Edward Searl

I'm a Unitarian Universalist minister -- humanistic in orientation and steeped in Natural Religion. Since 1983 I've been minister of the Unitarian Church of Hinsdale, IL, a suburb fifteen miles west of Chicago.

I studied American history as an undergraduate at the University of Delaware and as a graduate student at the University of Vermont. I received my theological training at McGill University's Faculty of Religious Studies in Montreal. I lived in Canada for six years and am forever nostalgic for that wonderful country and its civil people. I've been a Unitarian Universalist minister since 1977. Through 1983 I was minister of the First Unitarian Church of Younstown, Ohio.

I favor back roads and small towns throughout America, urban strolls in Chicago neighborhoods, ethnic restaurants and country cafes, and vegetarian food. Influences include Emerson and Parker, Twain, Jung, Fromm and Frankl, Steinbech and Sinclair Lewis, J. W. Krutch and Hal Borland. I adore Debussy. The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca are my nominees for top movies, but in the right mood, I'll vote for Cinema Paradiso, and sometimes for Blade Runner. In my estimation, James Lee Burke is a much underestimated American author and Ross Lockridge, Jr.s 1947, Raintree County, is the great American novel.

My first book, In Memoriam: Modern Funeral and Memorial Service was published in 1993. A second edition was published in 2000.

In 1998, Berkley Books, a division of Penguin Putnam, published my book on home altars, A Place of Your Own. (I wrote this in the midst of the enthusiasms for personal spirituality and for home shelter/​interior design.)

Subsequently, Skinner House Books asked me to do a five book, quote collection series. Four books covered the great rites of passage of a human life: Bless This Child, Coming of Age, We Pledge Our Hearts, and Beyond Abscence. A fifth collection caught the contemporary wave of interest in animal rights: In Praise of Animals.

I'm also an enthusiast for on demand publishing. I have a number of works on Lulu.com and Create Space.com. In the self-publishing vein, I have my own longstanding press--The Royal Nonesuch Press, theroyalononesuchpress.com.