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Give Me a Word 2014: Fifth Annual Abbey Giveaway

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:

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.

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680 Responses

  1. The word that flows through me is FORTITUDE. I have been sensing that there will be change in the forthcoming year. While change is constant, and some of this change will be intentional, it will take fortitude on my part not to settle into complacency. I sense there may be change requiring fortitude that is not intentional and therefore not yet revealed. In all circumstances I need to let go, let God.

  2. Irreducible: what a strange word it seems to me, when I could have had joy or beauty or courage. Seems awkward, a word without social graces. But intriguing none the less. What remains when all that is not true is stripped away? That’s the question for me to explore next year it seems.

  3. The word ARTIST has chosen me. I started painting this year, after successfully (!!!) resisting its call for decades. Lots of grace and pain in this word for me, having come from a long line of professional artists. Am now sitting with it every day as a mantra, being with all that arises from this, sinking into Love as the substrate of it all.

  4. When we are asked to choose a word, suddenly the world is full of words. Which one is for me? And then, the strangest thing happens – one of those words is heard and used again and again. My word is given to me in a myriad of settings and occasions. I can’t miss it and I can’t get away from it. For me this year, that word is BEAUTY.
    Nature provides beauty without fail; so do the arts. My choice is to find beauty in the actions and words of all others, especially those I knowingly place just within my peripheral vision.

  6. My word for 2014 is Adventure. I kept hearing and seeing this word over the last several weeks. After just losing my wonderful stepmom to pancreatic cancer at the age of 56 and starting a new job last week as a social worker on a psychosocial oncology team, I am present to the fragility of life. I am praying for a year filled with holy wonder and grand adventures!

  7. The word “Courage” chose me before I finished reading the first Give Me A Word
    email. Courage to surrender more, to trust more, to play it less safe, & to believe in myself more.

  8. Rudderless. My path appears to be without direction because I am not the one who directs it. That requires a lot of trust.

  9. GENEROSITY was the word on my lips today and it has stayed there. I started with simplicity (which I think was last year’s word!) but I am finding generosity to be more…it is to push simplicity outside of myself, to seek to give and to welcome more so as to keep giving. This is not for me to be enslaved in any way but to be filled and overflowing with love in every aspect of my living, prayer, interactions…

  10. Today the word from this mini retreat comes as fire… Big Sur is on fire…my eljah guru is there…primordial fire…purifying fire…rejuvenating and life giving fire…ashes to phoenix fire…Teilhard’s fire of love and the noosphere…
    Illumination came yesterday that golden light and drum celebrate 50 years of entrance into monastic life…1964-2014