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
“Create!” The exclamation point brings me a sense of excitement, of movement towards, of power, of force and strength and will, to enter into a season of imagining, and bringing new ideas into reality.
“Be”. After years of illness, and a very driven life of writing, art and teaching, I am slowly learning to do less, to protect myself from over-engagement, and to open to the beauty of our 50 acres in Northern Michigan.
“Allow.” In the past few months I have been buffeted by a number of losses and shocking surprises and am facing surgery in the spring. Just yesterday I read something that compared “acceptance” to “allowing”:
“The word ‘allow’ is a softer word, a word that takes me beyond accepting and rejecting altogether. It releases me from the whole idea of comparison, of
preference for or against, of hope and fear. It is a resting place. Resting in allowing.”
Clearly if I am to find rest in 2018 I need to allow it to be done unto me.
Thank you, Sandra! This speaks to me strongly!
My word is ‘trust.’ This is my work right now. To trust that all will be well not matter what…
Enjoying reading all of your “words “… Very inspiring. My word is, “forgiven, “but imagining it stamped across the forehead of every person I meet. I am hoping this will increase compassion and decrease in the tendency to presume character.
Mine is a phrase – “new life now”, coming after years – no, decades – of waiting. It feels like a foreign, exciting, life-giving and unknown gift!
Last year my WOTY was ‘PILGRIM’ – supported and inspired by Christine’s wonderful writings around the soul of pilgrimage and its characteristics. I will keep on walking the pilgrim path, but for 2018 two words entwined themselves insistently to be a miniature poem and encouragement: NOURISH & FLOURISH. I love how they balance each other – input and output, consume and produce, enrich and bless, gather and give, absorb and radiate!
“Dare.” So much yet for me to dare to imagine, dare to hope for, dare to seek!
“mercy’s bosom” is the word that contiually emerges from the silence of my morning meditation. Experienced as a gentle and subtle resonance, a stream and flow attuning heartbeat and breath in balanced rhythms. From this place of deep listening, there emerges a yearning for wholeness. A deeper communion to heal the wounds and false divisions, the unknown and unloved places of my soul and a sensitivity to the pain and suffering in our broken and divided world.These two words inspire me seek balance in contemplation and action, a receiving and responding to the needs of others, Love in action, engaged compassion, a movement and new creation in progress, journey home, prodigals and pilgrims embracing, good will and spirit sharing common ground. A mutuality of shaing healing and wholeness. Mercy’s vocation, conspiring hope and vision.
Peace and blessings to all.
Holding. So much today is about “letting go” when some situations that arise should be held and looked at and remembered so one does not keep with a pattern of needing to Let Go! So says I ? so holding after my morning contemplation and rearranging of my thoughts has arrived as my word for 2018. Thank you again for your guidance. Blessings.