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            Any community is only a year away from estrangement.  All that is needed is for forgiveness to end, for acceptance to break down, for trust to turn to mistrust and understanding ceases.

            Seldom, if ever, is this the fault of one person alone.  It takes at least two persons to have a problem to begin with, and generally it requires a whole community’s complicity, whether passive or active, to produce a real climate of estrangement.  People join in withholding understanding, or neglect trying to reach new understanding, when differences arise.  Then a finger of blame is pointed and suspicion rises and conversations between fearful parties become superficial and then cease all together.  If nature abhors a vacuum, a community finds it even more abhorrent; and the silence is quickly filled with rumors, with negative valuations of each other, with criticisms and closed judgments.

Caring Enough to Forgive, David Augsburger, pages 81, 82