A couple years ago, advertising agency GSD&M head man Roy Spence left Austin on a wandering road
trip, trying to find out whether there was any common ground among Texans.

"I don't know why I was doing it, except I was thinking our country was going to split
apart, based on religion," said Spence. "I didn't know if there was common ground. I really
didn't."

He wound up going into several churches in South Texas. Two days later, he had learned
enough to reassure him that there was indeed deep belief among Texans. He returned to
Austin and announced to some top staffers, "We're going to do a book called `The
Amazing Faith of Texas.'"

As sometimes happens, some of those staffers rolled their eyes. But since he has, after all,
a large voice in the company as one of its founders, and its president, a book indeed
resulted. They got a motor home, a camera crew, and went around Texas to interview
people about their faith.

"If you ask people about religion, they just clam up," Spence said. "If you ask them what
they believe, they'll talk all night and all day."

They talked to cowboys, naturalists, preachers, mothers and fathers, a mayor. Spence
found that most people they ran across are more focused on inclusion than exclusion.

"People buy into the notion that we're better together," he said. Hence the subtitle of the
book: "Common Ground on Higher Ground."

People definitely come in a lot of varieties. "In the end, God made everybody different,"
Spence said. But he found common threads of charity, compassion, forgiveness and
humility, among people as disparate as Buddhists, Jews, Catholics, Muslims, non-
denominational, Native American, protestant Christians, Hindus, those of other religions,
and those with their own self-styled set of beliefs.

"The main thing I got is that people have a longing to belong to something bigger than
what they belong to now," Spence said.

The advertising entrepreneur, whose firm helps other firms help define their purpose, has
been involved with campaigns for the likes of Southwest Airlines, Wal-Mart, the Texas
Department of Transportation ("Don't Mess With Texas"), The University of Texas ("We're
Texas!") and dozens of others. Spence said something he learned from the late Sam
Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, resonates through successful marketers.

"I remember Sam always used to say `We want a place where no one's too good, and
everyone's good enough,'" Spence recalled. That sense of inclusion, Spence said, is far
more important and effective not just for religions and across faiths, but in politics.

"The parties are stuck in representing the extremes," Spence said. He believes the fact
Democrats were awarded slim control of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on
Nov. 7 is an indication people are tired of divisive politics.

"The American people voted for change, but they're actually asking for better," Spence
said.

He points out that every religion has some form of the Golden Rule: Christian: "Do unto
others as you would have them do unto you." Or the Buddhists: "Treat not others in ways
that you yourself would find hurtful." And others.

The book has some beautiful pictures of churches, of the people who inhabit them and
their stories, and of the outdoors, which many find an extended sanctuary or one in itself.

Spence is encouraged that the spirit of inclusive togetherness he and his friends found
allows Texans and other Americans to concentrate on what unites them more than what
might divide them.

At one church, he heard the priest point out that "maybe God's message is, `I made you all
different, stupid. That's what it's all about.'"

Making everybody different was hard work. It would have been simpler to make everyone
the same. And that may be what we have in common, Spence said: we're all different, and
we should respect and treasure each other for our differences as much as our similarities.

Happy Thanksgiving!