The Give Me a Word invitation ends tomorrow – stop by to see over 400 responses, share your own word and receive a free gift, and enter a drawing to win some lovely prizes!
It has been an amazing gift to read the reflections coming in – it gives me a profound sense of hope and joy to know how many of you are reflecting on what will challenge you in the coming year, listening to what is calling forth your heart’s deep longing. Thank you to everyone who has participated!
I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Judith Jessop’s reflection on solitude and community. A sabbatical is a precious gift. In my tradition it arrives like clockwork every 7
Imbolc and Brigid Blessing*Spirit of the rumbling ground,help us attune our ears to the renewal taking formbeneath the winter earth,snowdrops and crocusesin white and purple-petaled wonder,hedgehogs and bearsbeginning to stir from sleep.Let Brigid be our guideas we navigate the way from rest to slow emergence,support
I was inspired to share this reflection on Mary as Mother of Mercy by the brave words of Bishop Mariann Budde speaking truth to power: Holy Mary, mother of us all,we see a world filled with violence toward one another,we ask for mercy.We see children
4 Responses
Embody is my word…look forward to traveling with it into 2012.
My word for 2012 is Authentic. Authentic, by my definition, is to be true to my personality, spirit, character, and my God. I resolve to live an authentic life to becoming who I already am in Christ. By letting go of the false illusions of myself and turning back to God, I will acknowledge that I am imperfect and vulnerable, and sometimes afraid, but always a beloved child of God.
“True Self” is the word that has accompanied & challenged me over the last 3 1/2 years of recovery & opportunity a life threatening/changing illness brought to me. As Parker Palmer writes:
“The figure calling to me all those years was, I believe, what Thomas Merton calls “true self.” This is not the ego self that wants to inflate us (or deflate us, another from of self-distortion), not the intellectual self that wants to hover above the mess of life in clear but ungrounded ideas, not the ethical self that wants to live by some abstract moral code. It is the self-planted in us by the God who made us in God’s own image– the self that wants nothing more, or less, than for us to be who we were created to be.
True self is true friend. One ignores or rejects such friendship only at one’s peril.”
? Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation
So, I stand on the precipice of a new year. Behind me is the safe & now comforting place of healing. A place I shared with only a few. Before me lies the vastness of moving forward. A longing grows in me to reach out to the world. To not only reconnect but, to connect offering my true self. I embrace the word that has welled up in me and take a step of faith to “Connect”.
My star gift word for this year is contentment. Ahh, I, the ever seeking one, the restless one, the one who beats herself up over a mistake in worship, or in prayer, etc. has been given the word, contentment! God is ever inviting me to be more gentle and like Paul, to learn to be content, satisfied, thankful in all things, in plenty and in want, in good times and in the hard, difficult times. A good word, a challenging word for me for this New Year of 2012.