A COUPLE OF YEARS ago, I was going through some of my mother's things. And I came across a clutch of papers that were in the form of letters she had written to herself, in trying to think through various issues. And one of these happened to be race relations.

She was probably in her late teens or early 20s when she wrote that. And she just kind of reasoned with herself about race relations and the fact that people should be able to exist harmoniously together. That there shouldn't be a sense of division. This would have been probably the early 1940s.

She talked specifically about interracial marriage, and obviously that was so much of a no-no at that time that it was probably not discussed, let alone done. And yet, she reasoned with herself that there shouldn't be any occasion where that should be a wrong thing, provided that the two people involved were genuinely in love and cared about one another—even if their families didn't support them.

My mother grew up in a small community in upstate New York, and it was completely white, except for one African American family that moved there—a single mother and her two teenage children. They became very good friends with my grandparents, and with my mom and her sister and brother. And I have a feeling that was what prompted her to think about the subject of race at that time in her life.

Let's fast-forward 20-some years. My parents were in their 40s, and they had four children of their own—my dad had been married before and had two children, two daughters, from that marriage. Rather unknown to us four children, the elder daughter from my dad's first marriage, Nancy, had married an African American. When Nancy and Henry got married, my father cut off all contact with Nancy. He had never met Henry.

In the meantime, about eight years had passed and Nancy and Henry had had three children. During that same period, my parents found out about Christian Science and embraced it with their whole hearts. We children had started going to Sunday School and loved what we were learning there. I really think it pulled us together as a family in a way that we hadn't been before. It transformed our lives. My father found a job that he desperately needed. We found a new home. We found, really, a new life.

Then late one summer, when my dad was away on business, my mother asked all us children to come upstairs to one of the bedrooms. She said she had something she wanted to talk to us about, a secret she wanted to tell us. She wanted us to help her think about something.

Well, she told us about the situation regarding Nancy and Henry—what had happened with Dad as well as the fact that they had three children. She said she'd been praying about it, and the thought had come to her that she should invite them to visit us for Dad's birthday at the end of October, as a surprise to him.

Love, I believe, gave her the courage to consider this. Love is universal. As it says in the Bible, "God is no respecter of persons" (Acts 10:34). We were learning that there's no discrimination on God's part. That God sees all of His sons and daughters as equally vital and worthy. This has implications in terms of race relations, but I think what it gave us, and certainly what I'm sure it gave my mother, was just a sense that an undergirding principle had been behind this reasoning she had done so many years before, about how logical and inevitable it was that the races must come together. I'm sure it gave her a resource, an understanding, a deep understanding, that must have provided the courage to actually act on this spiritual intuition when this situation involving racial discrimination came up in her own life.

I know that's what Christian Science has done in my life. It has provided that environment of understanding that love is the nature of things. That love is the nature of our relationships with one another, because it's the nature of God. It's the nature of the relationship each of us has with God.

We all instantly gravitated to my mother's idea. There was no hesitation in any of our minds that we shouldn't do this. And, you know, my mother certainly got us to think about the possible negative remifications, just to be wise about it. But we were all utterly enthused. It was the innocence of children. And I believe it was partly a consequence of having been brought up in Christian Science. We had such confidence that Love would conquer all. I was eager to see Nancy after all those years and to meet Henry and their family. As I recall, we just ended by praying the Lord's Prayer together. And then it was our secret for the next several weeks. We obviously were not to tell Dad.

Mom called Nancy and Henry and made arrangements. Something I learned later touched me deeply, and I think it was again evidence of this Love that is so, so deep and selfless. Henry told Mom that he was very happy to come. But if Dad had any hesitation about his being there, if there was any discomfort on anyone's part, he was more than happy to drive home the four hours and wait there until Nancy had had time to get reacquainted with her dad. Then, he said, he would come and pick up her and the kids.

The day arrived. It was a Saturday, a beautiful day, a beautiful fall day. We were, of course, up and outside from the very earliest part of the day. And waiting. Fortuitously Dad happened to be inside at the time Nancy and Henry drove into the yard. Mom called to him and just said someone was there to see him. And he came outside.

Well, a myriad of emotions swept through him—and were evident on his face—as he assessed the scene. But he did the right thing. He just walked toward Henry and reached out his hand, and they greeted one another, like there'd never been any lapse of time and almost as though they'd always known each other. It was a wonderful day.

We had many happy experiences as joint families after that day. When my dad passed on several years ago, Henry was the first one to stand up and eulogize him.

The qualities that stand out to me among the people most intimately connected with that situation are courage, humility, and selfless love—the courage that my mother expressed, the humility that came through my father, and the selfless love that I saw in Henry. To me, it's those qualities that are most needed to create spaces and places where reconciliations can occur. A sense of respect and love. It has to go beyond tolerance to break through the barriers. It really has to come from a love that would motivate one to do whatever is needed to bridge these gaps. And that can only come from God.