Yet Another Unitarian Universalist
A postmodern heretic's spiritual journey.
Our congregation’s Ecojustice Camp, a week-long summer camp, just finished its overnight. We left no trash ourselves, but we scoured our campsite for trash that might have been left by others. The campers carefully arranged the trash on a picnic table. Here’s a photo of all the trash we found:
When they saw this photo, the campers said, “Hey, it looks like art!” (Shades of Kurt Schwitters and Robert Rauschenberg….)
Anyway. There you have it…trash art.
The Ministerial Fellowship Committee (MFC) of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) just sent an email to congregational leaders saying: “The Ministerial Fellowship Committee voted recently to remove the Rev. Dr. Marian Stewart from fellowship for violating the terms of her probation. These terms were set in 2023 by the Committee based upon a complaint against Rev. Dr. Stewart. Refusal to adhere to those terms violates Rule 21 of the Ministerial Fellowship Committee, which requires ministers in fellowship to fully cooperate with the terms of their probation.”
Marian Stewart has already been removed from the online UUA database of professional staff. But her name is not listed on the UUA webpage “UUA Clergy Removed of Resigned from Fellowship with Completed or Pending Misconduct Investigations.” So maybe this is not misconduct? If so, then what’s this all about? Your guess is as good as mine as to why she was removed from fellowship.
Another website says that Stewart is retired from active ministry. So the violation of MFC probation could be anything from she just didn’t bother filling in MFC paperwork (because: retired), to — who knows what.
I understand the desire for transparency has to be balanced with the need for privacy and confidentiality. But somehow this email makes me feel that the balances have tipped well away from transparency in this case.
I also understand how hard it can be to come up with a process that covers all eventualities, so I’m willing to cut the MFC a fair amount of slack. But still, this email feels like it’s aimed at insiders, people who are already in the know — and those like me who are not insiders are left outside wondering what’s going on.
Part of my angst here is that I’ve spent a good part of my career in Unitarian Universalism cleaning up after clergy misconduct (and misconduct by other paid professionals). Clergy misconduct, in my view, thrives in secrecy and ambiguity. Thus when I see ambiguous statements like this one coming from the UUA, it bothers me.
Oh well. Listen to me whining. Heck, lots of things bother me. Just because something bothers me, don’t let it bother you.
Not many blog posts recently, as my spare time has been taken up with revising religious education curriculum.
I just completed a version of my full-year middle school “Ecojustice Class” curriculum for southern New England. Congregations in similar climates in the eastern U.S. should probably be able to use this curriculum as well. This is a beta test version — entirely teachable, but the curriculum is still a little rough around the edges.
Much of this is adapted from the northern California version of the curriculum, which we developed over ten years at the UU Church of Palo Alto. For New Englanders, I adapted this curriculum to a four-season climate. I added several proven session plans which have been adapted from Ecojustice Camp, as well as from my summer eco-spirituality workshops that I’ve led off and on since 2006 (mostly at Ferry Beach Conference Center).
Read about the Ecojustice Class concept on my curriculum website. Then if the concept works for your congregation, you can click through to Ecojustice Class Southern New England.
I just updated my story-based curriculum “Beginnings,” aimed at middle and upper elementary ages. This is a “light revision,” mostly cosmetic but with a few major changes.
This eight-session curriculum features explorations of truth — what is true, how do we know what truth is? This topic seems quite relevant in this presidential election year.
I just updated the tagline for this blog to read “A postmodern heretic’s explorations in eco-spirituality and ecojustice.” This small change was prompted by three things. First, I find myself wanting to focus more and more on these two topics. Second, I’m less interested in writing about Unitarian Universalist denominational politics, history, or other purely denominational concerns; or writing about religion more generally. Third, I think I’m moving in the direction of posting more visual images relating to eco-spirituality and ecojustice. I’ll try this new focus for a while and see how it goes. Your comments and feedback are welcome, as always.
Update, 6 August 2024: Nah, I changed my mind. Back to the old tag line.
I’m attending a week-long seminar on bryophytes at a natural history institute in coastal Maine — which I like to refer to as “moss camp.” We go out collecting for an hour or so, then spend the rest of the day in the lab trying to figure out what we’ve collected. I spend about equal amounts of time staring through a microscope, and poring through dichotomous keys.
Identifying bryophyts has proved to be challenging. To begin with, the dichotomous keys can be frustrating. They use terms like “complicate-bilobed” and phrases like “Leaves keeled and conduplicate.” Different dichotomous keys sometimes use different terms for exactly the same characteristic. Then there are taxa which are frustrating — to identify Sphagnum moss to species, our instructor told us to make slide preparations of a stem leaf, a branch leaf, the stem stripped of leaves, and a section of the stem; and then after an hour or so of staring through microscopes, three different keys gave three different answers because the taxonomy isn’t settled. Usually by mid-afternoon, the three of us in the class have to get up and walk out of the lab to clear our heads.
The beauty of the bryophytes makes up for the frustrations of taxonomy and morphology. It’s another whole world….
Today I discovered a peer-reviewed journal, Urban Naturalist: Natural History Science of Urban Areas Worldwide (Eagle Hill Publications). This journal offers free and open access to all articles.
So far I’ve read two articles:
“Effect of the Edge on Eastern Cottontail Density: Urban Edges are Harder than Agricultural” studies Eastern Cottontail density in urban preserves in Mexico City, and concludes that this species of rabbit avoids the edges of urban preserves (perhaps due to noise, light, etc.). This effectively reduces the amount of land habitable by these rabbits in an urban preserve.
“The Bee (Hymenoptera: Apoidea) Fauna of a Transmission Right-of-Way in a
Highly Developed and Fragmented Landscape of Central New Jersey” sampled bee populations in a power line right-of-way. The authors conclude that power line rights-of-way probably offer habitat for bees that would otherwise be lacking in a highly developed landscape. Unfortunately, 13% of the species found by the researchers were introduced or invasive bees. I was also struck by the observation that highways result in high bee mortality: “Roads can be substantial barriers to the movement of bees, and can cause high mortality that increases as roadway speed and traffic volume rises….”
As urban areas increasingly dominate our landscapes, obviously this kind of research is increasingly important. Since most of you reading this live in an urban or suburban area, it’s worth dipping into this journal to learn about some of the unforeseen effects our urbanized lifestyle has on other organisms…if we’re gonna feel guilty about eating meat, maybe we should also feel guilty about contributing to worldwide bee decline every time we drive on a highway.
The past couple of weeks, I’ve been experimenting with cyanotype as a way to get people to look more closely at plants. This post is some notes to myself about cyanotype resources.
Lawrence Hall of Science sells “Sunprint Kits” with 12 pieces of 4 inch square cyanotype paper and a clear acrylic overlay sheet. Cost buying direct from them is US$5.99 per kit (do not buy from Amazon where the price is higher).
Lawrence Hall of Science also sells refill packs of 12 sheets of cyanotype paper for US$3.99. The kits and refills are ideal for class use — inexpensive enough to allow people to experiment. You can also purchase kits and refills with 8-1/2 by 11 inch cyanotype paper from them. The larger sheets are more expensive (about US$1 per sheet), but if your class gets serious about cyanotypes the larger size allows for more possibilities.
Jacquard Products sells cyanotype sets — two plastic bottles with cyanotype chemicals that you fill with water, then mix the resulting solutions 1 to 1 when you’re ready to coat your paper. (I bought my set at an independent art supply store, but haven’t yet used it. You have to coat the paper in a low light setting, and dry the paper in darkness. I haven’t yet figured out a place where I can dry the paper.)
Kit for an alternative cyanotype process — this is a different chemistry, and supposed to be a superior process.
Finding paper that’s good for cyanotype can be a c allenge, since not only must the paper stand up well to repeated wetting, but the pH of the paper is also important. Christina’s Anderson’s 2018 article on paper choices is probably dated by now (paper companies change things over time), but worth reading. Freestyle Photography sells Hahnemuhle Platinum Rag, which both Anderson and Annettee Golaz (see below) mention as one of the best heavy papers for cyanotype. Dick Blick sells Hahnemuhle Sumi-e, which both Anderson Golaz say is an excellent lightweight paper.
Be warned: many of the books on cyanotype available online are self-published. But here are two books from a reputable publisher.
Cyanotype Toning: Using Botanicals To Tone Blueprints Naturally by Annette Golaz (Routledge, 2021), part of Routledge’s Contemporary Practices in Alternative Process Photography series, is an excellent introduction to toning cyanotype. It also contains an entire chapter on the basic cyanotype process. It’s expensive — US$66.99 — but for me it was worth the price.
I haven’t yet seen Cyanotype: The Blueprint in Contemporary Practice by Christina Anderson (Focal Press, 2019), but Annette Golaz refers to it repeatedly in her book.
Many of the cyanotype websites appear to be “AI”-generated slime. Others are too basic (“Expose the cyanotype paper, put it water, look at the result!”). But I found these websites to be well worth visiting:
Cyanotype by Angela Chalmers, a PDF, gives instructions on making cyanotype photograms using plants. Great ideas, and the author’s photograms are gorgeous.
“How To Make Cyanotypes of Flowers” on the Nature TTL website includes very useful instructions on a specific form of wet cyanotype process.
A digitized version of Anna Atkins’s book of botanical cyanotypes is online at London’s Natural History Museum website. A scholarly article with an analysis of Atkins’s book from the point of view literary analysis can be found here.
Atlas Obscura has samples of a 12 year old’s botanical cyanotypes here. Interesting for educators to look at.
Jacquard has a guide on toning cyanotypes to produce different colors here.
Vinegar-developed cyanotypes on the Alternative Photography website describes how to develop in vinegar so that your cyanotypes are less contrast-y. Alternative Photography has other articles on cyanotype, which I haven’t had time to explore yet.
The following sentence by J. M. Berger has been widely quoted: “If you believe that only ‘the other guys’ can produce extremists and that your own identity group cannot, you may be an extremist yourself.”
The original context of the quote provides more nuance:
“In the United States, the term extremist is frequently hurled, shorn of context, across racial and partisan divides. Many in the wider West contend that the entire religion of Islam is inherently extreme, arguing for policies that range from the curtailment of civil rights to mass internment. Within Islam itself, furious debates rage about which sect, movement, or nation is normative and which is extremist. These debates influence the study of extremism. There are perhaps three times as many academic studies referencing jihadism as there are referencing white nationalism. Pseudo-intellectuals, some in positions of political power, have argued that white nationalism is far less important than jihadism, despite the fact that white nationalism has a far longer and more deadly history. And they have shaped policies accordingly. If you believe that only ‘the other guys’ can produce extremists and that your own identity group cannot, you may be an extremist yourself. History provides ample evidence that extremism is part of the human condition and not the exclusive province of any single race, religion, or nation. Not all violence is extremism, nor are all of humanity’s countless wars, conflicts, and atrocities. Many cases are ambiguous, but some clearly align with our modern understanding of the word. The diversity and ubiquity of the problem can be seen in a review of historical outbreaks of significant violence driven by ideological belief.”
— from the book Extremism by J. M. Berger (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2018), p. 2.
As we head home from vacation in Maine, here are photos of three lepidopterans (butterflies and moths) that I’ve seen in the past two weeks:
