Two years ago I began what has now become an annual tradition at Abbey of the Arts during this time of new year reflection. I offer the same invitation this year, again with some prizes to give away on January 6th, and this time with a free gift for everyone who participates.
*Everyone* who shares their word for the year and a brief description in the comments below also gets a *free guided meditation recording* from the Abbey with an *Embodied Examen Prayer for the New Year.* It is a great way to reflect on the past year and tend your dreams for the next. To claim your free gift, read through the instructions below and when your word for 2012 emerges, share it in the comments (scroll to the bottom of the page) and then email Eveline, the fabulous Abbey admin at admin@abbeyofthearts.com and request the link.
Then share this invitation with others! Help spread the love and opportunity for reflection!
Read on for more inspiration:
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 was sanctuary. Sanctuary has multiple meanings: 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 shimmered throughout my year, but especially the sense of finding sanctuary within my own heart, to feel at home in the world. This was the grace of this past year, its fierce lesson for me. This year my word is *savor* (click the link if you want to read more about its meaning for me). It came to me in a moment of silent prayer as I reflected on the call I am feeling these days to deeply savor each moment of my life, to immerse myself even more in the present moment. I am eager to discover what the word holds for me this coming year.
If you want help in letting a word choose you, scroll down for several suggestions.
- 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 Friday, January 6th
Leave your word for the year ahead in the comments below plus a couple of sentences describing your choice.
Letting a Word Choose You
For some of you the word may have come right away, but for some you may desire a word to ripen within your soul these coming weeks and months, but one doesn’t seem to be coming. So here are some suggestions for allowing a word to choose you:
- Release your thinking mind in this process, this isn’t about figuring out just the right word to improve yourself this coming year. The word comes as gift, often your sense of it being “right” is more intuitive, a more embodied sense of yes. The word (or phrase) is one that will work in you (rather than you working on it). Remember that a word that creates a sense of inner resistance is as important to pay attention to as one that has a great deal of resonance.
- Lectio divina is one of the primary practices we have in Christian monastic tradition for listening for a word or phrase that shimmers or calls to our hearts. Lectio is traditionally applied to scripture, but can also be engaged to pray with life experience. Allow some time for prayer and in your imagination review this last year, honoring it as a sacred text. As you walk through your experiences notice which ones stand out, call to you for more attention, or shimmer forth. There may be more than one, but for this time of prayer select one of them (and you can return to others in future times of prayer). Enter into it with all of your senses. Remember it in all of its detail. Experience it from this place you are in now. Notice if there is a word or phrase which rises up. Then allow that word to unfold in your imagination and welcome in images, feelings, and memories which stir in you. After a time of making space for these, begin to ask what is the invitation or call rising up from these noticings? Where is God calling you to a new awareness or action in your life? Close with some time of silence.
- Approach a soul friend, a spiritual director, or a wise elder for your word, as in the desert tradition. They might need some time to ponder this with you. It is always wise to consult with a soul companion or community when testing the fruits of prayer.
- Create a time of retreat for this holy time of year. A couple of hours is enough. Make space to sink into silence, journal, reflect on your experiences of the year past. Write about your dreams and deep desires for the year ahead. In the space of contemplation and stillness, notice if there is a word, image, or phrase which rises up.
- Go for a contemplative walk where you aren’t trying to get anywhere. Your sole purpose is to be as present as possible to each footfall. Listen for how your inner life is calling you forward with each step. Be present to the gifts of creation around you (even if it is the city pigeons and trees planted down the sidewalk). Listen if they might have a word to offer to you.
- Listen to your dreams in these coming days. As you go to sleep, lay a piece of paper and pen by your bed as a sign of your willingness to receive the wisdom that comes in dreams. Consider strong dream images as possible words calling to you. Pay attention to synchronicities through the day. Are there images or words which seem to repeat themselves? If so, take note.
- Allow time for the word to ripen. This may be a slow process. If you hear a word calling, sit with it for a couple of days. Listen attentively to the stirrings of your heart in response. Eventually there will be a tugging inside of you, where you feel yourself drawn again and again to this word. Allow yourself to be in a space of unknowing with this and practice being present to your anticipation knowing that things of the soul unfold in their own time. This is a journey of transformation and the word may not make immediate sense to you, but trust that over time more of its meaning will be revealed.
When the word emerges, please share it with me and others in the comments section below. I am truly blessed by the sharings offered there – it is such a gift of hope in this time of holy darkness (and if you share by Friday, January 6th you are entered into a random drawing for a chance to win one of several prizes!)
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458 Responses
My word is Longing. My body, mind and spirit are often restless. I want something seemingly constantly. I usually scratch that itch of “want” with distraction. Distractions come in the form of food, the Internet, planning for the next thing. I am so aware of how these things don’t satisfy. Beneath that little niggling want or desire is a true and deep longing. It is a longing for what is Truest and Deepest. A longing for Beauty and Nature. A longing to be loved and to Be Love. It is a longing for God. God is in every moment. Truth and beauty and love is to be found every where when I pay attention. This year I pray that I will listen with constancy and depth to my Longing.
My word is “tell,” both in the sense of the verb–to tell stories–and the noun–a new city (a new year, new life) built on top of the ruins of one’s own life and the lives of one’s ancestors.
My word is “vessel.”
I looked back in my journal at two dreams in the last few weeks that had seemed to shimmer for me. In one I had met my male-poet doppelganger–a man living in rich poverty, and I thought a word might wink at me from that journal entry, especially because in one “room” of the dream my mother–now deceased–had sung a song about how much she loved her daughter. Although I could hear her, I couldn’t see her, but that was enough. But the part of the dream that yielded my word for the upcoming year was in some writing I did about the ending of the dream–a part I’d forgotten.
Outside of this man’s shack I found a large glass vessel. I remember that I thought of the word “vessel” when I first saw it. I decided to clean it up. It was really caked in dirt, and I kept rinsing and rinsing it with a hose. Finally, it came clean and was a deep reddish purple–so beautiful. My discovery felt like finding the holy grail sitting sitting around in plain sight but obscured by neglect.
In my life–and my work as a poet–I will be thinking of myself this year as a holy vessel for the Spirit. Or perhaps it is each poem that is a vessel. I will work to keep this vessel’s beautiful colors clear, to attend to it regularly. I vow not to neglect it, however busy or distracting my world becomes.
My word came to me on Christmas Eve and as I sat with it for a few days it became stronger, speaking to me also from week 5 of the Artist’s Rule and the Rumi that Christine quotes there. Etty Hillesum’s spiritual journey is one of the most extraordinary I have read. She writes in September 1942:
‘Hineinhorchen – I so wish I could find a Dutch equivalent for that German word. Truly, my life is one long hearkening unto myself and unto others, unto God. And if I say that I hearken, it is really God who hearkens inside me. The most essential and deepest in me hearkening unto the most essential and deepest in the other. God to God.’ (Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941-1943, p 519)
This is a particular quality of listening, inner listening. The translation from the German ‘hineinhorchen’ into ‘hearken’ does not completely capture what Etty means, and Etty herself cannot find a word in Dutch (the language of her diary), which captures her meaning. Etty was deeply influenced by Rilke and my word for last year ‘unfold’, came from him. So my word is hineinhorchen.
Smelik, Klaas A D ed., Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941-1943 (Cambridge: William B Erdmans, 1986).
My word is “Reality.” In the story of the lost son or prodigal son (Luke 15) he has an experiencing of “coming to himself” or “coming to his senses.” It is a key turing point in his story. He confesses that he has “sinned against heaven and before you (his father). It is as if he is saying, “I have gone against / lived over against reality, against the way things are, against heaven itself.” This recognition, this awakening to this in his life carries the seed of new hope. He is no longer blind to his lostness. He sees it. All to say that I feel the need for a shift in how I see reality; something that offers more hope; something that allows a less adversarial stance, less aggressive response to the world around me.
My word for 2012 is “birth” and includes its many forms – birthing, birthed, giving birth, etc. This word has grabbed me for a couple weeks now and has shown up everywhere. I am aware that birth is not all lovely, but can be a struggle, cause pain, needs to be breathed into. Something (or someone) is being birthed in my life and I look forward to meeting that something or someone!
I wanted something else. But I got ” brave”, (or “be brave”). It came from an unexpected source, a quote on the facebook status of a Canadian broadcaster: “2012 is for the brave”!
So it shall be. Because it spoke to me, that catch in the throat, prickly skin kind of speaking. And I know that of all that I could have chosen as a watchword, it is my walking through fear that will test my meddle, and maybe I will even learn what to ‘be brave’ means, for me.
The word that has found me is “Initiate”. The word is offering all sorts of images so far – healing, receiving, dedicating, entering into the mysteries; I have a vision of stepping more deeply into the holy spaces and inviting others to follow me. I feel the word is a calling to birth new things and awaken newly to life.
My word is ‘generous’. It has surprised me but is the word that will not ‘let me go’. Generous can often so easily be used in connection with money but I have been really blessed this past year by the ‘generous listening’ that has been given to me and that I, in turn, have been able to offer to others. So this is perhaps an opportunity to consider the word ‘generous’ in so many other contexts and I am looking forward to it.
My 2012 word is “promise.” I desire to believe and have faith in God’s promise to me and unreservedly live in what I feel is my promise to others.