I've always assumed that given equivalent access to the same facts, reasonable people will tend to come to similar conclusions--perhaps differing in approach, but not in core concept. All that's required is a desire to learn, a willingness to listen, and a modicum of goodwill.

As such, I've watched with dismay as public debate over topics like health care, political appointments, California's Proposition 8, and the propriety of HBO airing dramatized excerpts from the LDS temple ceremony in its popular Big Love series have rapidly devolved into exasperated exchanges of established and well-rehearsed positions lobbed across a vast conceptual chasm with little apparent effort to trace the steps in between.

While writing my own exasperated response last year to a friend regarding Big Love--someone who just refused to see what I was saying--I began to wonder whether we were actually participating in the same discussion. We seemed to perceive the basic idea of what constitutes the sacred so differently as to beg any hope of shared understanding.

As I explored that idea, a series of my own experiences came together in my mind to recast the question--and my ideas about ways to approach an answer.

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