Another in a long-running series of brief biographies of obscure Unitarian Universalists. This is a chapter from my long-delayed book on Unitarians in Palo Alto from 1895 to 1934.
Out of poverty
Assistant minister, then settled minister, of the Unitarian Church of Palo Alto in 1926-1927, she was born at Larned, Kansas, on October 18, 1888, the first child of Fred Newton Lasley and Leura Auretta Davis. Times were hard in Kansas, and not long after Leila was born, Fred scraped together enough money to take the train to Portland, Oregon, where his brother and half-sister lived, in hopes of finding work. He found work as a carpenter, and saved enough money to send to Leura so that she could join him in Portland. Leura was just twenty years old when she took that five day journey by rail, carrying a baby in diapers, and with no one to help her.
After a year in Portland, Fred found work managing a farm in Springdale, east of Portland. He and Leura felt financially secure enough to have more children, and Leila’s younger sisters Weltha Evadna Lasley, and Gladys Mable Lasley, were born in Springdale; a brother Clarence, born in 1890, died young. By 1896, when Leila was 8 years old, the family had saved enough money to purchase their own farm in what is now Corbett, Ore. On the side of a hill, Fred built a two room shack using rough lumber he purchased, with a root cellar underneath. Fred built a trough that ran from a nearby spring to the house, so that they would have running water in the house. Leila’s sister Clara Belle Lasley was born on the farm the next year, in 1897. Leila’s younger brother Walter was born there in 1905.
The Lasleys were “poor as church mice.” They had few toys, and their clothes were often faded and patched. But their mother kept them looking neat and tidy, and encouraged them with homey moral sayings. If the children felt discouraged and unable to do something, their mother would say, “Mr. Can’t just fell off the fence and broke his neck — now you girls get back to work.” If their mother heard something that sounded like gossip, she would say, “That doesn’t concern you, so don’t publish it.” What Leura lacked in schooling, she made up for in common sense. Leura also had pride: she wanted her daughters “to be brought up decent.”
This deity is a yipwon figure, from the Yimam people who live along the Karawari River in East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. Since I know essentially nothing about the Yimam people and their deities, I’m going to quote from various authorities who claim to know something.
Yipwon figure in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, acc. no. 2014.306
Maia Nuku, in the recent book Oceania: The Shape of Time (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2023), says this about yipwon figures.:
“Depicting ancestral spirits, yipwon figures have long played a central role in hunting and warfare for Yimam people along the Korewori [sic] River in the Middle Sepik. The figures served as vessels into which spirits were summoned before a hunt or raid. The carvings were either large-scale or small enough to be portable, to be carried and deployed by their owners as powerful amulets or charms. Large figures were owned by the group and kept in the ceremonial house, close to the back wall, the most sacred area of the house. Each yipwon bore a name and was paired with one of the senior male members of the clan. Before its assistance was required, the yipwon spirit was summoned into the sculpture by activating it with a mixture of betel nut, ginger root, and a small amount of the blood of the man who was activating it…. On entering the yipwon figure, the spirit could also possess its human counterpart, speaking through him to the assembled men…. Yipwon were not intended to be representative portraits of individuals, but, rather, an activated vision of the exceptional nonhumans with whom the community was in relation….”
Christian Kaufmann, Korewori: Magic Art from the Rain Forest (University of Hawaii Press, 2003), pp. 70-71, gives a version of the myth they say underlies the yipwon figures:
“In 1963 Eike Haberland and Sigfried Seyfarth made a detailed study of the Yimam on the upper Korewori and its tributary the Wogopmeri as well as the hills to the north of them. These people name their hunting helpers yipwon, which Seyfarth and Haberland translate as ‘hunting demon.’ … The yipwon hunting helpers and the somewhat different older hook figures of the Yimam owe their existence to a mythical event which has been described in detail. They were created from the wood chips that were left when Sun, a male being, cared the first slit-gong. They have a human-like life, and enrage Sun by committing a murder. When this deed is discovered by the moon-woman, their shame is such that they transform themselves on the spot into stiff, thin wood figures and press themselves in the dark against the wall of the men’s house. Sun appoints them as hunting helpers at the moment when he takes leave of humans forever.”
The Metropolitan Museu of Art has photographs of several yipwon figures on their web site. On the web page for one of those figures, they give a somewhat different summary of the same myth, probably from the same source (Seyfarth and Haberland):
“…Local oral tradition describes the origin of these distinctive images. When the spirit of the Sun, who formerly inhabited the earth, was carving the first slit gong (a large musical instrument), the pieces of wood chipped from the carving came to life as spirits who lived with the Sun in the men’s ceremonial house. One day these spirits killed one of the Sun’s male relatives and drank his blood, after which they stretched themselves out against the wall of the house and turned back into wood. Angered by their act, the Sun ascended into the sky while the yipwon remained on earth as patron spirits of warfare and hunting….”
I found very little information online about the Yimam people, who are also called the Alamblak people. The Joshua Project, a Christian group that aims to spread their religion to other peoples, claims that there are 3,100 Alamblak people today; they claim that currently 90% of the Alamblak are Christian, and they link to a translation of the Christian Bible into the Alamblak language. The only other references I could find to the Yimam or Alamblak people was in relation to their artworks. It seems that the only value the Alamblak / Yimam people have to the First World is either to provide artworks (which sell for quite high figures), or to provide converts to Christianity. And I wonder how much remains of their old religion and mythology: are the yipwon still active?
Religion News Service reporter Kathryn Post has an interview with William J. Kole about his new book, “In Guns We Trust,” to report on White evangelical gun culture. In the interview, titled “‘In Guns We Trust’ challenges white evangelicals to rethink their alliance with firearms,” Kole says that he was a part of White evangelical churches, but has been “deconstructing” his Christian faith over his perception that gun culture (and its ally, Christian nationalism) has nothing to do with Christianity:
“…I feel like the historical Jesus is objectively nonviolent. I understand that evangelicals will cherry-pick Scripture to find a few verses to help them feel more comfortable with gun culture, but I find it completely unbiblical. The churches that are embracing gun culture now were almost entirely pacifist up until the late ’60s and early ’70s, when a shift began. Even the Assemblies of God, where I served as a lay missionary for three years in Europe, was officially pacifist in its constitution and bylaws. So, they’ve had to pivot, and it’s a perplexing pivot for me. I just don’t see how weapons have anything to do with a faith tradition that is rooted in nonviolence.”
Kole also says that he’s now “reconstructing” his Christian faith, adding:
“I just can’t, in good conscience, continue in the evangelical tradition.”
A couple of weeks ago on the Patriotic Millionaires site, Emily McCloskey posted a rant — sorry, a well-reasoned essay — laying out why, when Trump has a national approval rating of just 43%, the Democratic party approval rating is just 27%:
“Trump and Republicans have offered a story to voters to explain their financial woes. They’ve blamed immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTQIA people, government bureaucrats, and more. And while they are morally, historically, and economically wrong to do this, unfortunately, Democrats have not strongly pushed back on these assertions in a way that resonates and sticks with voters.
“If Democrats want to win back the affections of voters, particularly those of working people, the solution is simple: they need to start telling a story. More specifically, they need to tell the RIGHT story about why working people are struggling so much while a handful of millionaires like us are doing so ridiculously well. That story involves ruthless corporations, C-suite executives, Wall Street financiers, and compliant politicians from the past and present. It’s not as simple and straightforward as ‘Immigrants are stealing your jobs,’ but it’s also not that complicated to explain.
“But they can’t stop at telling a story to explain people’s economic problems. They also have to offer a solution to them. And that solution is so uncomplicated that it’s almost painful for us to write: adopt an economic populist platform for people to rally around. An economic populist platform will involve policies that are simple, straightforward, and effective at reducing inequality….”
These days, it can seem as though the leadership of the Unitarian Universalist Association has basically adopted the Democratic party line. I especially notice this as someone who is proudly registered as an independent voter, someone whose political views (such as they are) could be called something like “Jesus socialism.” Not Christian socialism — most Christians in the world would not recognize me as Christian; and for my part, given what Christianity has become here in the United States, I don’t want to be a US Christian. Yet while there’s no way you can call me a Christian, I’ve been deeply influenced by the teachings and philosophy of Jesus. I think Bernard Loomer got it right when he argued that Jesus should be recognized for a major contribution to Western thought, his conception of the universe which places the interdependent web of all existence at the center of everything. Sometimes Jesus called that interdependent web “the Kingdom of Heaven,” sometimes maybe he refers to it obliquely as “God,” sometimes he didn’t really give it a name. However you name it, once you acknowledge the centrality of the interdependent web of all existence, the first thing you’re going to notice is….
Quiz time: If the interdependent web of all existence is your central reality, as it was for Jesus, what’s the first thing you’re going to notice?
Nope, not environmentalism. The first thing Jesus noticed was human beings living in poverty.
Environmentalism is not a bad guess. It’s true that we’re connected to all living things, and Jesus did indeed speak about how his God would know when even a small insignificant animal like a sparrow dies. So we should be concerned with all living beings, and indeed with the non-living world (air, rocks, and so on) as well.
But mostly, it appears that Jesus focused on poor people. In the fragmentary records we have of Jesus’s teachings, sparrows are mentioned once, but he talks about poor people any number of times. Unfortunately, Jesus’s thinking and philosophy have been somewhat obscured by later religiosity, and even atheists tend to think of Jesus as somehow divine. When you think of Jesus as a human being, as a human animal (Homo sapiens), however, then it makes sense that in his widening circles of concern, he begins with human beings.
Then when Jesus looks at what damages human animals, he acknowledges the damage done by what we now call racism (this is the point of the story of the Good Samaritan, as Dr. King made clear), and sexism, and all the isms we like to talk about these days. But Jesus starts with people who are poor — people who don’t have enough to eat, people who struggle to find the basic necessities of shelter and physical safety. So reducing poverty is going to be the starting point for anyone who wants to follow Jesus’s moral example. (Both Pope Francis and now Pope Leo get this; Pope Leo’s first official “exhortation” calls on Catholics to care for the poor.)
Dr. William J. Barber II, one of the few public US Christians whom I respect, has pointed out that poverty cuts across the lines of race, sexual orientation, and all the other isms. Barber, who is Black, reminds us that while it’s true that a greater percentage of Black people than White people live in poverty in the US, in terms of absolute numbers there are more White people than Black people living in poverty. As a result, Barber says, we can’t fall into the trap of believing the myth that poverty in the US is a Black problem — poverty is a White problem, a Black problem, and a problem for every racial group.
This brings me back to the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA). On the national level, Unitarian Universalism does not spend much time worrying about poverty. When you look through the denominational magazine, UUWorld, you will find lots of articles about environmentalism, LGBTQIA+ rights, anti-racism initiatives, feminism, and other worthy causes. I’m glad that the UUA promotes anti-racism, feminism, LGBTQIA+ rights, environmentalism, and so on, and I’m proud to be associated with those causes. But I rarely see articles in UUWorld about poverty. Looking beyond the denominational magazine, here’s another example: at the most recent General Assembly, the annual meeting of the UUA, delegates chose between three Congregational Study Action Issues (CSAIs) to serve as a focus of our social justice efforts. Of the three, only one CSAI touched even remotely on poverty — the CSAI on housing justice — and, not surprisingly, it did not win. I’m glad housing justice made it on the ballot, but I’m not surprised that it did not win.
My take on all this is that the UUA has the same problem as the Democratic party. Like the Democratic party, the UUA supports many worthy causes and initiatives. But, like the Democratic party, the UUA does not spend much time or energy on addressing poverty. Yet William J. Barber II points out that by some measures, nearly half of all US residents are poor (where poor is defined as: a household for which one major expense, e.g. a $1000 car repair, would push that household over the economic edge). Nearly half the US is poor. That’s just astonishing in a so-called First World country. That’s an issue that deserves our full attention.
I’m one of the 73% of US residents who don’t give their full approval to the Democratic party. Unfortunately, I’m starting to feel that way about the UUA. I’m seeing poverty everywhere in the US. Even here in Cohasset, Mass., a supposedly wealthy town, I’m seeing people with their economic backs to the wall. They range from a few people who are homeless to quite a few people who are just one unexpected expense away from economic disaster.
So I’ll repeat that advice that Emily McCloskey of Patriotic Millionaires gave to the Democratic party — but I’m going to direct that advice to Unitarian Universalists (UUs) in the US. We US UUs need to “adopt an economic populist platform for people to rally around [with] policies that are simple, straightforward, and effective at reducing inequality.” Or to put it more bluntly: US UUs, we need to stop ignoring poor people.
Artist Matt Inman has a long cartoon/blog post on his website The Oatmeal, in which he sets forth his feelings about AI-generated art. He is thoughtful, while at the same time he pulls no punches (including the use of some salty language). Here’s an excerpt:
“AI art is an interesting technology because despite its growing popularity, nobody seems to want it. Artists hate using it. Consumers hate consuming it. And yet it thrives, like an Arby’s built inside a protected forest.
“I know it’s bleak. But artists, remember this: Nobody worth giving a damn about wants this technology. No one with a modicum of taste, patience, or culture gives a shit about AI art.
“AI art might eventually have the right number of fingers, but it’ll never have a heart. (I know this is cheesy but fuck you I like it.)”
“Maybe it [AI art[ will get better. I’ve said it before: I don’t know what we (humanity writ large) are capable of achieving with AI, but I know the people and corporations funding AI are in it for profit, not the betterment of culture or humanity.”
“…the transformation from self-centredness to Reality-centredness [following a transcendent experience from e.g. psychedelic drugs] is a fundamentally ethical one: to be far enough along it is to be a saint, one who has had ‘a transcendence of the ego point of view and its replacement by devotion to or centred concentration upon some manifestation of the Real, response to which produces compassion/love towards other human beings or towards all life’ (Interpretation of Religion 301). But I think we need to be very careful about that sort of claim. The point came up in my interview with Osheen Dayal of MAPS Canada, where I pointed to the example of tycoon Elon Musk.
“It is publicly documented that Musk has used psilocybin, LSD and more, and given his known involvement in psychedelic spaces like Burning Man, he’s probably done far more than the documents let on. He has almost certainly had multiple psychedelic experiences of self-transcendence in the face of a larger reality. And yet Musk is about as far as one could imagine from ‘compassion/love towards other human beings or towards all life.’ Rather, he is practically a caricature of a self-absorbed egoist, so confident in his own rightness that he used his brief time in government to destroy thousands of military veterans’ lifelong careers and end the lifelines of thousands of desperately poor people around the world in the name of saving a tiny fraction of money and sometimes nothing at all.
“Musk is to today’s generations what Charles Manson was to the baby boomers: a sobering reminder that psychedelic experiences can leave you a terrible person….”
Back in 2017, sociologists Brad Christerson and Richard Flory published a book titled “The Rise of Network Christianity: How Independent Leaders Are Changing the Religious Landscape.” In one of their central arguments, they said:
“We argue that macrolevel social changes since the 1970s, including globalization and the digital revolution, have given competitive advantages to religious groups organized by networks rather than traditionally organized congregations and denominations.”
For Flory and Christerson, Independent Network Charismatic (INC) Christianity is the paradigm for this type of religious organization. INC Christianity is associated with a specific set of beliefs, including spiritual healing, confrontations with “demonic forces,” and social transformation on the far right side of the culture wars.
But why couldn’t other religious groups, with different sets of beliefs, organize themselves through networks? And I suspect that there are such religious groups, including those with sets of beliefs, and with political commitments, with which I’m somewhat more comfortable.
I suspect that it would be possible to identify what we might call Independent Network Westernized Buddhism. From what I’ve seen of Westernized Buddhist practitioners, there does appear to be a loose network that shares some of the attributes of INC Christianity, including “experimentation with controversial supernatural practices, innovative finance and marketing, and a highly participatory, unorthodox, experiential faith that is attractive in today’s pluralistic, unstable religious marketplace.” I’m sure many Westernized Buddhists would argue that they do not engage with “supernatural practices,” but the evolving science around meditation and mindfulness appear to downgrade some of the more extreme claims of that practice — a practice which, to my skeptical mind, is just as supernatural as prayer.
Another decentralized network that might qualify is Progressive Christianity. In a comment on a post I made earlier this week, Gabriele Simion drew my attention to this network, which features progressive Christian luminaries like Diana Butler Bass (thank you, Gabriele!). Progressive Christianity is not exactly a denomination — they don’t appear to ordain or credential clergy, they have minimal staff, they don’t plant new congregations, etc. — so maybe they’re a “network” in the sense that Christerson and Flory use the term?
I’ve begun to think that the Unitarian Universalist association might want to take on more attributes of networked religion. Funding for denominational work continues to plummet, congregations continue to fade away — the denomination is shrinking before our eyes. In spite of the shrinking of the denomination and the congregations, there are lots of individual Unitarian Universalists in the world who still want to connect with other Unitarian Universalists. My own tiny little congregation here in Cohasset has (we think) three regular viewers of our livestream who live far from Cohasset, have never been a part of the in-person congregation, yet who have been watching our livestreamed services most weeks, and donate money as well.
Yet I suspect that most Unitarian Universalist leaders would not be very receptive to the idea of moving away from the traditional organizational structures of denomination and congregation. Back in 2004, evangelical Christian Brian McLaren pointed out that “[religious] conservatives tend to be rigid theologically and promiscuous pragmatically and [religious] liberals tend to be rigid methodologically and a lot more free theologically.”
Well, that’s still going on — the religious conservatives are being “promiscuous pragmatically” and they are dramatically out-competing the religious liberals. There is one group among Unitarian Universalists that might have a hope of competing with the INC Christians: the Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF). They deliver their religious services primarily online, and have the potential for adopting the best organizational practices of network Christianity. However, they are pretty well locked into the traditional denominational financial structure of the UUA, which hampers their ability to innovate financially.
I suspect a great many religious progressives have mostly given up on religion, and just assume that secularization will do away with religion entirely. But the secularization hypothesis is just that — a hypothesis — and in any case, right now the INC Christians have become extremely adept at winning elections and pushing their agenda of social transformation. I wish religious progressives could find it in themselves to be as innovative as the INC Christians.
I went for a walk at Black Rock Beach late this afternoon. A large quantity of seaweed had been left behind by the ebbing tide, mostly Sugar Kelp (Saccharina latissima), but also some wrack (Fucus spp.), some Sea Lettuce (Ulva lattuca), and a few other odds and ends.
There were also hundreds of small (2-3 cm long), almost transparent jelly-like objects washed up above the line of seaweed. At first glance I thought they were Sea Gooseberries (Pleurobrachia pileus), a species of comb jellies. But when I put my photos on iNaturalist, user ja-fields corrected me — they were salps.
What is a salp, you ask? It’s an organism in Family Salpidae. The Salpidae are in Subphylum Tunicata, which is a part of Phylum Chordata — animals with spinal cords. Human beings are also in Phylum Chordata, so this odd little animal is more closely related to us than are crabs, sea urchins, or starfish.
This made me curious — how does one identify Salpidae, if not to species level, then at least to genus? James L. Yount, “The Taxonomy of the Salpidae (Tunicata) of the Central Pacific Ocean,” Pacific Science, July, 1954, has a “Key to world species and reproductive forms of Salpidae,” pp. 280 ff. Identification requires looking at the internal structures, and Yount provides a “Schematic median section of a solitary salp (after Ihle, 1935).” I digitally enhanced his sketch, and identified the body parts in easy-to-read type:
After Yount (1954).Click the image above for a PDF version.
At some point, perhaps I’ll type up Yount’s key. In the mean time, you can find it yourself here.
Back in 2010, Scott Wells came up with a list of congregations that claimed an affiliation with both Unitarian Universalism and some other religious tradition. 15 years later, we’ve seen many small congregations close, so I decided to revisit Scott’s list and see how many of the congregations in his post were still in existence.
Below is my list, grouped together by U.S. state, and in alphabetical order within each state grouping. Except where noted, I’ve given religious affiliations as garnered from congregational websites.
Update, 13 Oct. 2025: Thanks to commenter Gabriele Simion, added several congregations; cleaned up some typos, and fixed names of denominations / religious groups. Update, 23 Oct.: Added Free Congregation of Sauk City, thanks to Gabriele again.
The list
The list has all multi-religious congregations I was able to find that are formally affiliated with the UUA. I determined formal affiliation based on the congregation’s appearance in the UUA’s online directory. (N.B.: I haven’t included affiliations with the new North American Unitarian Association, because they don’t publicize a list of their member congregations.) If you know of multi-religious congregations formally affiliated with the UUA that I’ve missed, please mention them in the comments.
First Universalist Church of Hardwick Preservation Trust (part of the Tri-Parish Community Church, which meets at First Universalist July-Dec.; affiliations from UCC denominational website, and UUA directory) — Hardwick, Mass. — UCC, UUA
First Church of Templeton (website is gone, I’ve linked to their active Facebook page; UCC affiliation from other online sources) — Templeton, MA — UCC, UUA
United Church of Winchester (website is gone, I’ve linked to their active Facebook page; UCC, UMC affiliations from other online sources)— Winchester, NH — UCC, UMC, UUA
There are other congregations that may have had a Unitarian or Universalist affiliation in the past, but no longer do. Trying to research such congregations seems incredibly difficult, so I haven’t included them. But here are three examples from Scott’s 2010 blog post:
The Community Church of Pepperell, in Pepperell, MA, is formally affiliated solely with the UCC. On their website they say that they formed as a merger between the Unitarian church and the Congregationalist church in Pepperell.
First Church in Belfast, Maine, was formerly affiliated with the Unitarians and the Congregationalists, but is now solely affiliated with the UCC. (The history section of their website states that “Congregationalists believed in the complete autonomy of the local church; Unitarians did not”; this is incorrect, as both Congregationalists and Unitarians share the same polity).
The Federated Church of Hyannis is an “independent” (i.e., nondenominational) congregation that claims both Universalist and Congregationalist roots. It would be interesting to learn more specifics of their history; there were other Universalist churches which left the Universalist General Convention and affiliated with the Congregationalists in the first half of the twentieth century.
If you know of other multi-religious congregations with a Unitarian or Universalist history, please mention them in the comments. If possible, provide a link to their website or social media presence.
In the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, there’s a lovely small sculpture of the god Shiva with his wife Uma. It was made in the 13th century CE out of “copper alloy” in Tamil Nadu, the southernmost state in India.
Shiva and Uma, Walker Art Museum, acc. no. 54.3023. Uma is on the right.
But wait a minute…isn’t Shiva married to Parvati? Who is Uma?
For a partial answer to the question of Uma’s identity, I looked at the Kena-Upanishad, which can be found of the Talavakara-Upanishad. I used Max Mueller’s translation in The Upanishads Part I, Sacred Books of the East series, volume I (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1897), pp. 46 ff. The third and fourth khandas of this upanishad tell how Brahman, the ultimate reality or highest deity, is more powerful than anything else in the universe, more powerful even than various other gods and goddesses. Mueller’s translation of the third khanda (verses 1-12), and the first verse of the fourth khanda, reads as follows:
“Brahman obtained the victory for the Devas. The Devas became elated by the victory of Brahman, and they thought, this victory is ours only, this greatness is ours only.
“Brahman perceived this and appeared to them. But they did not know it, and said: ‘What yaksha [sprite, demon] is this?’
“They said to Agni [fire]: ‘O Gatavedas, find out what yaksha this is.’ ‘Yes,’ he said.
“He ran toward it, and Brahman said to him: ‘Who are you?’ He replied: ‘I am Agni, I am Gatavedas.’
“Brahman said: ‘What power is in you?’ Agni replied: ‘I could burn all whatever there is on earth.’
“Brahman put a straw before him, saying: ‘Burn this.’ Agni went towards it with all his might, but he could not burn it. Then he returned thence and said: ‘I could not find out what yaksha this is.’
“Then they said to Vayu [air]: ‘O Vayu, find out what sprite this is.’ ‘Yes,’ he said.
“He ran toward it, and Brahman said to him: ‘Who are you?’ Vayu replied: ‘I am Vayu, I am Matarisvan.’
“Brahman said: ‘What power is in you?’ Vayu replied: ‘I could take up all whatever there is on earth.’
“Brahman put a straw before him, saying: ‘Take it up.’ Vayu went towards it with all his might, but he could not take it up. Then he returned thence and said: ‘I could not find out what yaksha this is.’
“Then they said to Indra: ‘O Maghavan, find out what yaksha this is.’ He went towards it, but it disappeared from before him.
“Then in the same space [ether] he came towards a woman, highly adorned: it was Uma, the daughter of Himavat [the Himalayas, or snowy mountains]. He said to her: ‘Who is that yaksha?’
“She replied: ‘It is Brahman. It is through the victory of Brahman that you have thus become great.’…”
In a footnote, Mueller provides some information about Uma:
“Uma may here be taken as the wife of Siva, daughter of Himavat, better known by her earlier name, Parvati, the daughter of the mountains. Originally she was, not the daughter of the mountains or of the Himalaya, but the daughter of the cloud, just as Rudra was originally, not the lord of the mountains, girisa, but the lord of the clouds. We are, however, moving here in a secondary period of Indian thought, in which we see … the manifested powers, and particularly the knowledge and wisdom of the gods, represented by their wives. Uma means originally flax, from va, to weave, and the same word may have been an old name of wife, she who weaves (cf. duhitri, spinster, and possibly wife itself, if O. H. G. wib is connected with O. H. G. weban). It is used almost synonymously with ambika, Taitt. Ar. p. 839. If we wished to take liberties, we might translate uma haimavati by an old woman coming from the Himavat mountains; but I decline all responsibility for such an interpretation.”
David R Kinsley, in his book Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Traditions (Berkeley: Univ. of Calif. Press, 1986), p. 36, has a somewhat different take on who Uma in this upanishad might be:
“The Kena-upanisad contains a goddess named Uma Haimavati (3:12). This is one of the most common names of the late Sati-Parvati, but this reference does not associate the goddess with Siva, nor does it associate her with mountains, except by name (haimavati meaning ‘she who belongs to Himavat,’ who is the Himalaya Mountains personified as a god). Her primary role in this text is that of a mediator who reveals the knowledge of the brahman to the gods. She appears in the text suddenly, and as suddenly disappears. It is little more than conjecture to identify her with the later goddess Sati-Parvati, although quite naturally later writers do make the identification when describing the exploits of Sati or Parvati. To devotees of the goddess, this early Upanishadic reference provides proof of her venerable history….”
How can we make sense of all this? On Hindu Blog, which gives contemporary popular accounts of Hinduism, writer Abhilash Rajendran cites the Encyclopedia of Hinduism, vol XI (India Heritage Research Foundation and Rupa Publications, 2012) p. 22, and says Uma “has thousands of names depending on which way a devotee want to perceive her.” Rajendran goes on to say that some of the key aspects of Uma’s symbolism include feminine energy, “motherly love and nurturing,” balance, harmony, and “asceticism and devotion.” She can also appear as a “fierce warrior goddess”; and in fact, Kali is one of her manifestations.
Other sources may depict Uma slightly differently, but the gist of her is always the same: the great power of the feminine. Don’t mess with Uma.
