Last year I offered the invitation to my readers to consider a word shimmering for them that might carry them throughout the year. There were 140 beautiful postings and I later created a Wordle from the entries as a celebration of the prayers gathered. I offer the same invitation this year and again some prizes to give away:
In ancient times, wise men and women fled out into the desert to find a place where they could be fully present to God and to their own inner struggles at work within them. The desert became a place to enter into the refiner’s fire and be stripped down to one’s holy essence. The desert was a threshold place where you emerged different than when you entered.
Many people followed these ammas and abbas, seeking their wisdom and guidance for a meaningful life. One tradition was to ask for a word – this word or phrase would be something on which to ponder for many days, weeks, months, sometimes a whole lifetime. This practice is connected to lectio divina, where we approach the sacred texts with the same request – “give me a word” we ask – something to nourish me, challenge me, a word I can wrestle with and grow into.
Last year my word for the year was sovereignty and it ripened in me as the year unfolded leading me to new discoveries about myself. I resisted the word at first, as I didn’t like the sound of it. But I knew in all the internal energy it stirred up that I needed to pay attention. When I allowed my heart to soften, the word began to shimmer in me, rang long and clear like a chime (hint: sometimes the word which creates resistance in us is the one we most need to pay attention to).
This year my word is sanctuary. This past week I had to go to the emergency room while alone in a foreign country because of leg pain and shortness of breath. I was diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism and a blood clot in my leg and admitted to the hospital for two nights of treatment and observation. I am being medically supervised now and will be fine, but the experience was dis-orienting in many ways (in the sense of calling me to a new orientation). I have much to process in the coming weeks, but for now I remember as I lay there in the midst of unknowing, that my thoughts were aligned to home, to my husband, to my friends, to my heart-expanding work, to a longing for the refuge of the familiar, but also a profound sense of sanctuary right in the midst of where I was. The sanctuary in a church is the place where the holy of holies dwells, but we also create sanctuaries for animals needing protection or for persons fleeing persecution. The layers to this word and how it seems to reach out to me prompts me to choose it as my word for the year to see what else it has to reveal to me.
- What is your word for the year ahead? A word which contains within it a seed of invitation to cross a new threshold?
- What word, phrase, or image is shimmering before you right now inviting you to dwell with it until it ripens fully inside of you?
Share your word in the comments below before Monday, January 3rd.
Leave your word for the year ahead in the comments below plus a couple of sentences describing your choice. Please note that I have my comments moderated (meaning I need to manually approve them) so it may not show up immediately, but should within 24 hours.
343 Responses
heart-play
Enlightenment
My word: Listen
My word for 2011 is deeper;
looking more deeply, feeling more deeply; giving more deeply, listening more deeply
friends
Enlarging
SOLACE – Cherished loved ones died this year…I have come to know ‘solace’ in a deeper more profound way through nature and poetry.
STRUCTURE to construct; a quest for form but also for purpose and continuity; to be seen as the embodiment of creation
Peace
“Embody” our prayers slipping into liminal space. Holy and humbling Ground.
today is my birthday, and i’m realizing what a blessing the timing of it is, though for years i haven’t appreciated this. often forgotten or overlooked, my birthday falls at a time when persons are not interested in one more celebration. persons are ready for quiet, for turning inward, for return.
and so the gift for me is that this day is one of quiet solitude, of introspection, of time to myself after the extraverted expectations of the holidays. i suppose my birthday has become my new year’s day, my threshold day of looking more closely at my life, in that this is the day.. no matter when new year’s day falls, even on the years it comes on a friday and folks have the weekend to continue the party….when i can hear again.
and so today, i listen for the word. and the one that comes shimmering through is ‘beauty’. though not a new one for me, it is how i wish to live my life, and i once heard these words spoken aloud to me in a dream, ‘You are bound to beauty’, so it seems i can’t escape it if i try.
i realize that looking for beauty is a way of prayer for me, a way of staying present and in love with life. i also trust that, as meister eckhart said, ‘the eye with which i see god’ is the eye with which i am also seen’, and so it is good for me to imagine myself being beheld as beauty.
and so, this year i will continue to look for Her, to nurture and to foster Her, to welcome Her, as i continue along the journey. i recently read a portion of a poem by bonoko
‘life is a garden,
not a road
we enter and exit
through the same gate
……
wandering,
where we go matters less
than what we notice’
may i notice.
My word is Providence, trusting that the Providence of God guides and directs into greater holiness and freedom.
Reconciled…..after years of struggling to find out who I am and where I was supposed to be…..content and peaceful realizing that I was ok with who I was all along and I was actually in the right place too. Letting myself give God the steering wheel and trusting the Divine Spirit.
Persevere
Late here with my word, but it came to me on New Year’s Day as I collaged a vision map into the front of my journal — Renewal.
And I too am relieved to hear your health issues are under supervision — blessings to you and a safe journey home.