A little bridge

A few years ago, I joined a small group in Seoul that wanted to make a difference in our community. The network was small at first, but it grew to include hundreds of people in Seoul and beyond. The name of the network and its purpose are quite simple — “Footbridge: People walking together across boundaries.” At our gatherings in Seoul, one will find people from all walks of life, from various cultural and language backgrounds and from various faith communities. At a group meeting not long ago, I was seated at a small table having a simple pre-meeting meal of a gimbap roll and a small cup of instant coffee. As others needed a place to sit, I invited some to join me at the table, including a younger woman, an older woman and a young man of other-Asian origin. We enjoyed small talk as we ate and got to know each other. We soon discovered that this Protestant pastor was sharing with a Catholic sister from an order that typically did not wear the habit, a Presbyterian woman and a young Muslim man from Indonesia. And so it went, around the room of a hundred people. The meeting was ho