Yet Another Unitarian Universalist
A postmodern heretic's spiritual journey.
The second video in the Possum Feels Stressed series. Mindfulness meditation didn’t work out as a stress-reliever for Possum, and in this episode he and his friend Nanas the monkey try yoga…
The script is below, for those who like that sort of thing. Be warned, it got changed a bit in performance and editing.
Continue reading “Possum feels stressed, part two”Alice Locke Park, pacifist and early feminist, was a member of the Unitarian Church of Palo Alto from 1907 to 1920. Alice resigned from the church in 1920 in protest of the way some people in the church supported the the First World War; she was probably referring to people like Rev. Bradley Gilman and George Fullerton Evans, both of them saber-rattlers who spouted pro-war “propaganda” (in the words of another pacifist in that congregation). She later joined the Quakers. But she was a Unitarian for 13 years, and some of her writings seem to me to encapsulate a very contemporary Unitarian Universalist worldview—like this statement:
My religion is humanity—humanitarianism—confident that the present time is all that we are sure of, and [that] our duty, our progress and our usefulness are all here and now—If we think earnestly of the present and try to do all we can right here and now—we are at least sure of immediate results. My religion is boundless—Nothing human is alien to me. [quoted in Eunice Eichelberger, “‘Hearts Brimming with Patriotism,’” ed. Robert W. Cherny, California Women and Politics: From the Gold Rush to the Great Depression, Univ. Neb. Press, 2011, pp. 321-332.]
I think this would make a good responsive reading, if you arranged it something like this:
My religion is humanity—humanitarianism—
Confident that the present time is all that we are sure of, and that our duty, our progress, and our usefulness are all here and now—
If we think earnestly of the present and try to do all we can right here and now, we are at least sure of immediate results.
My religion is boundless—Nothing human is alien to me.
Not that this is some final definition of religion, some kind of dogma. By the end of his life, my father had become such a strong environmentalist that he refused to call himself a humanist any more, and I can imagine his criticisms of this reading. Nevertheless, the call to action and the appeal to a wide humanitarianism should be pleasing (if not definitive) to most.
The first installment in the Possum series of videos:
As the years go by, I find I’m less interested in how famous or “important” Unitarian Universalists live their lives, and increasingly interested in the lives of ordinary Unitarians and Universalists. Maybe this is because I don’t know any important or famous Unitarian Universalists, but I’ve known lots of ordinary Unitarian Universalists. With that in mind, here’s a brief biography of Martha Clara Elizabeth Ziegler Greenlaw [a.k.a. Reynolds, Seymour, and Fancher], a member of the old Unitarian Church of Palo Alto:
A housewife and mother who experienced more than her share of domestic challenges and tragedies, Martha Clara Elizabeth Ziegler was born Feb. 27, 1894, in Chicago. In 1900, she was living in Hyde Park Township (which became part of Chicago). She lived with her father Gustav, a machinist’s helper, who had been born in Denmark; her mother Ida, who had been born in Germany; and her younger brother Charles.
When she was 17 years old, on Aug. 1, 1911, she married Charles Greenlaw (q.v.) in Chicago, Ill. Charles worked for American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) installing new phone systems in communities across the country, and his job required him to relocate every few months. His wife and a growing number of children had to move with him, and some of their moves can be traced from the birthplaces of their four children: Arnold Ziegler (q.v.) was born July 12, 1912, in Chicago; Colin Torrey was born March 27, 1914, in Baltimore, Md. (q.v.); Morrison Bronk was born Aug. 3, 1918, in San Francisco; and Margery Ellen was born Nov. 3, 1920, in Chicago. All these moves put strain on the family.
To try to reduce some of the strain on the family, from about 1918 to 1920 they spent significant amounts of time in a cabin Charles owned in Willits, Calif. But soon they had to move again, and in January, 1920, they were living in Detroit, Mich. And by 1923, the family had moved to 523 Webster St. in Palo Alto.
Continue reading “Ordinary Unitarians: Martha Ziegler”The fourth and final installment of the Contestants on a Game Show! series:
Over the past few months, I’ve been writing and producing videos nearly every week for the online worship services at the UU Church of Palo Alto. For my own reference, I just created blog posts for each of the videos I’ve done so far, including a still from the video, a link to the video on Youtube, and a full script. The posts are backdated to the Sunday on which the video appeared in the worship service.
You can see all these blog posts here.
The third installment of the Contestants on a Game Show! series:
This is a major revision of an earlier short biography of Bertha Cady Chapman.
A writer, biologist, and sexuality educator, Bertha Louise Chapman was born July 5, 1873, in Santa Barbara, Calif., the daughter of Truman (sometimes given as “Freeman”) Fletcher Chapman and Mary Elizabeth Furlong Chapman; Bertha’s older sister Elizabeth Corinne Chapman had been born in the same place in 1870. By August, 1873, the family was living in San Buenaventura (now known as Ventura), Calif., where Truman worked as a druggist.
After Bertha was born in 1873, Truman became involved in mining, and he moved the family to New Mexico to operate mines there. In 1880, Bertha, her parents, and both siblings were living in Las Vegas. Truman was the postmaster of Las Vegas, New Mexico, from Jan., 1878, to Sept., 1880. In 1880, he owned the St. Nicholas Hotel on the Plaza. Las Vegas had grown into a bustling town with the coming of the railroad in 1878, but the Plaza retained a distinctly Southwestern flavor:
“The Plaza is in the center of the town.…About the center of the Plaza is the relic of the old well, the windmill having been torn down, and the well long out of use. It was the scene of [a] horrible sight this Spring, as on the night of February 9th the vigilantes hung one cowboy to the windmill, and laid his two companions out beneath him, riddled with bullets, because of their murder of Joe Carson, a few weeks previous. The Plaza is the principal market for the produce of the farmers.… Almost daily one will see large droves of burros standing about, loaded with wools, hides, or pelts.…Little, narrow, crooked streets lead out from the Plaza, and on all side of the town are scattered those queer little adobes, which give the place its ancient and foreign appearance to strangers.” (H. T. Wilson, Historical Sketch of Las Vegas, New Mexico [Chicago: Hotel World Pub., 1880?], p. 18)
This is the town where Bertha lived when she was perhaps 5 to 8 years old.
Continue reading “Obscure Unitarians: Bertha Louise Chapman Cady”The second installment of the Contestants on a Game Show! video series:
The first installment of the Contestants on a Game Show! video series:
