5: Getting Lost in Bethlehem and Learning to Trust

Fear of the Other is deeply entrenched, despite our best efforts. An aversion to the unknown cements distance between people, even as we attempt to fortify our hearts and minds against the onslaught of narratives that insidiously cast certain communities—fellow members of humanity— in the role of the Other. It is the Other who we believe lives beyond the familiar side of a border, remote to all that is known. We turn them into ominous specters best understood as our antithesis, inverted versions of ourselves and the communities that grant us sanctuary. Those who come to embody otherness serve as a vessel for our collective anxieties and uncertainties. Without ever volunteering for this part, they serve as a canvas on which the world paints their dread.