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.

  June Theme

Reflections on

 Care of the Soul

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Lynn Hough wrote, “life is a journey and not a destination.” Life is a series of waystations woven together by our journey. No straight line. A meander with dead-ends, amazing vistas, dense forests, cool waters, treasured companions, and mountains, always mountains. It is getting lost and being found again. It is the present moment and distant memory. We use the journey to discover our self.

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Take Care of Yourself

by Oprah Winfrey (3:18)

While she doesn’t use the word soul, Winfrey refers several times to that which is bigger than self and which makes self-care so important.

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfLGR0KYuys

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What is the Size of Your Soul?

by Rev. Rob Hardies

     Theologian Bernard Loomer asked…, “What is the size of your soul?” By which he meant, “What is your soul’s ability to grow and expand, to stretch when life throws more contradictions your way?”

     Size was the defining concept in Loomer’s spirituality. He almost always wrote the word S-I-Z-E, with capital letters and dashes, to better convey the spaciousness that he intended by using the word. Loomer describes the concept this way: “By S-I-Z-E I mean the capacity of a person’s soul, the range and depth of his love, his capacity for relationships. I mean the volume of life you can take into your being and still maintain your integrity and individuality, the intensity and variety of outlook you can entertain in the unity of your being without feeling defensive or insecure. I mean the strength of your spirit to encourage others to become freer in the development of their diversity and uniqueness. I mean the power to sustain more complex and enriching tensions. I mean the magnanimity of concern to provide conditions that enable others to increase in stature.”

     …Loomer showed me that spiritual growth isn’t about a vertical ascent to Heaven but about growth in every dimension at once. It’s spirituality in 3-D. Growth in spirit doesn’t measure one’s proximity to a God above, but rather the spaciousness of one’s own soul—its volume, its capacity, its size. We need to grow souls that can encounter the other as a unique subject, not an object—in the words of Martin Buber, a “Thou,” not an “it”. We need souls that can take in the world in all its complexity and diversity, yet still maintain our integrity. And we need souls that can love and be in relationship with all of this complexity.

     Instead of fight or flight, we need a spiritual posture of embrace.

Source: http://www.uuworld.org/ideas/articles/23672.shtml

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