Interdependence Day Reflection

As the United States, North America celebrated another Independence Day on July 4th it is understandable (and encouraged) to pause and ask more existential questions. Globally, what is "independence" and for whom and from what? And most broadly, can we also see ourselves as part of an "evolving Universe, where the Cosmos too, is our home"  Mary Evelyn Tucker, scholar, friend of Passionist Thomas Berry and cofounder of the Yale Center of Religion and Ecology urges us to appreciate the bigger picture and the broadest sense of interdependence--one that Berry describes where "The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects."
 
Mary Evelyn has thoughts on another timely and related area:  democracy.  She says "the spiritual roots of democracy lie in the aspiration that we can move through this period to reassert interdependence and interconnection in ways that are both ancient and new, simultaneously ecologically and economically viable, and, most critical, politically and socially imperative."
 
We surely see this aspiration in Laudato Si' which calls for an integral ecology and "combines the 'cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor.' In this spirit, mutually enhancing human-Earth relations need to be based on environmental justice and social participation."  This is a basis for an expanded spirit of democracy and interdependence. 
 
Read more from Mary Evelyn Tucker

• Cosmos as Home. Evolution as Context
• Expanding the Spirit of Democracy

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