Why independence and inter-dependence need each other. Some reflections on Independence Day

Our little family enjoying a canoe ride into sunset on a lake up north.

This independence day I would like to propose another holiday:

Interdependence Day.

Don't get me wrong, the 4th of July is a fine holiday that celebrates the founding of a country that is slowly growing into its initial vision of freedom and justice for all.  

The picture above is of our small family in a borrowed canoe on a lake at a friend's cabin.  A next door neighbor whom we barely know took the picture and sent it to us via the son-in-law of the friend.  Our whole trip "up north" in Minnesota was supported by an infrastructure that others have tended, down to the kind woman and her shy child who tended the garden by the playground where we paused on our journey north.

Though we look like the idyllic, inward focused, nuclear family, we are surrounded by and embedded in communities of interdependence.  We need to celebrate them.

We too often succumb to a harmful vision of independence that each person is an island r…