I was a member of a New York City writing group many years ago. A wonderful and highly original Filipina playwright was also a member, and once she expressed her views about multi-culturalism, a staple of the City’s artistic scene.

“Multi-culturalism,” she snorted. “The trouble with this country is that it doesn’t have its own culture. What it has is a mixture of all these different things, but there’s nothing here of its own, everything is taken from other people and other countries.”

It could be that this came after a glass of wine or two, for her and me both, but I remember feeling funny about it. She was successful, having had her plays produced in New York by Filipino compatriots. True, none were Broadway smashes, they appeared in small theaters Off-Broadway (often where the best plays come from), but they had an audience. They were written, directed, and produced, and yet here she was, voicing her dissatisfaction with the multi-cultural aspects of this country.

My friend and fellow culprit, Roshi Michel Dobbs, told me of his conversation with our dear Lakota friend, Violet Catches, just before we flew to Minneapolis. She told him that they’re now afraid of ICE agents surging into Rapid City, South Dakota.

“That’s funny,” says he. “I wasn’t aware that Rapid City has many immigrants.”

“Michel,” says the wonderful Violet, “For us, other than the Lakota people and a few Mexicans who arrived here many, many years ago, everyone is an immigrant.”

Duh.

We can all make our individual lists of what’s uniquely American. For me, jazz is on that list, baseball, our great library system—and the fact that we’re all immigrants (this last is also true for Canada). Ours is an immigrant culture: the religious traditions, the foods, the languages, the media, the holidays and street festivals—like my friend said years ago, it’s all from different countries and cultures. The only identifiable native culture we put in reservations long ago.

For an immigrant nation, that raises the question: What do we agree on?

It reminds me of the exchange I had with Bernie Glassman so many years ago in, of all places, the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. He turned to me and said: “People always like to say that we all have much in common—we want shelter, we want food, we love our children, etc. In my opinion, the only thing that I see that we have in common is that we’re all different.”

I saw that even in the organization of that retreat. In the early years we had different individuals publicizing and organizing the retreat from their respective countries: France, England, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, and the US. They sometimes fought among themselves because they, Westerners all, had different styles and opinions about how the retreat should be run, and I would hear comments like: If those Swiss start running things, we’re out of here, or: We can’t possibly do what the Poles say, they’re crazy. Here we were, bearing witness to how the Nazis dealt with differences, and we were fighting among ourselves about how to run a retreat that commemorated that.

In Minneapolis/St. Paul last week I saw something very different: Residents of those cities, members of different religious affiliations, skin color, genders, and ethnic origins came together to protect residents of color. Michel joined a small group of big women, including trans, protecting those going in and out of the church and calling themselves Sequeerity.

It wasn’t just about protecting ourselves—our members, people who look and live like us—but everyone. Buddhists, Native Americans, Christians, Somalis, Latinos—one big force protecting everyone. And it was wonderful to be led by the only real natives around, the American Indians, that Saturday. They were showing us what noble hospitality really means.

I think this is our job in the United States. Given our immigrant roots, we have the remarkable challenge of building bridges and finding a common language. That may be less difficult than you think. We don’t have to talk politics when we get together, we can talk children, talk social media or AI, talk local taxes and housing issues, talk about small things we share and take so much for granted. Build those bridges. Don’t let the White House and whatever news outlets we use—including “progressive” ones—rile us up and turn us against our neighbors.

I’ve been noticing that of all the many articles on the face-off between ICE agents and Minnesotans, there was remarkably little written about how well the resistance was organized and how empowered they felt. In the middle of havoc and even terror, they held their ground. A few gave into rage; most did not. The media preferred to report on the former.

This is the challenge facing me as a Zen Peacemaker. Right now, our own neighborhood has begun to organize like the people in Minneapolis, with meetings and trainings in various towns, discussions with local police and politicians, studying legal remedies that the state has, etc. Moms, grandmoms, Bernie Sanders activists—people are showing up.

Trouble is, we begin to build a progressive club. We reach out to all who feel as we do and don’t worry about those who don’t. Those excluded create their own club, and the two don’t meet.

So even as I begin to work to protect immigrants here, how do I not exclude? How do I open channels with people who see things differently from me? A friend last night told me that her sister is convinced that all those taken by ICE agents are dangerous criminals. How do I have a conversation with her? Not by daring her to show me the data, perhaps not even about ICE. Instead, we may start by comparing notes on how both of us are at an older part of our lives, both of us with losses of husbands. Does that make us feel vulnerable? Does that make us feel afraid?

That, for me, is where spiritual work lies. Many will join us to protect immigrants, but who is ready to reach out to the others? Who is ready, as we say in one of our liturgies, “to see ourselves as Other and Other as ourselves?”