For Your Consideration

The Touchstones Project

An Intriguing Way

of Doing Church

A Unitarian Universalist congregation can transform the people it serves, inspiring them to help transform the world. This requires an intentional, sustained, integrated, holistic process of deepening that informs, nurtures, and challenges.

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Please note that the materials can easily be adapted for use by all liberal, progressive congregations.

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Developed over eight years, the Touchstones Project has been dramatically expanded to make a meaningful difference in people's lives: those within your congregation and those who live in the community that your congregation serves.

We invite you:

     1. To browse our website to learn how

          what we offer can transform

          your programming.

     2. To request our materials for the  

          theme of beauty to facilitate a

          comprehensive review by your staff           and key volunteers.

     3. To schedule a conference call with

          us so that we can answer any

          questions that you and others

          may have.

     4. To order a trial subscription for

          three months to implement and

          evaluate our program.

     5. To become a member of the

          Touchstones community by

          extending your subscription for the

          balance of the program year, which

          ends in August of each year.

Click here for information about subscriptions.

  April Theme

Reflections on

 Mindfulness

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    Mindfulness is the quality and practice that overcomes our fragmentation so that we can experience wholeness. Mindfulness is the call to pay attention. M. Scott Peck said that, “The principal form of love is attention.” Being mindful is paying attention to our self, others, and the world. Mindfulness requires skill, but its practice is transformative of our self and our relationships.

​​Video

What is Mindfulness?

by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn (5:17)

Mindfulness expert Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn defines "What is mindfulness?" and discusses the hard work and rewards of practicing mindfulness.

Video Link: https://vimeo.com/185281015

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Live Each Minute of Life

Thích Nhất Hạnh

     Mindfulness is the miracle by which we master and restore ourselves. Consider, for example: a magician who cuts his body into many parts and places each part in a different region—hands in the south, arms in the east, legs in the north, and then by some miraculous power lets forth a cry which reassembles whole every part of his body. Mindfulness is like that--it is the miracle which can call back in a flash our dispersed mind and restore it to wholeness so that we can live each minute of life

     Mindfulness is at the same time a means and an end, the seed and the fruit. When we practice mindfulness in order to build up concentration, mindfulness is the seed. But mindfulness itself is the life of awareness: the presence of mindfulness means the presence of life, and therefore mindfulness is also the fruit. Mindfulness frees us of forgetfulness and dispersion and makes it possible to live fully each minute of life. Mindfulness enables us to live.

     ...Each act of daily life must be carried out in mindfulness. Meditation is not just in a meditation hall. It is just as sacred to wash the dishes mindfully as to bow deeply.

   Source: The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thích Nhất Hạnh

Like our Facebook Page where we post something inspirational each day related to the theme.

Touchstones Themes 

for 2020-2021

Our theme-year began in

September 2020. Please click on

the pdf icon to access a flyer for

the themes for the year.

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Annual theme for 2020-2021

Deepening Connections