets change the way we treat each other. You see the old way wasn't working so its on us, to do what we gotta do to survive.