Share your Word for 2014
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. The word which chooses us has the potential to transform us.
- What is your word for the year ahead? A word which contains within it a seed of invitation to cross a new threshold in your life?
Share your word in the comments section below by Monday, January 6, 2014 and you are automatically entered for the prize drawing (prizes listed below). Last year we had 840 people share!
A free 12-day online mini-retreat to help your word choose you. . .
This year I am offering all Abbey newsletter subscribers a gift: a free 12-day online mini-retreat with a suggested practice for each day to help your word choose you and to deepen into your word once it has found you.
Sign up here and you can start your mini-retreat today. Once you subscribe you will receive a confirmation email with access to the mini-retreat content (and you are free to unsubscribe at any time). If you are already a subscriber, the invitation will be in this week’s email newsletter.
Win a Prize – Random Drawing Giveaway on January 6th!
I am delighted to offer some wonderful gifts from the Abbey:
- 4 people will win a signed copy of Eyes of the Heart: Photography as Christian Contemplative Practice (mailed directly from me in Ireland to you, anywhere in the world)
- 4 people will win a copy of Naked and You Clothed Me: Homilies and Reflections for Cycle A with two reflections by Christine, plus also Richard Rohr, Rob Bell, Jan Richardson, Fr. James Martin, SJ, and many more!
- 4 people will win their choice of self-study online classes from following: Creative Flourishing in the Heart of the Desert: A Self-Study Online Retreat with St. Hildegard of Bingen, Soul of a Pilgrim: An Online Art Retreat, Seasons of the Soul, Lectio Divina: The Sacred Art of Reading the World, or Eyes of the Heart: Photography as a Contemplative Practice.
So please share your word (and it would be wonderful to include a sentence about what it means for you) with us below. Subscribe to the Abbey newsletter for your free gift. Share the love with others and invite them to participate. Then stay tuned – on January 6th I will announce the prize winners!
If this is your first time commenting at the Abbey, or you are including a link, your comment will need to be approved before appearing, which usually takes less than 24 hours.
680 Responses
I didn’t expect to have my word today, as I started late and for me today is day 10 in the process. I was considering a few words/phrases — Silence, Inner Wisdom, Pause, Withdraw — but none of them really “shimmered” for me, and they felt forced, as though they were coming from mind rather than soul; I wasn’t trusting the process enough to allow the word to come on its own. I had almost resigned myself to just choosing one of the above words, regardless. But when I woke up this morning, as I read my day 10 email, the word Return came to me, as in
Return to Inner Wisdom
Return to the Spiritual Path
Return to cultivating my Interests and Talents
Return to the Present Moment
This word fits so well with how I view my spiritual journey, which I associate with the image of the labyrinth, a process of turning and returning until the Center is reached, and then repeating the process as one moves back into the world. No matter how often I drift away from the process, I can always return again, and again and again.
So happy to have found my word on Epiphany!
I’m in the grip of a word and it won’t let me go. It chose me last year as my sacred word for centering prayer, and it’s insisting on being my word for 2014. The word is “entrust.” It’s being a long,slow process learning to let go and entrust myself to God.
I have worked through so many possible words. And finally this morning as I thought about the threshold of this year the word came to me.
CHRYSALIS — the stage of growth when the butterfly is moving into adulthood….maturity. The last couple of years have taken me to many thresholds…through many refiner’s fires. I have struggled and learned and now stand at the next threshold….into the chrysalis I go. There is a protective covering around me…a shield from GOD…so that I can complete the transformation that has been in the works for a while.
The word may morph or refine itself as I work it. But that is it….CHRYSALIS.
witness.
FEARLESS. This word scares the pants off me…which is why it’s needed. For me, it means fearlessly exploring, seeking, experimenting, (re)defining my self and God and my beliefs, creating, challenging, and being (for a start).
I’ve written more about my word and my rebirthing here: http://www.bethmorey.com/2014/01/a-re-birthing-my-fearless-year.html
Clarity-
Seeing with fresh eyes and an open heart. Walking with intentionality this year and the willingness to get my feet wet with new decisions.
My son who lives with a mental illness just had a massive stroke. How do we as a family support him?
Blessings on the journey-
Gini
STRENGTH that’s the word that has chosen me this year!
WATER is the word that asked me to flow with it through the coming year, washing away the other contenders, ‘cherishing’ and ‘opening’, as I stood in the rain on a railway station just before Christmas. Quietly, and persistent as the rain, it said that if I were to observe closely its ever-changing yet constant nature and to deepen my relationship with it, it would be an eternal source of thankfulness, wonder and praise, dispelling all myths of separation from self, other and God. Already this year has been daily blessed by the beauty of its revelations and a gentler relationship with myself.
Let me be humble and yielding as water
Let me be playful and joyful as water
Let me be wild and powerful as water
Let me be still and reflective as water
We are not one, we are not two
Engage
in a dream a priest and I were walking together. I am about for
4 or 5 and he is very tall–it feels like he is my Dad. We are on a dry dusty road and occasionally there is a tuft of long grass. I look down in one if these patches– there is something hidden like an Easter Egg almost and I think to myself: “What is the letter ‘t’ doing in the grass?” He picks it up, looks at it for a moment then hands it to me. “This,” he says, “means you’re engaged”. I look up at him in confusion, and am about to say, “But I thought it was a diamond?” (meaning “engaged”). Then I wake up.
I wonder, what is the letter “t”… And it comes to me that it is not the letter t;
it is a Cross and Father has given me a way to carry it with grace, (instead of sinking into myself and becoming almost a vegetable, as is my tendency. I have lupus–but never mind; He has shown me how to LIVE with it.
I hope you will share with us how you “engage” with the cross(es) you have to bear in ways that help you grow in grace, acceptance, maybe even celebration. You seem to have already “engaged” with your dream in searching for its meaning for you.
Thankful
I tried many words. “Thankful” came to me in my early morning awakening and as I started to name all that I am thankful for, my body relaxed and I knew this was the word for my new year.