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.
Please note that the materials can easily be adapted for use by all liberal, progressive congregations.
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.
October Theme
Reflections on
Emotional Intelligence
While IQ has long been valued, intelligence alone is not sufficient for success. Equally important is EQ or emotional intelligence with its focus on self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill. These emotional competencies are not innate, but they can be learned. Through them, thinking and feeling are employed together in life-affirming ways that influence all of our interactions.
Video
Emotional Intelligence
Amy Blaschka
Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize, understand, and manage emotions in ourselves and others. It’s about making emotions work for you, instead of against you. (1:01)
Video Link: https://vimeo.com/328259083
Developing Emotional Intelligence
Katie Klear
…According to [Harrison] Monarth, “Emotional intelligence is the ability to both recognize your own emotions [and] understand your own emotions, and the impact they have on your thinking, on your behavior, as well as how your emotions impact the thinking and behaviors of others, the feelings of others.” Taking that first component of the definition a step further, he elaborated: “Emotional intelligence is being able to not just understand all of this but also to manage it …for more productive outcomes.”
…Alicia Del Real…has curated six pillars for what EI looks like…. “First is a minimum of defensiveness and arrogance,” she said. “Two is accurate empathy, being able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and giving them what they need. Third is living your social values; define what you stand for and walk your talk. Four is appropriate transparency, having open and honest communication even when it makes you feel vulnerable. Five is emotional courage. Finally, the sixth condition is a tolerance of paradox [of] ambiguity.”
…Bill Benjamin …describes the emotional and cognitive parts of the brain as two strains of an intertwined rope.
…Del Real stated, “It’s hard for us to develop and reach our potential when we aren’t in touch with our blindspots, so it all starts with emotional intelligence.”
…Whereas the IQ component of the brain is relatively fixed, EI can be improved.
… “The only way to build emotional intelligence is through practice,” Del Real said. “You really have to practice it, set a goal, share it socially and then practice it, the only way to move the needle.”
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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.
Annual theme for 2020-2021
Deepening Connections
