Humanity is in urgent need of practices that help take down the walls and bridge the chasms that divide us. My work with the United Religions Initiative has taught me many. I’d like to share one I learned in Brazil.

In May 1997, 120 Brazilians, and a few foreigners, converged on Itatiaia, a lush national park in the rainforest halfway between Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.  The intention of the gathering was to have the diverse participants come to know each other better, to share their dreams of a better world and to plan cooperative action to help those dreams become reality.

Some in this group already knew each other. But for the most part, they were strangers, gathering with a mixture of hope and fear, trust and uncertainty, eagerness and resistance. All were ready to invest. No one was sure how much.

The spectacular setting helped. The meeting room floated above a vast forest reflecting every shade of green imaginable, with flashes of bright color as birds played against a constantly changing backdrop of cloud and sky. There were no barriers. It felt as though we could see forever.

Though Brazil is a country that tolerates, indeed often celebrates difference, its history and present make clear that there are plenty of human-made walls and chasms that divide its different people – race, culture and religion being three primary ones.

By intention, the people who gathered represented this diversity. They came from all over Brazil. From big cities, small towns and the Amazon. Black, brown and white.  Materially affluent and materially poor. Men and women. Young and old. With impressive contemporary mainstream education and extraordinary training in ancient tribal wisdom. Lay professionals – educators, community organizers and activists, politicians, artists and artisans, healers, psychologists –  and spiritual leaders.

In all, 35 religious and spiritual traditions were represented. When we gathered for an opening ritual, there were people of diverse Indigenous nations, some wearing headdresses of brightly colored feathers and others in conventional clothes; Afro-Brazilians, some resplendent in their ritual white and others in conventional clothes; and Euro-Brazilians in a wide array of religious and conventional garb.

The diversity couldn’t have been more obvious; and it was easy for an outside observer to see how participants tended to cluster with those who appeared to be most like them and to avoid those whom they knew only as negative stereotypes forged through a history of wounding, hostility, exploitation and mutual avoidance.