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.
June Theme
Ritual
Ritual pervades our lives. These include personal rituals, family rituals, rituals at schools, rites of passage, observance of holidays and holy days, rituals associated with sports, those observed by religions, including civil religion, and much more. Rituals provide structure and meaning to life, they bind people together, and they lift up important values. Rituals that lose their significance need to be replaced by new rituals that address contemporary life. And sometimes a ritual does not exist to address some issue and one must be created.
Video
What is Ritual?
by Religion For Breakfast (6:31)
A thoughtful overview of ritual.
“‘Ritual.’ We all think we know what it means...right? Ritual, though, is a lot more complicated than you think.”
Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_URgZf01hU
Monthly Themes
for 2022-2023
Our theme year begins in
September 2022. Please click on
the pdf icon to access the
monthly themes for 2022-2023.
Annual theme for 2022-2023
Regeneration
A River of Saffron
Pam Houston
I am a mountain girl…. But I’ve been drawn south …by the reported kindness of the Laotian people and the early morning ritual that is about to begin.
…The bells of the monasteries begin to have their morning conversation.
When the monks come pouring down the stone steps of the prayer halls, they appear first as a river of color, a ribbon of saffron silk…. All over Asia, monks wear robes the color of spices: curry, cumin, paprika. In Luang Prabang, every robe is brightest saffron….
As they approach it becomes possible to distinguish one monk from another, hands clasped in front of the belly, echoing the shape of the wooden begging bowl they hold.
Like the Mekong they live beside, this river of men never stops moving; they pass in a quiet, contemplative gait that is two parts walking, one part floating. One by one they drift past the woman, who also keeps a kind of time with her motions: one large scoop of steaming rice into each hand-carved bowl, refill, release, refill again. Every monk bows to her deeply and moves on.
Every few streets the same thing is happening: different woman, different monks; same bright, graceful river passing in front of her. …This is what happens here every morning, 365 days, year in, year out.
The women up early, cooking in the dark, carrying their little tables in the milky first light. Then the monks, a small fire in the gray light, lightening their rice cookers, lightening their burdens.
…A monk moves around the corner, back up the stairs and into the dormitory, like a magic trick of compassion, of generosity, of prayers offered and received.