"Cathy raised her hand," Dunn says. " 'Let me tell you how "the one true church" comes across,' Cathy said. 'It doesn't fly that well.' " Later in the week, the man called Cathy to say he had taken what she had said to heart.

"The ripple effect," says Lazar.

The women applaud efforts like those of Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson, who has begun a series of public Bridging the Religious Divide forums (the next forum is Wednesday at the University of Utah's School of Social Work auditorium, 7-8:30 p.m.), and other neighborhood groups that work hard to unite Mormons and others. And they hope more groups will form.

"Nine people is not a lot of people. It doesn't change the world beyond our neighborhood," says Perez. "But it would be wonderful if nine more people and then nine other people and then another nine or 10 or 12 sat down and went through this process."

It requires coming together with goodwill, says Lazar, and with the willingness to carve out the time it takes to make it a priority. It requires the strength to speak honestly, to accept some measure of confrontation, to not react with defensiveness. "The ultimate goal of this group," she says, "is to learn to respect, understand, . . . maybe even to honor each other."

"I can see why people stay with their own kind," says Perez. "But it's so debilitating. . . . I get so tired of meaningless chatter."

The process doesn't mean giving up your own beliefs, says Dunn. "This dialogue has strengthened my own resolve (about her religion). I've had to articulate what I think. I'm not on autopilot. . . . I've had to think: 'What do I believe?' . . . When we hang out with people who think like we do, we don't talk about it."

And the bridge, says Holt, "needs to extend way beyond just us" to the wider community. "If we, in our own Judeo-Christian background, can't listen to one another and care enough to let go of the tribal mechanism, how on earth are we even going to deal with the influx of other religious groups, way beyond Jewish-Christian?"

Wand, who travels more than three hours round trip from Fairview to attend the monthly meetings, works with an international group called The Virtues Project, which she describes as an effort to "bring unity into diversity." Wand believes that Woman to Woman might be a model for other places where religion divides people. "We're just a small microcosm of the challenges that are out there."

The women of Woman to Woman have spent a year coming together and will decide at their 13th meeting, Sunday night, what will happen next.

Holt thinks the questions need to be asked of everyone in Utah. "We're at the point we need to ask ourselves and others, 'How much does this community mean to us?' . . . If we reach out and think about how much do we care — and caring is the key word — how much do you really care beyond yourself, beyond your own family, your own congregation or ward; do you care enough about your community that you're willing to put forth the effort to bridge this difference?"

Not to just make some flimsy bridge, not just a swinging bridge, says Holt. "But pave it over with real caring."

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E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com