SHARE YOUR WORD FOR 2016
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 January 6, 2016 and you are automatically entered for the prize drawing (prizes listed below).
A FREE 12-DAY ONLINE MINI-RETREAT TO HELP YOUR WORD CHOOSE YOU. . .
As in past years, 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. Even if you participated last year, you are more than welcome to register again.
Subscribe to our email newsletter and you will receive a link to start your mini-retreat today. Your information will never be shared or sold. (If you are already subscribed to the newsletter, look for the link in today’s email).
WIN A PRIZE – RANDOM DRAWING GIVEAWAY ON JANUARY 6TH!
We are delighted to offer some wonderful gifts from the Abbey:
- One signed copy each of Soul of a Pilgrim, Eyes of the Heart, The Artist’s Rule, and Water, Wind, Earth, and Fire.
- One space in Sacred Seasons: A Yearlong Journey through the Celtic Wheel of the Year
- 4 people will win their choice of self-study online classes from the 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 to receive ongoing inspiration in your in-box. Share the love with others and invite them to participate. Then stay tuned – on January 6th we will announce the prize winners!
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712 Responses
Expand.
Expand vision, compassion, awareness, tolerance, self.
My word is truth. This is the year when we will all start seeing and feeling the truth no matter what a person is saying or writing about a situation. As we read each other’s energy, there will be no more secrets, no more lies.
Eucharist
– reminding me all at once to give thanks (the literal translation from Greek) and that within thanks – charis – meaning grace or spirit; and the great mystery of Christ’s presence in ordinary bread blessed and broken.
The word that has chosen me is pilgrimage. I may choose to go to Spain this summer to follow in the footsteps of St Ignatius of Loyola. Or……I’m sensing a local, yet to be discovered pilgrimage may be beckoning me. It has to do with walking, yes. But also listening, writing, conversation and images either through photography or drawing. It is local and sacred and ordinary and for and with others…..not just for me. It’s choosing me but not yet fully known.
Spacious. Its hard to articulate in words what this means to me, but I feel it deeply within me.
The word that keeps surfacing for me is “Courage.” In this word I see the steps I have taken to priesthood and responding to Christ’s calling.
Courage has led me through the risks taken and the experience of the “cost” of this calling. Courage also reminds me to go deeper, in my
thoughts and relationships.
Camino: I walked the 500 mile Camino de Santiago two years ago. Camino means Way, referring to a Pilgrimage. The word brings to mind engaging the Presence of God, developing deep relationships, engaging beauty beyond description, enduring physical pain, taking risks, experiencing community across hundreds of miles with people from dozens of different countries. The word means to me becoming fully present with the people and places along the way as I travel my daily Camino. My word for this year is Camino.
My 2016 word is NOURISHING. Investing in taking care of myself and learning the balance of receiving and giving shall be cultivated. Nourishing all that serves my soul – creativity, long walks, befriending myself, investing time and energy with my partner and few close friends, nourishing my relationship with the Divine, growing spiritually after shifting away from ‘church.’ I’m so looking forward to living into this word and all that it entails. Thank you. Grace and peace.
“Threshold”…it chose me as I read your invitation shortly after Christmas.
Sustenance; willing to surrender a sense of self preservation to a greater reality of “being” sustained by a greater “Other”