First the Columbine shootings, and then the World Trade Center attacks, brought home to Brenda Rosenberg, co-founder of the Pathways To Peace Foundation, the need to create safe spaces where people (and especially children) could come together and share their stories of feeling different, alone or persecuted, without fear of retaliation or bigotry.

Together with Imam Abdullah El Amin from Detroit's Black Muslim community and Reverend Dan Buttry, a global reconciliation specialist for the Baptist church, she envisioned a project where Muslim, Christian, and Jewish children of all ethnicities could interact peacefully with one another, ending the centuries-old cycle of hatred and intolerance many parents and elders had preached to them. But how to explain her idea in terms these children could immediately grasp?

Brenda decided to tell them a story.

After breaking bread together, Brenda and the Imam told the children, gathered from all over Detroit, the story of the two sons of Abraham -- Ishmael (considered the father of all Muslims) and Isaac (the father of both Judaism and Christianity) -- and how the two brothers came together after years of feuding to bury their father.

That historic tale is common (with slight variations) to Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Through the power of this shared history (and similar experiences of discrimination that the children had endured simply because of their faith), these children realized that they had many things in common. They were able to see through the lies they had been fed about each other's religions. They then decided to work together to try to spread this realization to other members of their community.

Having an objective behind any change you propose is critical but, by itself, that objective can be rather abstract and difficult to connect to. Bridges writes that people "need a picture of how the outcome will look and they need to be able to imagine how it will feel to be a participant in it." The picture of Ishmael and Isaac making peace with each other was something the children could immediately relate to. At the same time, it fired their imagination. To see that their shared history already contained the seeds of a peaceful future helped these children put aside their differences better than any lecture could have done.