Sometimes terrible tragedies can bring us together, and I’m hopeful that somehow a lasting good will come out of the shooting at the ball field in Alexandria, Virginia. Maybe even a rebirth of civility, which has virtually disappeared from politics and even our culture as well.

Representative Steve Scalise, fighting for his life in a hospital in Washington, is an old friend of mine. I watched as he rose through the House ranks to become whip. Like everyone else, I’m praying for his full recovery. He’s a wonderful man.

Like everyone else, I was happy to hear President Trump talking about unity in the wake of the shooting. “We are strongest,” he said, “when we are unified and when we work together for the common good.”

The same can be said for Speaker Ryan, who spoke beautifully and passionately from the House floor, saying, “I ask each of you to join me in resolving to come together.” He emphasized, “An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.”

I want to put a spotlight on one person who really surprised me with her remarks. Nancy Pelosi got me thinking — praying — that maybe, just maybe, some lasting good will come out of this tragedy. She said her prayers were with Mr. Scalise, the Capitol Police, and the Hill staffers hit on that ballfield.

“You may not know this, my colleagues,” Mrs. Pelosi said, “but every time I pray, which is very frequently, and certainly every Sunday, I pray for all of you. All of you, together.”

“In the earlier years I used to pray for your happiness, for the fact that we would work together,” she said. She added that she would “heed the words of President Kennedy in the closing of his inaugural address, when he said . . . ‘God’s work must truly be our own.’”

That’s a central theme in my book, written with Brian Domitrovic, “JFK and the Reagan Revolution.” Reagan and Kennedy were civil in public as they sought to persuade, not smear, their opponents. They both reached across the aisle to achieve their policy goals.

It’s something to which we need — desperately — to return. Nancy Pelosi spoke in that spirit.

“How do we view what God’s will is for us?” she asked. “How do we come together to give confidence to the American people that, as our Founders intended, we would have our disagreements and we would debate them and we would have confidence in our beliefs and humility to listen to others?”

To listen to others.

For a long time I have been talking about the need for a rebirth of civility. We cannot continue the meanness, personal slurs, and polarizing attacks, all of which are doing great harm to America.

Now, sparked by tragedy, Nancy Pelosi seems to have said: Let us come together. Let us have civility in our discussions. Let us have a sense of humanity. Maybe even a sense of caring. Let us pray for ourselves and the rest of the country. Let’s do this together.

“And,” she said, “pray for Donald Trump, that his presidency will be successful and that his family will be safe. Because it is about family.”

When did you ever think you would hear Nancy Pelosi say that? It was a welcome surprise. No, I’m not here to defend her politics. I’m a conservative. She’s a liberal. I have my beliefs. She has her beliefs. The battle of ideas must go on.

Our tone, our style, our civility, our ability to listen — it seems to me that that’s what’s been missing for so many years.

The blame is in the executive branch, the Senate, the House. Let’s add the press and academia as well. The political divide is large — across taxes, health care, and a whole raft of tough agenda items. I get that.

I’m just saying, if Nancy Pelosi, who has been in Washington a while, is coming out and speaking of unity, civility, and humility, it’s worth listening to.

Many of my friends believe that I am hopelessly naïve. They may be right. Today, though, I choose to believe that Nancy Pelosi means for all of us to be calm, to be humble, to be civil, and to work together.

I’m praying for that, because if that’s the case, we will get important things done to help this country and each other.