Daniel Harper – Page 28 – Yet Another Unitarian Universalist

Other professions

In 1778, James Boswell recorded a conversation between Dr. Samuel Johnson, then aged 68, and a man with whom he had been at college, one Oliver Edwards, then aged 65. One of these exchanges, included by Boswell in his Life of Johnson, interested me:

“Edwards. ‘I wish I had continued at College.’ Johnson. ‘Why do you wish that, Sir?’ Edwards. ‘Because I think I should have had a much easier life than mine has been. I should have been a parson, and had a good living, like Bloxam and several others, and lived comfortably.’ Johnson. ‘Sir, the life of a parson, of a conscientious clergyman, is not easy. I have always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain. I would rather have Chancery suits upon my hands than the cure of souls. No, Sir, I do not envy a clergyman’s life as an easy life, nor do I envy the clergyman who makes it an easy life.'” (James Boswell, Life of Johnson [Oxford Univ. Press, 1924], pp. 229-230).

I’m in my early sixties, and find myself thinking the same kind of thoughts that Oliver Edwards thought. Except that instead of wishing that I were a clergyman (because after all I am a clergyman), I think about other professions I might have followed.

But I find myself disagreeing with Johnson. I often disagree with Johnson. He liked patriarchy and hierarchy, and I don’t. So I don’t take the (literally) patriarchal view that a clergyperson is “the father of a larger family.” In my view, clergy (of all genders) are co-equal with congregants. And I’m sure Johnson would be as appalled at my views as I am at his views.

Documents relating to the Ute Indians and the Unitarians

Recently, people in the United States have been taking the month of September to reflect on the wrongs perpetrated against the indigenous peoples by the U.S. government and citizens.

(And yes, the perpetrators of wrongs against Native Americans were nearly all White, which means that Ron DeSantis doesn’t want this material taught in the Florida public schools because it might make some White kids feel ashamed of their race. More than 20 other U.S. states have laws similar to Ron DeSantis’s law in Florida, which means that this blog post is officially and legally banned in schools in more than one third of the U.S. But I digress….)

After the Civil War, various religious groups were assigned to Native American groups. The Christian religion, especially Protestant Christianity, was considered a “civilizing force,” a means by which White settlers could maintain control over Native peoples by forcibly integrating them into White culture. The Unitarians were still considered Christians in the 1870s (we got kicked out of the Christian club after 1900), and as a small denomination we were assigned “the Utes of Colorado,” a group of Native nations then living in Colorado, later forcibly removed to Utah. The Unitarians considered this “mission work,” a way of spreading the Unitarian religion through good works among non-White (and therefore less “civilized”) persons; and they classed it with the Unitarian mission in Kolkata, India, and the mission work done among African Americans in the Deep South.

Apparently, the Unitarians were fairly ineffective at this mission work. Given the history of Unitarianism, I suspect our ineffectiveness was due to our usual lack of organization and unwillingness to provide adequate funding. We established a school for Ute children, which is not listed in the first volume of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report, so perhaps it was not a boarding school. Nevertheless, given what we know now about how White-run boarding schools did so much damage to Native children, it seems important that we learn more about how this school operated.

(All this makes me think: The Universalists can be thankful that we were so small and disorganized and heretical during the 1870s and 1880s that the U.S. government never assigned them a group of Native peoples.)

In any case, I’ve collected some documents from the 1870s and 1880s pertaining to the Unitarian mission among the Ute peoples. They make for some pretty uncomfortable reading. Even though the Unitarian Universalist Association formally apologized to the Utes back in 2009, we still have a lot to do to reflect on how the Unitarian religion was used as a tool of colonization.

Scroll down for the documents….

Cover page of the report of the Fifth Meeting of the Unitarians.National Conference

Readings for memorial services

Families who are planning Unitarian Universalist (UU) memorial services often want suggestions for readings. Yes, there are many websites with tons of readings for memorial services. But many of those websites are going to have material that is too religious for us Unitarian Universalists. And some of the readings you’ll find online don’t exactly fit with UU values.

Of course, there’s the printed book with a collection of memorial service readings published by the Unitarian Universalist Association, Beyond Absence compiled by Edmund Searl. I used to lend that book to families planning memorial services, supplemented that with a small printed collection of readings that I had put together. But these days, almost all the meetings I have to plan memorial servicesare online. You can’t lend out printed material over a Zoom meeting.

So I finally put together my own online collection of readings for a memorial service. Public domain material appears in full in my online collection, using the most accurate texts I could find. I also include fair use material (excerpt under 500 words and less than half of a poem). For other copyrighted material, I provide links to an accurate text, with a very brief excerpt to give an idea what the reading is like. I’ve made an effort to include both older classics, and links to contemporary authors. I’ve provided readings by authors of different races and ethnicities, and different religious backgrounds ranging from “Nones” to UUs to Buddhists to lots more.

Click here to see my online collection “Readings for memorial services.”

Why Amazon sucks, cont.

I promised a friend that I’d buy 30 of his poetry books for a reading he’s doing in our congregation this weekend.

Unfortunately, he self-published through Amazon. So I had to buy his books through Amazon. Yuck. I expect Amazon to underperform, but they outdid themselves this time.

First of all, I paid extra for 2 day shipping. The books took four days to arrive. No surprise there. Amazon consistently ships items late, even when you pay extra for their Prime service.

Secondly, here’s what the books looked like when I unpacked the box:

New books shipped in too large a box. — What the box looked like when we opened it

The books were shipped loose in way too large a box. There was essentially no attempt to keep the books from flinging themselves around during shipping. As a result, corners are damaged, covers are bent. It’s just a mess.

First lesson to be learned: don’t self-publish your books through Amazon. Your customers are liable to receive poorly packaged and damaged books.

Second lesson to be learned: Amazon. Doesn’t. Care. About. Books.

Cranes

Four Sandhill Cranes have been frequenting Arcadia Audubon Sanctuary in Holyoke. We don’t see Sandhill Cranes in Massachusetts all that often. But I had a long talk with a woman staffing the visitor center at the sanctuary, and she said these four seem to have been around all summer, and there’s some who think they might be getting ready to breed in the area next summer.

Four large birds in a field with steep hills behind. — The four Sandhill Cranes with the ridge of Mt. Tom in the background.

Sandhill crane through a telephoto lens.

View

I’m on a brief road trip to the Connecticut River Valley. After driving through heavy and slow traffic along the Mass Pike — there must have been a lot of people going away for the weekend today — I arrived at Mount Tom State Reservation with just three hours before the park closed. I got up to Whiting Peak, then walked along the New England Trail with dramatic views over Easthampton west to the the Berkshire Hills.

I’m spending the night in a motel in Ludlow, and tomorrow I’ll be on a Mass Audubon botany field trip. I would have liked to have more time to explore Mount Tom today. But it’s good to get away for even this brief time, just to recharge my spirit.

Elder God Party in 2024

Back in the 2008 and 2012 presidential election cycles, this blog encouraged people to vote for Cthulhu for president. According to an old MIT webpage :

“Cthulhu is a large green being which resembles a human with the head of a squid, huge bat-wings, and long talons (true, that doesn’t really resemble a human, but bear with me here). [In] H. P. Lovecraft’s story ‘The Call of Cthulhu,’ Cthulhu rests in a tomb in the city of R’lyeh, which sank beneath the Pacific Ocean aeons ago. Cthulhu is dead but not truly dead, as he and his fellow inhabitants of R’lyeh sleep the aeons away…. From time to time R’lyeh comes to the surface, and Cthulhu’s dreams influence sensitive individuals across the globe to depict his image, slay, and found cults dedicated to him.”

Back then, I thought it was funny to promote Cthulhu as perhaps the worst presidential candidate anyone could conceive of. Then came the 2016 presidential election, and it didn’t seem funny any more.

As we approach 2024, the Republican Party seems to have turned into awakened Cthulhu — they’re ready to get violent with anyone they don’t agree with (“if I have to kick down doors, that’s just what patriots do”). The Democratic Party, by contrast, seems to drift ever further from their roots as the party of economic opportunity for ordinary working people — they look like Cthulhu sleeping away the aeons.

With both the Republicans and the Democrats trying to become bad imitations of an Elder God, I’ve decided it’s time to bring back the Elder God Party. Let’s get a real Elder God involved in politics. Imagine a debate between Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Cthulhu. Cthulhu speaks first. Donald Trump starts to shout over him, and Cthulhu eats him. Joe Biden tries to inject a comment, and Cthulhu mocks him for not being vicious enough. That’s the end of the debate. After Cthulhu is declared the winner, he eats the audience.

Look at it this way. We can die a slow death from ecological disaster while ruled by an authoritarian regime. Or we can die the same slow death while under the leadership of a party that is unable to organize its followers around the obvious unifying cause. Or — we can die a really fast death by electing Cthulhu, who will simply kill everyone and eat them.

Do the right thing. Vote for a really fast death. Vote the Elder God Party in 2024.

Natural dyes update

Our experiments in early August to make natural dyes using pine cones or invasive plants weren’t very successful. Subsequently, Carol did a lot of research and experimenting. When we held Ecojustice Camp in mid-August, she was able to produce some pretty good colors using natural dyes.

Person holding a t-shirt dyed in red, yllow, and brown in a spiral pattern. — Tie-dye cotton t-shirt by Micah with turmeric, choke cherry, and walnut husks

The most successful colors came from turmeric powder (bright yellow), choke cherry (magenta), and black walnut husks (brown). Camper Micah brought in the choke cherries. I’m not sure what Carol’s dye recipes were, but I do know she used an alum mordant.

Right out of the dye vats, the colors were pretty spectacular. After a first washing, the colors definitely faded to some degree. Nevertheless, they were still attractive.

I liked the warm brown of the black walnut husk dye the best. I’ve been collecting walnut husks over the past couple of weeks. If I can just find the time, I’m all ready to cook up some dye with them. And if I do, I’ll post the results here.

Email notifications

Every once in a while, someone asks me if they can get notified by email when I post something on this blog. There are several solid email notification solutions for WordPress that charge a fee — but I can’t justify spending any more than I already do on this website. And all the email notification solutions I’ve found take time to set up and maintain — but I’d rather spend the limited amount of time I have on writing blog posts rather than on maintaining an email list.

These days, most of the web is devoted to making money. Websites are either trying to promote a business or a nonprofit, or websites are trying to show you advertisements. Those people who make money from their websites — by showing you ads, or by promoting goods or services, or by soliciting donations for a nonprofit — are more likely to have a marketing budget and staff time they can devote to their website. But on this website, it’s just me, with no marketing budget.

I wish RSS were still a viable option for reading blogs, but it’s not. I guess your only option is to check this site regularly for new posts.

But even if there are no email notifications here, there are no ads, either. And no gobbling up your personal data and selling it….

“Social Movements and Congregational Responses”

The Congregational Consulting Group blog has a new post by David Brubaker titled “Social Movements and Congregational Responses”:

“Congregations [in the U.S.] often experience conflict in response to social movements in the world around them. Since World War II, movements regarding civil rights, the war in Vietnam, the ordination of women, and human sexuality—each vitally important in its own right—also have raised challenges inside congregations, forcing leaders to address internal questions of power and culture.”

Brubaker gives a brief overview of four external social movements that had a big effect on U.S. congregations: the Civil Rights Movement; the movement against the Vietnam War; the movement to ordain women; and the LGBTQ+ rights movement. I’d like to take a look at Unitarian Universalist (UU) response to each of these movements.

We Unitarian Universalists like to think that we were on the “right side” (i.e., the progressive side) of each of these movements, but that’s not true. We don’t often tell this part of our history, but if you talk with older Unitarian Universalist (UUs) — or if you’re old enough to remember these movements yourself — you know that we had a very mixed record for all these movements.

Civil Rights Movement

We like to tell ourselves the story that we were early and unified and vigorous supporters of the Civil Rights Movement. There is little evidence that was true.