The Edmundite Center at St. Mike’s sponsored a night with Miroslav Volf on the topic of “Identity and Otherness in a Fractured World.” I was very excited to attend the talk after having read his book: Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace. Tonight Volf talked about the need to embrace and use a hermeneutic of grace when interacting with other cultures, ethnicity’s, nationalities and so on. At the core of Christianity is this concept of interpreting the other through a loving gaze, and the action of embracing the one who is characterized as the enemy. The cross most fully exemplifies this as Christ embraced all who were far from him through his death. This does not mean that our mistakes are excused, but they aren’t in the foreground of Christ’s complete understanding of us. In the same way, let us embrace the other by seeking to understand them and welcoming their beauty into the foreground!