“The Interdependent Web, Part 2”
Sara Phinney Kelley (she/her), Director of Religious Growth and Learning, UUCSV – First written for the Sunbury Daily Item January 2026
Last week I wrote about the Seventh UU Principle and one of our UU Values, “Honoring the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” For many UUs, those words are all about nature and our place in the universe.
One of the most important parts of the Values statements is the covenant – the promise we make to live out the Values in so many ways. The first sentence in the covenant language for Interdependence fits right in with what I wrote last time about nature and our place in the universe: “We covenant to protect Earth and all beings from exploitation.”
If we read further, we find more nuance in Interdependence: “We will create and nurture sustainable relationships of care and respect, mutuality and justice. We will work to repair harm and damaged relationships.”
These two promises still ask us to work to create the earth and universe we want for all life. But the focus of this part of the covenant is definitely on how humans treat each other, and how we are all connected in ways we don’t often know.
We can see these sustainable, mutual relationships so easily in the small towns in our Valley. It is nearly impossible to go to your nearest grocery store without knowing at least one person or recognizing someone from an interaction you had elsewhere – maybe a school athletic event or concert, or a doctor’s office, or the Bloomsburg Fair. How many times have you met a new person at a party or your job and find that you have all sorts of people that you know in common? We see that on social media, of course, when the Internet keeps track of all our connections, but it happens in person so often.
When I was a teenager I was involved in several activities that allowed me to make friends and acquaintances all over the state. I went to a college where the field of people grew exponentially. It was a running joke in my high school friend group that I knew someone or knew someone who knew someone everywhere we went. Now I see that in my own child, who has been involved in similar activities. Their experience and their ability to connect is expounded by social media that didn’t exist when I was growing up, but both of us have robust interconnected webs.
I am guessing that most of us don’t think much about our connections until we have to. I’ve been heartened by the outpouring of support for the two men who have both been taken into ICE custody recently: Carlos Hernandez of Selinsgrove and Sergio Chaves Jimenez of Danville. In both cases, local people know them personally from their restaurants and from just being dads in their communities. All of a sudden the national immigration debate meets our “relationships of care and respect, mutuality and justice” head-on.
It’s not as simple as our politicians tell us. Every issue you read about in this paper or online has people affected by it. Each of those people are connected to others in their communities, just as Hernandez and Jimenez are here.
Immigration isn’t the only issue in which we see interconnected webs. Industrial pollution isn’t just along the coasts; it’s affecting former mining areas here and now we find out it’s affecting farmers in central Pennsylvania with high melanoma rates. Those are our neighbors, whose health issues are part of the same health care system we use and pay for. In turn their health issues are connected to insurance availability and rates, affected by the national debate on the budget, and eventually we all pay somehow.
We are indeed connected in so many ways that we don’t see. When we keep those hidden webs in mind, it is more possible to foster caring, respectful, just, and mutual relationships in our daily lives. We all benefit when that happens.
