What do you love? What do you value? What will you struggle to protect?

So much of human action and thinking is driven not by hate or anger but by the urge to protect what we love. By asking and sharing our answers to “what do you love,” each of us has a chance to name and to hear what matters most to us and why. It’s harder to argue when we start from what we love.

What have you lost? What keeps you up at night? What has been lost in your community? What do you miss?

People across the spectrum understand the experience of loss: the loss of money, jobs, status, national identity, cultural identity, a sense of security, a sense that they matter, etc. By asking and sharing our answers to “what have you lost,” we become curious about what each of us has lost, what we’re grieving, and perhaps what we’re trying hard to get back.

Where does it hurt? Where have you been wounded by life? What makes you angry? How or where do you feel that pain and anger?

Regardless of our race, gender, age, ballot choice, earnings, or location, we all know what it is to hurt. By asking and sharing our answers to “where does it hurt,” we become curious about how each of us has been wounded by life, by others, and by social forces, instead of assuming “others” are fine and only I or my group is hurting. We offer up our experiences and learn to offer one another compassion.

What do you dream? What do you hope for the future – for yourself, your family, your community, and your nation?

We all dream of a better world, as we imagine it from our own personal perspective, but we don’t get to hear or share that vision very often. Instead, people often assume that their own ideal picture of life, community, and society is shared by everyone or that certain others can’t possibly want the same kind of future they do. By asking “what do you dream,” we become open to hear and share each other’s dreams for our families, communities, society, and ourselves.

Level 1: Simple Conversations

• Conversations Across Difference: Keep having these conversations within and beyond your circles
• Braver Angels: With Malice Toward None: Simple small group conversations designed to connect “red and blue” Americans around mostly secular topics

Level 2: Conversations and Learning Across Difference

• Civil Discourse: Make Me an Instrument of Peace: Five-session curriculum from the Office of Government Relations and Department of Faith Formation for bridging partisan divides, learning from others, and enlarging the sacred space for debate
• The Difference Course: Five-session course on following Jesus in the face of conflict and seeing transformation through everyday encounters, produced by the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Reconciliation Programme
• Love God-Love Neighbor: Episcopal Migration Ministries’ training in welcoming work through community organizing, awareness, advocacy, and relationship with refugees and immigrants

Level 3: Deeper Reckoning Around Difference and Racial Identity

• Sacred Ground: 10-session film-based dialogue series for small groups to learn and reckon with U.S. racial history and their own racial identity, and to share stories on sacred ground – especially useful for engaging White communities and crossing barriers of class and ideology

Level 4: Related Campaigns for Healing, Prayer and Action

• Pray on MLK: Nationwide evangelical-led campaign organizing groups dedicated to racial healing to take specific actions on January 18, including sharing conversations and meals, forming a “wall of prayer,” and hosting “hope rallies”
• The People’s Inauguration: The day after the presidential inauguration, groups and individuals recommit to healing and building a nation with liberty and justice for all. Features “The People’s Inauguration: Becoming America” digital event, as well as teach-ins, artist offerings, concerts, vigils, and home rituals – organized by Revolutionary Love Project and Valarie Kaur