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
Stretching. I picture the image that taffy goes through in it’s process. Bending, twisting, moving to great lengths that seem impossible, folding into God’s will, and then doing it again over and over.
Practice – both as a verb and a noun. I am becoming more aware of life lived out as practices, or investments of precious time, energy and thought. Whether they are life-giving (prayer, meditation, writing, being in nature…) or life-draining (self-doubt, fueling our bodies with food and drink that cause more harm than good…), they influence how we show up and walk in the world. I want to spend this year both identifying and examining practices I am currently engaged in (recognized or not) as well as cultivating new ones to enrich my journey through the second half of life.
My word for 2023 is THEREFORE. My initial response was, ‘What sort of word is that? What will I do with this?’ But that’s the point; I don’t do something with the word, the word does something with me. As I sat with this word I sensed a strong pregnant energy … I tried ‘pregnant’ as my word, but my word is definitely THEREFORE. It is an invitational word and I am excited to see where this word takes me this year.
My word is YES, yes to all that reality brings, joy and sadness, health and sickness, love and fear, confusion and understanding.
LISTEN – the word has been appearing everywhere! In novels, on the radio, in facebook posts when I go in to update clients’ pages… in readings and even films we have been watching of an evening. A close follow up is QUIET so I am entering the year with the guidance to be quiet and LISTEN! Since I shall be retiring from teaching in May this advice is timeous, I shall have time to listen!
My word for this year is –journey–. What is the new leg of the journey I am on?
Life is a journey and I have come to a new place in that journey. Where will it lead?
What will it show me?
My word is vulnerability. Allowing this within both my inner and outer worlds
BEGINNER acrostic:
Benedictine wisdom
Emerges as a mantra
Guiding me
Into the new year
Novice, dilettante
Never the expert
Each morning I arise
Resolute to Always Begin Again
My word for 2023 is EQUILIBRIUM.
I’m pondering the word ‘still’–as adjective, verb and noun–and the puzzles and paradoxes its definitions and manifestations suggest. Still as a quality of motion, still as continuity, still as purification. I think it will keep me occupied for quite a while!
My word is actually a phrase: safe boat. John Climacus likened humility to a safe boat in the sense that it is the “remedy with which those who have obtained it overcome everything else.”