SHARE YOUR WORD FOR 2018
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 5, 2018 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 the Sunday email).
WIN A PRIZE – RANDOM DRAWING GIVEAWAY ON JANUARY 6TH!
We are delighted to offer some wonderful gifts from the Abbey:
- One space in our upcoming New Year’s online retreat – The Wisdom of the Body
- One space in our Lent retreat – Watershed Moments in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures
- One space in our online program Sacred Seasons: A Yearlong Journey through the Celtic Wheel of the Year
- 4 people will win their choice of our self-study online retreats
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!
433 Responses
This word(s) jumped out at me a couple of weeks ago but I wanted to sit with it to be sure. It’s “wild spaces”. It comes from theologian Sallie McFague but I’m also extending it. Here’s how: Getting outdoors into wild spaces, especially to exercise. Accepting the wilder parts of myself. Challenging status quo with a new vision for the good life. Environmentalism. Social justice. Living with the seasons. Living with my body and my emotions. Reclaiming parts I have cut off. Being at home in myself rather than others. Dancing. Undomesticating. Risking, dreaming, experimenting, being available for deep change. Standing on the threshold, on the margins, welcoming what is coming. Being centred within and also living on the borders. Liminal space: living expectantly in the not knowing. Place of uncertainty. Dissolved security to follow Christ. Healing old wounds and old stories. Letting God be bigger and less tame. Imagining new alternative ways of being
“Wild spaces” is great! My word is “adventure” and relates much to the philosophies you have expressed. Happy 2018!
My word is “trust”. My own health and the health of members of my family is cause for anxiety – so I need to trust that each day and each circumstance will be held in Love.
LEAD is the word that has come to me. Spirit is calling me to step into my power and BE the leader that I AM. This is not leadership or power as the world has known it for eons, but rather
one of QUIET LEADERSHIP – a way of leading that is inviting, enticing, almost seductive (seductive in a positive way, not negative or sexual). It is a subtle form of leadership, one that is feminine in nature and is the essence of Spirit.
My word for this year is Threshold…I am in a transition in my life, and believe this year will bring a major shift in both my external and internal world.
My word for 2018 is ….. Keys ….. This will be a year of already know BIG changes including husband retiring and a move to another state, which will need all the “keys” to many things to make this happen in best way possible.
It is savor, thanks to you…
My word is “replenish”. It’s what one needs when empty, “running on fumes,” or simply exhausted.
Joy was my word in 2017, which saw the death of my father, and joy has declared that it is not done with me yet, that there are actual joys to be discovered.
The word that finding me is” PRESENCE.” I have to be more presence in my life. In Norwegian the word is”TILSTEDEVÆRELSE”.
My word, strangely enough, is PUTREFECATION. There was just no escaping it. It came over a period of eight weeks in my dreams. I had several dreams where either me, or another man, are lying under water and the flesh of the body is bloated and near rotting off. In one dream I see my face and body in a glass tank and my arm is sticking out through a hole and I stuff it back in. There is no fear on my face and I am also simultaneously able to be in this submerged body breathing the water and calmly feeling it going in and out of my lungs. In another, homeless men (archetypes) are standing over my decaying body smiling at me happily. All is well with them.
I had been reading Marie Louise Von Franz this Fall and early winter and went back to her book on Alchemy. Putrefaction is one of the five/seven phases of the alchemical process—it is about the breaking down of everything. This is very synchronistic with what has been happening in my life where there has been a major upheaval in my work life and the loss of my medical certificate that prevented me from flying in my job as well as a freak windstorm that destroyed two of the gliders at my soaring club where I recently soloed. It is disoientinng, a bit frightening, and also exciting—what will happen next! I keep reminding myself of my favorite description of the Dharma—Silent. Signless. Aimless.