Mata

tlenski — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 11:00:20 -0500

Thanks for the link and the other great resources! As the daughter of an immigrant (mother born here of Scottish parents, father came as a child from Germany) I found myself nodding at your comments about the spirit with which so many of last century's immigrants came to the U.S. And I like your thinking that independence and interdependence do not need to be considered mutually exclusive.

Best to you,
Tammy

Hi Tess

Mata H — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 11:17:43 -0500

It was a pleasure linking to your blog. BTW, your latest post had me laughing out loud!

~~ Contributing Editor, Mata H. also blogs right along at Time's Fool

Thank you for the link. It's

Froniga — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 06:02:47 -0500

Thank you for the link. It's really heartening that so many people are thinking along the same lines.

Happy Independence Day and Interdependence Day

Mata H — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 20:25:04 -0500

When I was a little girl, my Dad would walk with my friend Sandy and me to the local fireworks display, where we would listen to the volunteer town band play patriotic songs. The night was all about fireworks, popcorn, watching the pre-teen boys watching us, and the fun walk home in the dark with a flashlight for light surrounded by fireflies and the sweet hum of a New England sultry summer night.

We didn't give much thought to who was truly free and who was not. Today I cannot celebrate my freedom without taking time to acknowledge and pray for those who do not share that freedom. Thanks to the rise of technology, we are able to be more aware of the disparities now than in the 60's when I was blithely walking up the path to the fireworks display surrounded by ignorance.

Today's world is a world of interdependence, perhaps more than ever before. We all now have physical manifestations of the interdependence of all parts of the world. There is no unique American Ozone Layer, no economy in isolation. Signs of one culture show up across borders as people become more mobile, and as the media becomes more ubiquitous.

Just as the ozone layer and global warming affect everyone, the suffering of people around the world should affect all of us, should impact our thoughts, affect our decision-making, enter deeply into our consciousness.

John Donne had a sense of it in 1624 when he wrote (sic):

"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all......No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee..."

In today's world the idea of independence should combine with the spiritual reality of interdependence. Just as so many were not free here when the original Independence Day was established, there are still those here who thirst for justice and long to be treated as full Americans. One does not even have to look beyond our borders to see the injustice of unequal access because of race, religion, national origin, sexual preference or identity, gender, income/class.

Our spirits have not always kept pace with our sincerely treasured ideals.

I love America, and treasure my freedoms here. I'm thankful for the Declaration of Independence which calls us to make good on all we believe, by ensuring the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. (We may be the only nation in the world that actually includes happiness in its founding documents. I wonder.) The greatness of that document calls us forward.

My grandparents were all immigrants, people who came here in search of the freedom that we celebrate today -- in search of the spirit of generosity and welcome that they were told was America. They joined waves of immigrants who came here because America had declared herself a tyranny free zone, a place where protection from discrimination was a fundamental principle.

My prayer today is that we come ever closer to the heart-held images we have of America at her best, and that we grow ever more conscious of our interdependence in the world.

RELATED BLOGS

Tammy has a GREAT video called "Declaration of Interdependence"!

Sarah declares today Interdependence Day and says

this kind of endeavor looks different for everyone, but for me it means doing my best to be open and generous, and to find creative ways to both give gracefully and receive graciously, and in doing so, work to create community and communities that are conducive to justice and met needs, and that take the power out of the hands of corporations and put it in the hands of all people.

Tess suggest a Global Interdependence Day:

But have we humans gone too far with our need for independence? Do we maintain our separateness so fiercely that we can no longer connect in a deep way? Do we not realise that what someone does on one side of the world affects others thousands of miles away? And that each decision on what to do, what to buy, what to eat has a small or large ripple effect around the world? We are all interdependent on each other, like it or not.

BlogHer - Happy Independence Day and Interdependence Day - Comments

Mata

Hi Tess

Thank you for the link. It's

Happy Independence Day and Interdependence Day