The “Interdependence” value and covenant statement currently reads:
23 Interdependence. We honor the interdependent web of all existence.
24 We covenant to cherish Earth and all beings by creating and nurturing relationships of care
25 and respect. With humility and reverence, we acknowledge our place in the great web of life,
26 and we work to repair harm and damaged relationships.
Our amendments would result in the following:
Interdependence. We honor the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
With humility and reverence, we covenant to protect Earth and all beings from exploitation, creating and nurturing sustainable relationships of repair, mutuality and justice.
Here is the current statement, showing amendments: :
23 Interdependence. We honor the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
24 With humility and reverence, we covenant to [cherish] protect Earth and all beings from exploitation, [by ]creating and nurturing sustainable relationships of [care] repair, mutuality,
25 and [respect] justice. [With humility and reverence, we acknowledge our place in the great web of life,
26 and we work to repair harm and damaged relationships.]
Context: This language resulted from my May 2023 discussions with two groups of GA delegates from throughout the United States interested in revising the “Interdependence” statement, and with several UU ministers. It is based on language drafted by the UU Animal Ministry Board, and was modified in conversation with staff of the UU Ministry for Earth.
Key revisions include the following:
Add “of which we are a part.” The ministers with whom I spoke felt it was important to acknowledge that the interdependent web is not just something external to us, but also interrelated with us.
Replace “cherish” with “protect … from exploitation.” “Cherish” can mean “to hold dear: feel or show affection for.” While cherishing is nice, it is not what Earth and all beings most need from us. They need protection from human-inflicted harms.
Add “sustainable.” This was suggested by a delegate as capturing an essential feature of the relationship we seek to build with the interdependent web.
Replace “care” and “respect” with “repair, mutuality, and justice.” “Care” can mean “affection” and “respect” can mean “regard;” both are far weaker than the proposed addition. “Repair” captures the the idea of “repair harm and damaged relationships” in the original draft. “Mutuality” means “taking seriously the needs of everyone in the relationship, acknowledging that those needs matter, and working to address those needs if possible.” Along with “justice,” a relationship of mutuality with the Earth and all beings suggests that our flourishing matters as human beings, and so too does the flourishing of individual beings and the Earth as a whole. Replacing “care” with “mutuality” was suggested by many amendments to “Interdependence” submitted in April 2023.
Eliminate the final sentence. “With humility and reverence” is included in the proposed amendment, as is “repair.” “We acknowledge our place in the great web of life” is unfortunately vague and is better addressed by adding “of which we are a part” in the primary statement.
With these changes, the “Interdependence” statement better characterizes the values we seek to honor as Unitarian Universalists and UU congregations.
I appreciated the elimination of “of which we are a part” because I feel that is a mechanistic view of the interdependent web. It reminds me of this poem by June Jordan:
There is no chance that we will fall apart
There is no chance
There are no parts.
While I agree with and share the concerns and sentiments you explain as motivating this revision, I believe the current value and covenant statement expresses those concerns and sentiments quite elegantly.
In the current statement, I am especially moved and inspired by the last sentence (lines 25-26) which this amendment would eliminate. It’s perhaps the phrase I find most moving in the whole of the proposed Article II language. “With humility and reverence, we acknowledge our place in the great web of life…” It isn’t at all vague. It clearly describes a powerful and transformative acknowledgment of interdependence. It is a much more powerful statement than the prepositional phrase “of which we are a part.”
The nit-picky rhetorician in me protests that moving “humility and reverence” before “we covenant” eliminates this statement’s parallelism with all the other statements.
I appreciate the concern about the sentimentality of the verb “cherish”. However, in the current language, it explains what “cherish” means: we cherish “by creating and nurturing relationships of care and respect.” I would be comfortable with an addition here: “… relationships of care and respect, mutuality and justice.”
I hesitate to presume to create a relationship of repair with earth or any being because, in and of themselves, they are already whole and divine, not in need of repair. What needs repairing is “harm and damaged relationships” as the current language states.
I like the addition of the notion of “protection.” Perhaps line 24 could be changed to: “We covenant to cherish and protect Earth and all beings…” ?
I worry that adding the condition of “sustainability” as a requirement here might give us a loophole and encourage us to be less bold and more conservative.
So here would be the compromise/collaborative revised statement, if it were up to me to take in these concerns:
Interdependence. We honor the interdependent web of all existence.
We covenant to cherish and protect Earth and all beings by creating and nurturing relationships of care, [and] respect, and mutuality. With humility and reverence, we acknowledge our place in the great web of life, and we work to repair harm and damaged relationships.
I appreciate the thoughtful response. I’ll hope to reply more later, but one piece of information that may be of interest for now: there were some people who read the Commission’s proposed language of “with humility and reverence, we acknowledge our place in the great web of life” to mean something like “we acknowledge our humble place within the web and reverence the whole,” an interpretation that resonates with me personally. But there were others who read “with humility and reverence, we acknowledge our place in the great web of life” to mean “we blush as we acknowledge our special place, which we reverence as uniquely gifted compared to all others…” We concluded that the phrase was too vague to be meaningful.
I guess for me beginning the last sentence “With humility” already works against the interpretation that ours is a ‘special’ place.
And, as the sentence is phrased, it is the web of life that possesses ‘greatness,’ not us specially or specifically.
Humbling ourselves before the great web of life feels to me like a profound and necessary spiritual/religious calling. Rather than any vagueness, what’s here is a necessary openness in that we will always be discovering more ways in and with which we should be practicing humility.
It occurs to me now that perhaps to claim that we have a role as “protectors” to play is a claim that our gifts and responsibilities as part of the great web of life are special, different from all others?
Also, every part of the web of life is uniquely gifted compared to all the others, isn’t it?
The prepositional phrase “of which we are a part” has always felt like a kind of afterthought to me. And “a part” is aurally too close to “apart” – something that has bothered me about the phrasing of the 7th principle ever since I first heard it.
I love that two humans I love -John and Joe are having such a thoughtful conversation. I really appreciate both of these perspectives very much and hope there is rich conversation about this proposed amendment at GA!
I support this amendment also. It strengthens the original language and brings it closer to the ideals we aspire to as Unitarians who cherish the earth and the beings we share it with and better expresses our role in the interdependent web.
Thanks Joe. As I reply, I am trying to be accountable to the views of the many people I have encountered who have engaged the revision of the “Interdependence” language from their own locations, and whose perspectives have often differed from my own. Some of the language I proposed resonates strongly with me personally, and some of it I proposed because it resonates with others strongly.
Regarding the final sentence of the Commission’s draft, I hear very clearly that it resonates strongly with you. You say that “it isn’t at all vague” and I hear that it isn’t for you, but I hope that I can convey to you that for some UUs, the language has the opposite meaning of what it means to you. Perhaps considering the image of an award-winner at the Oscars addressing the non-award-winners and saying, “I am humbled to receive this award” might convey how, in the context of centuries of human subjugation of the earth and other beings, saying “with humility … we acknowledge our place in the great [big] web of life” comes across to some.
I can see how moving “With humility and reverence” before “we covenant” could annoy. It’s not an issue for me and it didn’t come up in the discussions I have had until this point, but I hear you.
“Cherish” reads as a bit saccharine to me, but if we were going to stick with the “cherish” language, I appreciate your suggested addition of “mutuality and justice.” An additional problem with “cherish,” in my view, is that this portion of the statement is covenantal language, and it would ask that we covenant to “feel or show affection.” Some UUs feel affection for the more-than-human world, and some do not, but I think that all would agree that the more-than-human world needs protection from exploitation.
“Sustainable” wasn’t my suggestion but it seems a reasonable goal for humanity’s foreseeable future. If we could live sustainably with the earth and other beings, that would transform almost all of our lives in profound ways. Sustainability seems aspirational to me. Something like “regenerative” would be even more aspirational, but in the context of the rest of the language I think it would bog the sentence down. If you have another suggestion for replacing “sustainable” I hope you will share it.
As for “repairing harm,” we wanted to be more specific than the very general word “harm,” as (for example) other animals harm other animals all of the time, and no one is suggesting that we interfere with relationships between rivals, or predators and prey. So we replaced the idea of “harm” with the idea of “exploitation,” which better gets at the type of harms that humans do to the earth and other beings that most need repair.
I’m glad that you like the addition of the notion of protection. If I understood you correctly, you then ask if to name protection as one of our roles is to claim that our responsibilities are different from other beings’ responsibilities. I would say that yes, humanity has done unique damage to the earth and other beings, and we have a unique responsibility to protect the earth and other beings from further such damage.
There was originally a longer version of this proposed language. Delegates discussed which version of the language to put forward, the longer or shorter version. The longer version was seen as possibly more strategic, as it hewed closer to the Commission’s formulation of the “Interdependence” language. Ultimately the group decided to go with the shorter version as it was seen as more concise and powerful.
So at this point, if I were to try my best to include your and Rachel Maxwell’s perspectives with the many that I have tried to take account of up to this point, I might propose something like:
23 Interdependence. We honor the interdependent web of all existence.
24 We covenant to [cherish] protect Earth and all beings from exploitation, [by ]creating and nurturing sustainable relationships of care
25 and respect, mutuality and justice. With humility and reverence, we acknowledge [our place in] the great web of life,
26 and we work to repair harm and damaged relationships.
I look forward to hearing your and others’ thoughts. Thanks to all who read this.
I think this amendment is a move in the right direction and would support it (albeit half-heartedly). I would prefer (have preferred?) that the climate crisis be explicitly named. We name “racism” in the Justice amendment, why not “climate change” here?
I love your proposal, John! I think we’re hearing each other and your proposed language feels excellent to me.
That deletion of [our place in] (line 25) really makes sense and I think takes account of the concerns we’ve shared about that final statement. In fact, as a description of a spiritual/religious practice, it really strengthens it because it takes into account the concerns about ‘humility’ that you’ve described so well.
I’'m not a delegate but strongly support this amendment. Our Tallahassee church’s Food for Thought group is all about this type of emphasis to embrace our obligations to all sentient beings. We are educating our delegates in hopes that they will log in and show their visible support as well. The delegates I’v contacted so far have offered their verbal support. I’m glad to see this amendment on the prioritized list.