Touchstones Project
a theme-based ministry program
for Unitarian Universalist congregations
For Your Consideration
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.
Developed over eleven years, this theme-based ministry project has been dramatically expanded to make a meaningful difference in people's lives within your congregation.
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 call with us so that we
can answer any questions that you
may have.
4. To order a trial-subscription for
three months to implement and
evaluate our program.
5. To extend your subscription for the
balance of the program year, which
ends in August of each year.
Click here for information about subscriptions.
May Theme
Courage
The root of courage is corage, the Old French word for heart (as the seat of emotions). In Middle English, uses included bold corage meaning “brave heart.” As Aristotle said, “Courage is the first of human virtues because it makes all others possible.” Courage is essential to wield power non-violently in opposition to all that diminishes or negates life. Courage makes repair of the world possible
Video
Moral Courage
by James W. Foley (1973-2014)
Legacy Foundation (5:00)
James Foley, a journalist, was captured in Syria in 2012 by ISIS and murdered by his captors in 2014. The video captures Foley’s words about being a journalist and the role of moral courage, as well as remarks by some of the people who knew him well. The Foundation was created as a legacy to him. It operates in three areas: “building a resource center for families of American hostages and fostering a global dialog on governmental policies in hostage crises; supporting American journalists reporting from conflict zones and promoting quality educational opportunities for urban youth.”
Video Link: https://vimeo.com/290571022
Monthly Themes
for 2021-2022
Our theme-year begins in
September 2021. Please click on
the pdf icon to access a flyer for
the themes for the year.
Annual theme for 2021-2022
Repairing the World
Themes for 2024 are now being selected. Email us. We would love to see your suggestions!
Desert Spring
Rev. Victoria Safford
They had no idea where they were going, when they left that night, in the dark, without lights, without shoes, without bread, their children smothered against them so they would make no noise.
They had no idea what they were getting into, following this Moses, this wild-eyed one who claimed visions and made promises but who after all could guarantee them nothing, except death if they were caught.
They had no idea, these slaves, what it could mean, this promise of land (their own country) and life abundant. Of freedom they knew nothing, except what they could taste by living in its opposite, slavery, and that taste became a hunger, and that hunger became insatiable till they were ravenous for freedom, and they went out then—but no one knows to this day whether they were led by Moses or by the outstretched arm and mighty hand of something else, of something eternal (as they would afterwards and always claim), or whether their own human, hungry will made them flee that night from Pharaoh.
They went into the wilderness. There they wandered forty years, which in those days was a lifetime. Forty was a good, old age, so many of them died before getting anywhere, and many were born in the desert and grew to adulthood knowing nothing but the journey—not slavery, not freedom, just the going. They whined and complained and muttered, and some mutinied, for they were a stiff-necked and rebellious people (you can read it for yourself); ungrateful people, even when manna rained down from heaven and quails were sent to feed them; unhappy people, longing, out loud even, for the familiar security of Egypt, of all places, where at least they knew what to expect, as awful as it was; impatient people, making cheap little idols and gods of metal to bargain with in secret when the traveling got hard or merely dull, and the days and years became monotonous.
In the springtime we remember: the promised land is not a destination—it is a way of going. The land beyond the Jordan, that country of freedom and dignity and laughter—you carry it inside you all the while. It is planted in your mind and heart already, before you ever start out, before it even occurs to you that in order to leave that life in Egypt, the intolerable bondage of that life, what you need to do is stand up and walk forward.