July 2022 Touchstones Ministry Theme: Circle of Life

July 2022 Readings from the Common Bowl

July 1: “She understood that the hardest times in life to go through were when you were transitioning from one version of yourself to another.” ~ Sarah Addison Allen

July 2: “Everything comes from everything and nothing escapes commonality. I am building a house already built, you are bearing a child already born. Everything comes from everything: a single cell out of another single cell; the cherry tree blossoms from the boughs; …the rivers from tributaries from streams from falls from springs from wells….” ~ C.E. Morgan

July 3: “Your soul awakens your mind. Your mind makes your choices. Your choices manifest your life. Your life is your lesson. Your lessons create wisdom. Your wisdom enriches your soul.” ~ Karen Baquiran

July 4: “At last, the wheel comes full circle.” ~ Cassandra Clare

July 5: “Gardeners instinctively know that flowers and plants are a continuum and that the wheel of garden history will always be coming full circle.” ~ Francis Cabot Lowell

July 6: “In the circle of life / It’s the wheel of fortune / It’s the leap of faith / It’s the band of hope / Till we find our place / On the path unwinding / In the circle, the circle of life.” ~ Elton John

July 7: “…innocence of eye has a quality of its own. It means to see as a child sees, with freshness and acknowledgment of the wonder; it also means to see as an adult sees who has gone full circle and once again sees as a child—with freshness and an even deeper sense of wonder.” ~ Minor White

July 8: “Sunrise paints the sky with pinks and the sunset with peaches. Cool to warm. So is the progression from childhood to old age.” ~ Vera Nazarian

July 9: “To me, the model of success is not linear. Success is completing the full circle of yourself.” ~ Gloria Steinem

July 10: “I love all the seasons of you….” ~ Lisa Kleypas

July 11: “Service or giving is the other side of receiving. Giving and receiving is a full circle: a full circle feels more natural than a half circle.” ~ Laura Huxley

July 12: “The living and the dead, / The awake and the sleeping, / The young and the old are all one and the same.” ~ Heraclitus

July 13: “Grown-ups don’t look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they’re big and thoughtless and they always know what they’re doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were …[young].” ~ Neil Gaiman

July 14: “Life is a full circle, widening until it joins the circle motions of the infinite.” ~ Anaïs Nin

July 15: “There will come a time when you believe everything is finished; that will be the beginning.” ~ Louis L’Amour

July 16: “All human lives are so profoundly and intricately entwined—those dead, those living, those generations yet to come—that the fate of all is the fate of each, and the hope of humanity rests in every heart and in every pair of hands.” ~ Dean Koontz

July 17: “The books I have read were composed by generations of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, teachers and disciples. I am the sum total of their experiences, their quests. And so are you.” ~ Elie Wiesel

July 18: “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

July 19: “Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.” ~ J.K. Rowling

July 20: “Do you know that there’s a halfway world between each ending and each new beginning? …It’s a bog; it’s where your dreams and worries and forgotten plans gather. Your steps are heavier during that time. Don’t underestimate the transition …between farewell and new departure. Give yourself the time you need. Some thresholds are too wide to be taken in one stride.” ~ Nina George

July 21: “Would you like to know your future? If your answer is yes, think again. Not knowing is the greatest life motivator. So, enjoy, endure, survive each moment as it comes to you in its proper sequence—surprise.” ~ Vera Nazarian

July 22: “And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.” ~ Kahlil Gibran

July 23: “In my end is my beginning.” ~ T.S. Eliot

July 24: “Any transition serious enough to alter your definition of self will require not just small adjustments in your way of living and thinking but a full-on metamorphosis.” ~ Martha Beck

July 25: “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” ~ Mark Twain

July 26: “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” ~ Albert Camus

July 27: “Sometimes we can choose the paths we follow. Sometimes our choices are made for us. And sometimes we have no choice at all.” ~ Neil Gaiman

July 28: “Aging is not ‘lost youth’ but a new stage of opportunity and strength.” ~ Betty Friedan

July 29: “I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end.” ~ Gilda Radner

July 30: “We are not all born at once, but by bits. The body first, and the spirit later…. Our mothers are racked with the pains of our physical birth; we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth.” ~ Mary Austin

July 31: “Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship….” ~ Robert Woodruff Anderson