Yet Another Unitarian Universalist – Page 4 – A postmodern heretic's spiritual journey.

The color of late summer plants

We’re past Lughnasa now, and the days are noticeably shorter. At this time of year, I always look for a few plants with spectacular colors.

Delicately formed flowers. — Lobelia cardinalis

The Cardinal Flower grows in wet ground — in swamps, or along streams, rivers and ponds. I don’t often find a cardinal flower blooming where I can get close enough to see the details of the flowers, but this one was growing in a wet place along one of the paths around Aaron River Reservoir. The vivid red color, and the dramatic structure of the flower, makes it especially memorable.

Butterfly on a flower head. — Danaus plexippus on Asclepias tuberosa

Butterfly Milkweed grows in open fields and meadows. The bright orange is pretty enough by itself, but when an orange and black Monarch Butterfly lands on it, it’s truly spectacular.

Thin orange stems twining around a green plant. — Cuscuta gronovii

At this time of year along one of the inlets of Cohasset Harbor, I always see marsh plants covered in strange-looking orange filaments. Common Dodder is a parasitic plant that has no chlorophyll; it gets all its nutrients by sucking the sap out of a host plant. Parasites always creep me out a little — though I suppose letting your food source live is better than killing it, the way we humans kill carrots and potatoes, or cows and chickens. Nevertheless, the showy orange stems of Common Dodder twined in among green leaves is quite a beautiful sight.

What needs to be said

In a podcast on Religion News service, Rabbi Jay Michelson says that leaders among religious progressives have been avoiding talking about what we can only presume at this point is a government cover-up about the Epstein sex trafficking ring.

I’m not sure if I qualify as a religious progressive leader, but I haven’t been talking about Epstein, or about Ghislaine Maxwell, or about Donnie Trump’s possible connection to their pedophile ring, because I don’t like giving a lot of air time to human traffickers who got money and power trips out of exploiting girls. It always seems to be that the sexist assholes in this world take over all the conversations.

So let’s talk about Haley Robson, who was molested by Epstein when she was 16 years old. When she was 15, she had been raped, and her rapist was still stalking her and humiliating her; as a result she was probably extra vulnerable to Epstein’s emotional manipulation. So Epstein molested her, but stopped short of intercourse, telling her that she should go recruit other girls for him. An article in Psychology Today covers this part of Robson’s story — it’s a very ugly story.

In an interview with BBC News posted just a couple of hours ago, Robson talks about why we should not talk so much about Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell. Instead of talking about them, Robson says:

“I’d like to start talking about the women who have sacrificed and poured their blood sweat and tears to get the little bit of justice [they’ve gotten]. I would like the conversations to stop revolving around a billionaire pedophile — not a billionaire financier, let’s call him what he is — and I would like to stop having those conversations. I would like everyone to stop glorifying this monster and [stop] giving him the time of day. All you’re doing is sensationalizing him and it doesn’t need to happen any more.” [my transcript of the interview]

The whole Epstein saga reminds me far too much of the sexual misconduct cases I’ve seen in smaller organizations (like organized religion, and sports teams, and schools, etc.). A person in a position of authority uses their power to sexually exploit vulnerable people — then when they get found out, everyone focuses attention on the person in the position of authority, neglecting or ignoring or forgetting the vulnerable people who got exploited.

So I respect Rabbi Michelson’s opinion that religious progressives should not cede the conversation about the Epstein cover-up to the religious right. But I feel that Robson has the right idea — I don’t want to sensationalize or glorify either Epstein, or his proven and alleged accomplices. If we do decide to talk about this case, let’s make sure our conversation is focused on the people who got molested and manipulated, and how we might get justice for them.

Hammer dyeing with sumac leaves

I was reading the chapter on mordants in the book Craft of the Dyer: Colour from Plants and Lichens (by Karen leigh Casselman, 2nd ed., Dover Publications, 1993), when I came across this: “Some dye plants are used in the pot as mordants. This is true with alder and with sumac leaves.” (p. 40). (In case you’re not familiar with the term, a mordant is a substance used to help fix dyes in the cloth; a mordant helps make the dye color more light-fast, and helps the color stand up to washing better.)

This summer, I got interested in hammer dyeing (also known as “plant pounding”). This process transfers plant colors to cloth by hammering the plant against the cloth (details on the process are in this blog post). One problem with hammer dyeing is that the colors are not always lightfast, and may not stand up well to washing. But if sumac leaves can act as both mordant and dye-stuff, I wondered if they might produce a more permanent color if used for hammer-dyeing.

So I hammer-dyed a t-shirt using sumac leaves. And yes, they did indeed stand up to washing. As for lightfastness, only time will tell.

To see photos and a description of the whole process, scroll down.

Christian Socialism in 1935

I’ve been reading Capitalism and Its Critics by John Cassidy. According to Cassidy, Karl Polanyi criticized capitalism as being essentially undemocratic. After watching the rise of fascism in Europe, in 1935 Polyani wrote:” The mutual incompatibility of Democracy and Capitalism is almost generally accepted today as the background of the social crisis of our time.” Why? Because “only an authoritative State can deal with the contradictions inherent in Capitalism.” (Quoted by Cassidy, p. 283, originally from Polyani’s “The Essence of Fascism.”)

There was a religious side to this. Polyani was a Christian Socialist. Today, Christian Socialism is a concept that would probably cause the heads of many U.S. Christians to explode. (It would also probably cause the heads of Bernie Sanders and the Democratic Socialists of America to explode, but I digress.) Yet Christian Socialism used to be a widely-known option that boasted adherents ranging from Dorothy Day (a Catholic) to Adin Ballou (a Universalist turned Unitarian).

From Polyani’s viewpoint as a Christian Socialist, the rise of fascism not only threatened socialism, it also threatened Christianity. In that same 1935 essay, Polyani wrote: “Victorious Fascism is not only the downfall of the Socialist Movement; it is the end of Christianity in all but its most debased forms.” As a theological point, I think this is true — when people allow a central political authority to make moral choices for them, you’re going to see an attenuation of their individual moral capacity, which will similarly attenuate their religious capabilities.

Another

Email piled up while I was on vacation. I missed the fact that the Ministerial Fellowship Committee sent out another notice back on July 16:

“With regret, I am writing to inform you that the Rev. Kaaren Anderson has resigned her fellowship during a full fellowship review with the UUA’s Ministerial Fellowship Committee (MFC) for bullying and abusive behaviors in the workplace including in prior ministries. This fellowship review occurred after a full investigation by an independent investigator. The Executive Committee of the MFC met with the Rev. Anderson in early July and recommended removal from fellowship, necessitating a full fellowship review. It was during this process that the Rev. Anderson resigned.”

As I’ve said before, I do wonder who the independent investigator was. Does the UUA have enough money to pay for an outside law firm or consulting firm to carry out these reviews? If not, who is the independent investigator? In any case, Kaaren Anderson has her own website, where you can her employment history.

AI and UU sermons

Should Unitarian Universalists use so-called AI (Large Language Models, or LLM) to write sermons?

Since Unitarian Universalists don’t have a dogma to which we must adhere, there will be many answers to this question. Here are my answers:

I/ Adverse environmental impact of LLMs

Answer: No. The environmental cost of LLMs is too great.

First, we all know about the huge carbon footprint of LLMs. And the more complex the answer required from the LLM, the more carbon that is emitted. Deborah Prichner, in a June 19, 2025, Science News article on the Frontiers website, sums up the impact by quoting someone who researched energy use of LLMs:

“‘The environmental impact of questioning trained LLMs is strongly determined by their reasoning approach, with explicit reasoning processes significantly driving up energy consumption and carbon emissions,’ said … Maximilian Dauner, a researcher at Hochschule München University of Applied Sciences…. ‘We found that reasoning-enabled models produced up to 50 times more CO2 emissions than concise response models.’”

Thus, not only do LLMs have a big carbon footprint, but handling something as complex as a sermon could result in a carbon impact 50 times greater than the lowest LLM carbon footprint.

Second, the data centers running LLMs use a tremendous amount of fresh water. In their paper “Making AI Less ‘Thirsty’: Uncovering and Addressing the Secret Water Footprint of AI Models,” Pengfei Li (UC Riverside), Dr. Jianyi Yang (U Houston), Dr. Mohammad Atiqul Islam (U Texas Arlington), and Dr. Shaolei Ren (UC Riverside) state:

“The growing carbon footprint of artificial intelligence (AI) has been undergoing public scrutiny. Nonetheless, the equally important water (withdrawal and consumption) footprint of AI has largely remained under the radar. For example, training the GPT-3 language model in Microsoft’s state-of-the-art U.S. data centers can directly evaporate 700,000 liters of clean freshwater, but such information has been kept a secret. More critically, the global AI demand is projected to account for 4.2 – 6.6 billion cubic meters of water withdrawal in 2027, which is more than the total annual water withdrawal of … half of the United Kingdom.”

Third, on 1 May 2025, IEEE Spectrum reported that “AI data centers” cause serious air pollution. The article, titled “We Need to Talk About AI’s Impact on Public Health: Data-center pollution is linked to asthma, heart attacks, and more,” raises several concerns. The authors write:

“The power plants and backup generators needed to keep data centers working generate harmful air pollutants, such as fine particulate matter and nitrogen oxides (NOx). These pollutants take an immediate toll on human health, triggering asthma symptoms, heart attacks, and even cognitive decline.”

In sum: Because my religious commitments call on me to aim for a lower ecological impact, the environmental impact of LLMs alone is enough to stop me from using them to write sermons.

II/ Sermons as human conversations

Answer: No. I feel that sermons should be the result of human interaction.

You see, for me, a sermon should arise from the spiritual and religious conversations that people are having in a specific congregation or community. As a minister, I try to listen hard to what people in the congregation are saying. Some of what I do in a sermon is to reflect back to the congregation what I’m hearing people talk about. At present, a LLM cannot access the conversations that are going on in my congregation — a LLM can’t know that P— made this profound observation about their experience of aging, that A— asked this deep question about the reality of the death of a family member, that C— made a breakthrough in finding a life direction, that J— took this remarkable photograph of a coastal wetland. Some or all of those things affect the direction of a sermon.

Mind you, this is not true for all religions. Deena Prichep, in a 21 July 2025 article on Religion News Service titled “Are AI sermons ethical? Clergy consider where to draw the line,” states that “The goal of a sermon is to tell a story that can break open the hearts of people to a holy message.” In other words, according to Prichep, for some religions the role of the preacher is to cause other people to accept their holy message. Prichep quotes Christian pastor Naomi Sease Carriker as saying: “Why not, why can’t, and why wouldn’t the Holy Spirit work through AI?” I can see how this would be consistent with certain strains of Christianity — and with certain strains of Unitarian Universalism, for that matter, where the important thing is some abstract message that somehow transcends human affairs.

But that’s not my religion. My religion centers on the community I’m a part of. Yes, there is a transcendent truth that we can access — but as a clergyperson, I don’t have some special access to that transcendent truth. Instead, truth is something that we, as a community of inquirers, gradually approach together. Any single individual is fallible, and won’t be able to see the whole truth — that’s why it’s important to understand this as a community conversation.

As a clergyperson, one thing I can do is to add other voices to the conversation, voices that we don’t have in our little local community. So in a sermon that’s trying to help us move towards truth, I might bring in William R. Jones, Imaoka Shinichiro, or Margaret Fuller (to name just a few Unitarian Universalist voices). Or I might quote from one of the sacred scriptures — i.e., from one of the sources of wisdom traditions — from around the world. Now it is true that maybe a LLM could save me a little time in coming up with some other voices; but given the huge environmental costs, it seems silly to save a small amount of time by using a LLM.

III/ Biases built into LLMs

Answer: No, because of hidden biases.

LLMs are algorithms trained on digitized data which has been input into them. For a LLM, the digitized data is mostly in the form of text. But we know that certain kinds of authors are going to be under-represented in that digitized data: women, non-Whites, working class people, LGBTQ people, etc. The resulting biases can be subtle, but are nonetheless real.

As a Universalist, I am convinced that all persons are equally worthy. I have plenty of biases of my own, biases that can keep me from seeing that all persons are equally worthy of love — but at least if my sermons are affected by my own biases, my community can successfully challenge me about my biases. If I use a LLM model to write a sermon, a model that’s riddled with biases that I’m not really aware of, that makes it harder for my community to help me rid my sermons of my biases.

IV/ Final answer: No

Would I use a LLM to write a sermon?

No. It goes against too many things I stand for.

Should you use a LLM to write your sermons?

I ‘m not going to answer that question for you. Nor should you ask a LLM model to answer that question for you. We all have to learn how to be ourselves, and to live our own lives. Once we start asking others — whether we’re asking LLMs or other authority figures — to answer big questions for us, then we’re well on the road to authoritarianism.

Come to think of it, that’s where we are right now — on the road to authoritarianism. And that’s a road I choose not to follow, thank you very much.

Hammer dyeing for nature journals

“Hammer dyeing” is a technique where you transfer the shape and color of leaves and flowers to cloth or paper by hammering. The process is fairly simple: you place plant material on cloth or heavy paper; cover with cloth, heavy paper, or plastic wrap; then hammer the plant material to release its juices which stain the cloth or paper. This article covers hammer dyeing projects that are intended for inclusion in nature journals.

The technique goes under several different names: “flower pounding,” “hammer printing,” “hammer staining,” “leaf hammering,” “tataki-zome,” “hapa-zome,” “Cherokee leaf pounding,” etc.; but I prefer to call it “hammer dyeing.”

Origins of hammer dyeing

I found no well-documented source giving the origins of hammer dyeing. I suspect the technique arose independently in several cultures.

Some online sources call this technique tataki-zome or hapa-zome, and claim it’s an “ancient Japanese art form,” but without citing any sources. A search on Google Books turns up many references to tataki-zome from 2000 on, but I could find only one reference prior to that date: Rita Buchanan, in Dyes from Nature (Brooklyn Botanical Garden Record, Plants and Gardens, vol. 46 no. 3, autumn 1990), p. 79, says that students learning how to dye in Japan practice tataki-zome: “Using their own plants, they learn dyeing techniques such as batik, itajime — a sort of variegated effect made with wood chips, and tataki-zome, a way of mashing plants on the cloth.” More research is needed to determine if tataki-zome is actually a traditional Japanese art form.

Alabama quilter Bettye Kimbrell (1936-2016), named a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts, used a hammer dyeing technique she called “Cherokee leaf pounding.” It’s not clear this technique was actually used by the Cherokee people, so it’s best to consider this an American folk art with uncertain historical roots. Kimbrell used this technique in her quilts: “Cherokee leaf pounding is a technique where a fresh green leaf is taped to the backside of muslin fabric with masking tape. Using a hammer, gently pounding the leaf allows the chlorophyll to stain the fabric. After transferring each leaf to the fabric, the stain is set with a vinegar and water solution. The fabric is then dried and entirely hand quilted.” (Kristin G. Congdon and Kara Kelley Hallmark, American Folk Art: A Regional Reference, vol. 1 [Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012], p. 226.) More about her process here.

Screenshot from a video about hammer dyeing. — Screenshot from a PBS video on Bettye Kimbrell, showing her hammer dyeing a quilt. Click on the image to watch the video on the PBS website.

Books and references on hammer dyeing

For a comprehensive reference book on this technique, see Laura C. Martin, The Art and Craft of Pounding Flowers (Mt. Kisco, NY: QVC Publishing, 2001; Rodale Press, 2003). Martin covers which types of flowers, and which types of leaves, produce the best results; mordanting fabrics so the image is perhaps more light-fast; setting the image with a hot iron; etc. Unfortunately the book is now out of print. Used copies can be found on Thriftbooks (please do not buy from evil Amazon). The Internet Archive has a copy online that can be borrowed. The first 32 pages of the book are available on Google Books.

I’ve found references to two other books about the process: (1) Ann Frischkorn and Amy Sandrin, Flower Pounding: Quilt Projects for All Ages (Concord, Calif.: C & T Publishing, 2001); and (2) Linda Rudkin, Flower Pounding (London, U.K.: A & C Black Publishers, 2011). I haven’t seen either book, so can’t comment on them.

PBS has a video with Bettye Kimbrell demonstrating her leaf pounding technique. Sadly, the video does not show her technique for setting the image in vinegar (see below).

My curriculum website has instructions for doing flower pounding with children, using inexpensive watercolor paper. Scroll down to “V/Printmaking,” then go to project “D/Pounding flowers.” The technique I describe has been extensively field tested with children from grade 1-8, and produces reliable results. However, this technique is more focused on process than product (“process art”), and is not suitable for use in a nature journal curriculum.

Cloth with hammer-dyed impression of a fern on it. — Hammer-dyed fern on bleached cotton muslin, 36 inches wide. No mordant or scouring, but the image was set using a steam iron. The darker places are plant material deliberately left on the finished image. Image copyright (c) 2025 Dan Harper.

Hammer dyeing process

Earlier this month, during a week-long family conference at a Unitarian Universalist summer camp, I was leading an ecology workshop that centered around participants recording thoughts, feelings, and observations about the nature in journals (i.e., nature journaling). My co-leader, Rebecca, who is a middle school teacher, contributed to the development of this activity (thanks, Rebecca!). During this workshop, we field-tested a procedure for hammer dyeing. The process, outline below, is easy to set up, and is designed to help participants become more aware of the details of leaves and flowers.

Tools needed

Hammer, at least 1 for every 2 participants (see discussion of hammer types below)
Disposable foam ear plugs
Table with a hard flat surface

Materials

Thin cotton muslin cloth, 36 or 45 inches wide
Leaves, flowers

A rule of thumb for collecting leaves and flowers: Collect just 1 out of 20 similar leaves/flowers.

A note about fabric: I used to go to Joann Fabric to buy cloth for class projects, but they went out of business this year. Michael’s purchased Joann Fabric intellectual property, and one of the local Michael’s stores does carry 45″ cotton muslin in stock. My preferred online source for fabric is Dharma Trading Post, but as of this writing their popular 45 inch cotton muslin is out of stock.

MFC/RECC action

The Ministerial Fellowship Committee (MFC) and the Religious Education Credentialing Committee (RECC) of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) sent an email dated July 9. It reads:

“This email is to inform you of recent decisions of the UUA’s professional credentialing bodies. The Religious Education Credentialing Committee (RECC) has terminated the religious educator credentials of Gregory Carrow-Boyd. This determination was upheld by the Board of Review, upon appeal. The RECC was referred this case, following a decision by the Ministerial Fellowship Committee to remove Mr. Boyd from ministerial aspirant status because of conduct unbecoming of a minister, pursuant to UUMA Ethical Standard 13 – specifically sexual misconduct connected to consent, boundaries, and power dynamics. The MFC affirmed the findings of the thorough, independent investigation, which found a persistent pattern of these boundary violations and misconduct over many years.”

He was most recently the combined minister and director of religious education at the UU congregation in Honolulu. As always, by posting this I’m making no judgement about the facts of this particular situation. I post these on my blog simply because not everyone gets these emails. In addition, the page on the UUA website where these decisions are listed now appears to be hidden from public view and available only by application to the UUA; presumably this is part of the UUA’s decision to hide names and identifying information from bad actors. While making it more difficult to see this page is probably the right thing to do (in our current tumultuous socio-political moment), it also makes it easier to overlook this important repository of MFC judgements.

There is one thing in this email that I’d like to know more about. The email references a “thorough, independent investigation.” It makes sense to have an independent investigation, but I’d like to know who made this investigation. Identifying the investigating body would increase transparency, and consequently increase trust in the overall process.

On another topic — I don’t remember getting an email from the Religious Education Credentialing Committee before. I didn’t know that they could terminate religious education credentials. It makes sense that they can do so; I just didn’t know about it.

Update 15 July 2025: Added a sentence that got left out by mistake in the editing process.

Adventures in cyanotype

(Written on July 3, finally getting around to posting on July 12.)

I’m running an ecology workshop at a small conference at Ferry Beach Park Association in Saco, Maine. One of the activities I did to get participants to see the world in new ways was making cyanotype prints of plants. I was inspired in part by Anna Atkins, who created the first-ever book of photographs with cyanotypes of seaweed.

Thea and Mandy were leading an art workshop at the same time, and they got interested in cyanotypes. So after our morning workshops were over, we did some experimenting. In the evenings, after it got dark, we coated several different kinds of paper with cyanotype emulsion. During the day, we experimented with different compositions using natural object to make photograms. We even took a field trip to the Portland Museum of Art, where there’s a special exhibit of Jo Sandman’s large photograms on platinum-palladium paper.

We didn’t wind up with much in the way of finished art works. But we learned a great deal. As Thea kept reminding us, often the process is more important than the product.

Secularism stalls? Not so fast…

In the June 14 issue, The Economist reports that the decline of organized religion has seen a mild reversal since COVID. In 2023-2024, according to this report, three different surveys show a decline of “Nones,” those who report no religious affiliation, by four percentage points.

Unfortunately, The Economist neglects to tell us which three surveys report this decline (sadly typical of their reporting). A survey by Pew Research is probably one of them. On January 24, 2024, Pew Research published an online report titled “Religious ‘Nones’ in America,” in which they document a drop in the number of Nones from 2022 to 2023. However, in an analysis published the same day, Pew Research felt that it was “too early to tell” whether drop was significant. In another article published this year, on June 9, Pew Research detailed global religious decline from 2010 to 2020. One of the things they looked at was which religions suffered the greatest losses via “religious switching,” i.e., people switching to another religion or switching to no religion at all. Based on global surveys conducted from 2008 to 2014, Pew found that the biggest religious losers were Christianity (-11.6%) and Buddhism (-9.8%); the biggest gainer was no religious affiliation (+16.7%).

Screenshot of an infographic — Screenshot of web page with the infographic by Pew Research showing global percentage losses over five major religions, plus gains by the religiously unaffiliated. Click on the image above to go to the original.

The Cooperative Election Survey (CES), housed at Harvard University, also asks questions about religion, and serves as another good source for data on religious affiliation. The CES tracks the Pew Research surveys within a few percentage points. But there are some curious differences. CES finds 5.1% fewer Protestants than Pew does. There’s also a significant gap in those reporting as “Something else” — which is probably what many Unitarian Universalists would report themselves as.

Screenshot of inforgraphic — Screenshot of web page with infographic showing differences between CES and Pew. Click on the image above to go to the original.

Also of note — in my view, both CES and Pew define “religion” in such a way that Christianity serves as the paradigm, which may not capture the religion of, say, Unitarian Universalists who strongly identify with their religion yet don’t believe in God, don’t pray, and don’t feel the need to attend regular worship services. If you don’t assume that religion centers around Christian-style belief in God and attendance at church, then social atomization and disaffiliation (as reported, e.g., by Robert Putnam in his book Bowling Alone) might be the stronger factors driving so-called secularization.

The Economist does report one possible explanation for the slight increase in religious affiliation from 2022 to 2023:

“The most plausible explanation for the changing trend is the covid-19 pandemic. Lockdowns, social isolation and economic shocks affected almost all countries and age cohorts at about the time the data on religious belief hit an inflection point…. Research by Jeanet Sinding Bentzen, an economist at the University of Copenhagen, shows internet searches for prayer and other religious practices shot up in alsmot every country in 2020. Pippa Norris of Harvard and the late Ronald Inglehart argued that in times of existential insecurity, people tend to turn to religion for comfort…. Ms. Bentzen’s previous research on devotion following earthquakes — a different sort of shock — shows that religiosity tends to remain elevated for up to 12 years after a catastrophic event.”

Time will tell if we’re actually seeing a slight decline in “Nones,” or if this is just a temporary blip. As a Unitarian Universalist, I’m also less worried about secularization — after all, by many definitions we’re already secular — and far more worried about social atomization and disaffiliation. We don’t have to convince people to believe in God. We only have to convince people that being part of a values-based community is a good thing.