October 2021 Touchstones Readings From the Common Bowl

October 2021 Touchstones Ministry Theme: Reverence

October 1: “Reverence is an organic human experience that requires no supernatural explanations.” ~ Rev. Kendyl Gibbons

October 2: “Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

October 3: “Spring passes and one remembers one’s innocence. Summer passes and one remembers one’s exuberance. Autumn passes and one remembers one’s reverence. Winter passes and one remembers one’s perseverance.” ~ Yoko Ono

October 4: “In reverent pauses, when we slow down and think about the gift of life, we may briefly touch humility.” ~ Bryant McGill

October 5: “Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.” ~ Albert Schweitzer

October 6: “That sense of sacredness, that thinking in generations, must begin withreverence for this earth.” ~ Paul Tsongas

October 7: “Life must have its sacred moments and its holy places. We need the infinite, the limitless, the uttermost—all that can give the heart a deep and strengthening peace.” ~ A. Powell Davies

October 8: “When we approach with reverence, great things decide to approach us. Our real life comes to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty in things.” ~ John O’Donohue

October 9: “Love, Hope, and Reverence are realities of a different order from the senses, but they are positive and constant facts, always active, always working out mighty changes in human life.” ~ Elizabeth Blackwell

October 10: “There is only one valid way to partake of the universe…. That way is characterized by reverence—a reverence born of a felt sense of participation in the universe, a kinship with all and with all matter.” ~ Larry Dossey

October 11: “We may be divided from one another by our beliefs, but never by reverence.” ~  Paul Woodruff

October 12: “Reverence is a deep sense of respect for marvels that surround us and that brought us into existence. It is an awareness of ourselves …in an order beyond the grasp of any single human mind.” ~ Wisdom Commons

October 13: “Without reverence, there is no sense of presence or wonder.” ~ John O’Donohue

October 14: “The problem to be faced is: how to combine loyalty to one’s own tradition with reverence for different traditions.” ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel

October 15: “Let’s think of reverence as awe, as presence in and openness to the world. The alternative is that we stultify, we shut down. …This is our goal …to help others have this sense of …wonder, of seeing things anew, things that can catch us off guard, that break in on our small, bordered worlds.” ~ Anne Lamott

October 16: “Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.” ~ John Milton

October 17: “Science is …about reverence, not mastery.” ~ Richard Powers

October 18: “While arrogant intellect seeks to control and manipulate the world, the poetic spirit bows with reverence before its mysteries.” ~ Daisaku Ikeda

October 19: “Reverence calls us to service. When we have a mindset of reverence, it seems natural to use our life energy to preserve, honor and elevate something greater than ourselves.” ~ Wisdom Commons

October 20: “Bring nothing but silence / Show nothing but grace / Seek nothing but shelter / From the great human race. Take nothing but pictures / Kill nothing but time / Leave nothing but footprints / To show you came by.” ~ John Kay

October 21: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” ~ Marcel Proust

October 22: “Science enhances the moral value of life, because it furthers a love of truth and reverence—love of truth displaying itself in the constant endeavor to arrive at a more exact knowledge of the world of mind and matter around us, and reverence, because every advance in knowledge brings us face to face with the mystery of our own being.” ~ Max Planck

October 23: “A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the

conventional faiths.” ~ Carl Sagan

October 24: “True spirituality makes you

loving and grateful, and forgiving, and patient, and gentle, and long-suffering. True spirituality breathes reverence into every act and deed.” ~ Marjorie Pay Hinckley

October 25: “It is as impossible to live without reverence as it is without joy.” ~  Henry Beston

October 26: “By having a reverence for life, we enter into a spiritual relation with the world. By practicing reverence for life, we become good, deep, and alive.” ~ Albert Schweitzer

October 27: “Authentic faith leads us to treat others with unconditional seriousness and to a loving reverence for the mystery of the human personality.” ~ Brennan Manning

October 28: “If you desire peace in the world, do not pray that everyone share your beliefs. Pray instead that all may be reverent.” ~ Paul Woodruff

October 29: “Religion, according to Alfred North Whitehead, is a phenomenon that begins in wonder and ends in wonder. Feelings of awe, reverence, and gratitude are primary, and these can never be learned from books.” ~ Rev. Gary Kowalski

October 30: The cause of violence is not ignorance. It is self-interest. Only reverence can restrain violence—reverence for human life and the environment.” ~ William Sloane Coffin

October 31: “Reverence is profound respect mingled with love.” ~ David O. McKay