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.

  July Theme

Reflections on

Harmony

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Author Tony Hillerman writes, “The Navajo word hozro ... means a sort of blend of being in harmony with one’s environment, at peace with one’s circumstances, content with the day, devoid of anger, and free from anxieties.” Our task is to find our hozro, our way of living in harmony and in beauty. Harmony is a way of walking through life.

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​​Video

Harmony

Lisa Park

Harmony is an interactive performance using music, dance, and visuals which explores the balance of Yin & Yang. (9:29)

Video Link: https://vimeo.com/280148449

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Thinking Like a Mountain

Stephan Harding

     [Watching an old wolf die of a gunshot, Aldo Leopold wrote] in a chapter entitled Thinking Like a Mountain… “there was something new to me in those eyes, something known only to her and to the mountain. I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunter’s paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.”

      Perhaps it is possible to understand what Leopold means when he says that the wolf disagreed with such a view, but how could a lifeless, inert mountain possibly agree or disagree with anything? …Clearly, he is using the word “mountain” as a metaphor for the wild ecosystem…, the ecosystem as an entirety, as a living presence, with its deer, its wolves and other animals, its clouds, soils and streams. For the first time in his life he felt completely at one with this wide, ecological reality.

     …Notice that the experience was not looked for, expected or contrived. It happened spontaneously. Something in the dying eyes of the wolf reached beyond Leopold’s training and triggered a recognition of where he was. After this experience he saw the world differently….

     …This deep questioning of the fundamental assumptions of our culture contrasts markedly with the mainstream shallow or reform approach.

   Source: https://www.schumachercollege.org.uk/learning-resources/what-is-deep-ecology

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

Touchstones Themes 

for 2019-2020

Our theme-year began in

September 2019. Please see the

attached flyer for information about

the themes for the coming year.

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Annual theme for 2019-2020

Building Beloved Community