When I was seven years old, I spit out the body of Christ.

It wasn’t an act of rebellion, only the reflex of an unselfconscious girl I must have been once. My Sunday school teacher asked for a volunteer to demonstrate how to take communion, and I volunteered for everything then. She told us it was bread, but as soon as I tasted the wafer, I was sure there’d been a mistake—the sliver sticking to my tongue and then, suddenly, to my outstretched palm, had to be cardboard.

As of late, I feel that so much of the national discourse has fallen along divides that I know all too well. Politics pull out our deepest beliefs about the world and our religious values. I see a wide range of these. My facebook feed is chock full of staunch conservatives, Church going good people who vote right, liberals, and change-making, activist liberals (labels that I give out lovingly for the sake of this post — not to box anyone in to a complete identity). It ranges the spectrum. So when I have read many commentaries on the recent election and the country’s reaction to it, I notice how many highlight the inability for people to listen to one another and even conceptualize in any way where the other person may be.