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
My word is detachment.
My word is ENEMY. I think it’s strange, so I won’t blame you if you do too. This year I have had the phrase “I Have No Enemies” running over and over in my mind. I even Googled it and that has surely taken me to some uncomfortable places – one a sometimes luminous, sometimes fleshy, gay website. Perhaps that is the point – discomfort with the stranger. Maybe my word could be “stranger” and it would mean the same. I’m wrestling with confrontations of my conscience as well as looking at the wider world and seeing the misery and pain this concept of enemy causes. Is it inherent in our nature or is it something we can learn to put aside? I have known people who are self-defined by who & what they hate and seem happy with it. So I’m not sure I can get this word to shimmer – I haven’t yet – but I will wrestle with it this coming year. Thanks for the opportunity to do it in a structured and conscious manner.
Thank you Claire
The word that calls to me this year is patience. This is a year that will hold many big changes in my life. The dreams and hopes are held up, the planning has begun. But so many things are in the realm “not yet” and “perhaps” and “maybe.” Like an impatient child I push against the restraints of the presesnt, eager to move ahead to find what this nebulous future will REALLY hold. But patience is needed to make wise decisions, to wait well, to move graciously forward in God’s good time.
My word is and has been adventure. I recently married a man from the UK and will move there from America in April.
My word is ASK.
Ah Rosie, I hear you. I had a really bad diagnosis a couple of years ago and I truly learned to ask. It is SO important. I don’t know if I hear behind the word a struggle that you are having or the opposite. But, if life is a circle like I think it is, then we must receive as well as give. Asking takes us there.
SAPIENTIA…….”Wisdom”…..being held & gentled & enlivened by Sophia in the journey of life….my word for the year ahead , maybe for the rest of my life ? At the start of 2011, I move to a new house , not of my choosing, & have named my home “Sapientia” to hold the promise of the future for me.
SURRENDER is my word for 2011 as in surrender to the word of God, trust and have faith for all will be revealed when it is the right time.
The word that immediately popped up when I read this was “celebrate” – and probably with a capital C. Two years ago today, my mom died. Then a year and a half ago my oldest grandson (25 years young) died. I continue to grieve for both, perhaps for my Tom most since his death was so needless. It’s been difficult to celebrate anything since his death. Yet I believe that is exactly what God is calling me to do. So I shall pay attention to His bidding and see what wonders He calls me to celebrate.
May you be blessed with celebrating the gifts their lives and graces brought to your own life. This year, on my son’s birthday, I made and placed a Christmas grave blanket on his grave and then took his children/grandchild out for dinner to celebrate his life. I think it was special to all of us and will begin a new tradition. Somehow it is making it easier to face Christmas with having celebrated his life on the 20th.
Thank you, Julett. Friends gave me a prayer shawl after Mom died, and I was able to spread it over Tom’s body before he was cremated. The shawl now means so much more to me. It holds the love of both of them: my mom and her great-grandson.
WONDER – this is my word for the new year – moving away from judgement and into a softer place of unknowing and mystery. It feels right for me in this time of political upheaval with seemingly dishonest leaders who are not representing the people but themselves and their party for seemingly selfish gain. I must move toward wonder or I will lose my mind – I hear the frustration in this short writing – I want to become more like my grandchildren and wonder at all of the mystery in the world around me without putting my head in the sand or becoming paralyzed with rage. I WONDER what kind of a challenge has the holy one put on my heart and I am choosing to move toward – I WONDER…
My word for the year is summoned. In reading an article on the Summoned Self in the New York Times, I was struck by the two approaches to life described. The Summoned Life is described not as a project to be completed, but as a landscape to be explored. The Well-Planned Life focuses on the question What should I do? The Summoned Life asks What are my circumstances asking me to do?, a profoundly spiritual question. In the Summoned Life, the person is small and the context is large: life is not about an individual completing a long-range plan but about a Self becoming part of a larger purpose and cause. This year I will be listening for a summons, asking in each time and place in what way I am summoned.