Dear monks, artists, and pilgrims,
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 6, 2024 and you are automatically entered for the prize drawing (prizes listed below).
WIN A PRIZE – RANDOM DRAWING GIVEAWAY ENTER BY JANUARY 6th!
- One space in our Love of Thousands online companion retreat to the book
- One space in our online Lent retreat on A Different Kind of Fast
- Two people win a space each in their choice of self-study retreats
- Three people will win a digital album of their choice.
- Three 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)
Winners will be announced on Sunday, January 12th.
If you would love a retreat experience to support you in listening for your word, letting your word ripen, and carrying your word into the year ahead, please join us for our Give Me a Word Advent and Christmas season retreat which begins today! I am joined by many wonderful guest teachers and there is a suggested practice for each day from now until Epiphany!
Join us tomorrow for our Contemplative Prayer Service where I will be joined by Simon de Voil and Polly Paton-Brown to reflect on the gifts of Mary for our journey.
With great and growing love,
Christine
Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE
P.S. We are delighted to announce the release of Birthing the Holy: Dancing with Mary and the Sacred Feminine! This digital collection of 12 dances and companion teaching videos by Betsey Beckman and guest artists offers another beautiful resource for engaging with the gifts of Mary.
Image paid license with Canva
233 Responses
I am leaning toward the word “Well”. so many nuances and possibilities to explore with this simple but multi-layered/usage word.
My word is Adventure. I still see my life as an adventure, a challenge to discover as much about life in this world as I can, before I am called to leave it. I also see my ongoing relationship with the Divine as an adventure. Where is the Holy One leading me?
ENFLESH. Not even sure it’s a real word. But it calls. What does it mean to be spirit-in-body? How does living into enfleshment reshape the way I relate the rest of creation? Does it in any way give direction as to how to be “in the world but not of it?”
My word for 2024 is sonder. It is a word created by John Koenig, author of the New York Times bestselling and enchanting, Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. It’s a book of words to express the emotions we don’t have the words to express. Here is the defintion, Sonder-noun: “The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own-populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness-an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.” As a contemplative, sonder brings me out of personal reverie to witness and connect with the universe of souls around me in awareness. Linda E. Leopard – Oregon & California
wow how creative and lovely word!
Surrender.
Love. Just love.
Visions: I’m being led this season by a whole new set of images, symbols, and meanings. I sense 2024 to be a new start for me, a rebirth after a tumultuous and painful few years. Blessings of the season to all! ✨💚✨
My word for 2024 is RELEASE. I have retired and physically moved to a new town. I find I am grieving and holding on to many feelings and ways of what has been good but needs to shift. In doing so, I have little to no room for the new God desires to show me. Letting go is not enough. Release is what I must be about.
My word for 2024 is “Appreciating” which to me includes the qualities of deep reverence for Life, respect, awe, wonderment and devotion as well the important element of embodied action.
My word for 2024 is “release”. Set myself free to inhabit the artists place, with a commitment to it being as important as breath itself.
Fleeing to the desert this winter will provide me with the restart I need to start the new year off with renewed commitment to that place that currently sits on the periphery.