In ancient times, wise men and women fled out into the desert to find a place where they could be fully present to the divine 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, 2023 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, we are 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, December 11th email and at the bottom of each Sunday following).
WIN A PRIZE – RANDOM DRAWING GIVEAWAY ENTER BY JANUARY 5th!
- One person wins a space in our Lent retreat on A Different Kind of Fast
- Three people win a space each in their choice of self-study retreats
- Five people win their choice of one of our digital albums
- Seven people win one of our Dancing Monk Medallions
Please share your word with us in the comments below
(and it would be wonderful if you included a sentence about what it means for you)
Subscribe to the Abbey of the Arts newsletter to receive ongoing inspiration in your in-box. You can choose daily, weekly, or monthly. Share the love with others and invite them to participate. Then stay tuned – on January 8th we will announce the prize winners!
475 Responses
My word is FLY!
Horizons!
“Awake”, or “wake up” has shown up repeatedly to affirm this theme/word is what will walk with me through 2023.
My word is ENOUGH. I am enough. I have enough. There will be enough.
Joy for 2023! As I have pondered what constitutes joy, especially joy experienced in simple things, for me it is feelings of amazement and gratitude. Embracing more joy in 2023!
Wishing everyone a joyous new year.
My word is Nourish. It is the essence of ‘the feminine’, I recently read in a book about Meister Eckhart by Matthew Fox, but it popped into my head during a spacious Qi Gong meditation on emptiness. For me this word is also very much about self-tending, self-nourishing, seeking, noticing, and finding nourishment each day.
The word(s) that have chosen me are “no nest.” I keep having the image of birds soaring and trusting the currents to support them. I want to fly!
Early on in the retreat my word came to me as I was walking my dog. It is Thresholds. When I took the Celtic retreat earlier in the fall, I was so moved by the first guided meditation, when Christine asked us to envision in the cave of our hearts a portal through which we could see and admit all our shining ones beyond the veil. That image moved me so deeply, and as I thought about it as a threshold, I began to think of all the other thresholds that 2023 will offer to me to cross. The most final one, the threshold to eternity after death, is always there waiting, but each day will offer countless other thresholds, some inviting, some intimidating, some maybe even frightening, but others leading to new discoveries and experiences, new adventures. The word Thresholds holds more meaning for me each time I contemplate it.
The word that chose me was “lightening” as in “lightening my grip”. I initially had the word “fixation”come and it was in the sense that the more I stayed fixated on my “things” the more that love was being blocked, the flow stopped or interrupted. Then it came to me that it was really about “lightening my grip” on my fixations and attachments. Then I came across the golf tip how to grip your club, “lightly like you had a little bird in your hand”. This was it. My fixations were the tightly held grip and I was am constantly being called, in fact we all are, to “lighten our grip” so that the little bird of love is not choked and killed due to our fixations. All of life is about changes, for everything changes…I feel that is my word now to live in and through, “Lightening” my grip and letting go of my fixations so love can flow in and through me freely.
My word is relinquish.