All species and the Earth itself have interdependent roles within Creation. Humankind is not the species to whom all others are subservient, but one among many. All parts, all issues, are inextricably intertwined. Indeed the web of creation could be described as of three-ply thread: wherever we touch it we affect justice and peace and […]
Just degrees removed
For the last twenty years, Hollywood’s cliché has been that everybody’s somehow connected to the actor Kevin Bacon. Tracing the six or fewer degrees between community nodes like Bacon and other community members can be a fun way to prove that Disney was right: It’s a small world, after all. I’m two degrees removed from […]
Staying centered, staying focused
Out of many, one. The 44th President of the United States used the Great Seal motto E pluribus unum in his pre-2009 speeches. He used it to encourage audiences to recognize their part in his “we.” When he said “we the people” and “yes we can,” he wanted people to imagine themselves in the number. […]
Being connected means… being connected.
One of my favorite concepts from Martin Luther King’s last few years is the concept of interdependence. King wrote and spoke about it in both his letter from Birmingham’s city jail (1963) and the Christmas sermon he delivered to Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta in 1967. In the Birmingham letter he responded to criticisms of his multi-state activism. “We are caught in […]
Interdependence Day
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly… Before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’re dependent on more than half the world. This is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality. We aren’t going to have peace on Earth until we recognize the basic fact of the interrelated structure of […]