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 4, 2026 and you are automatically entered for the prize drawing (prizes listed below).
Read Christine’s book Give Me a Word: The Promise of an Ancient Practice to Guide Your Year for guidance and inspiration.
This book is designed to help you contemplate what holiness is birthing within your soul. Each day there are different practices offered to inspire, challenge, and support you in listening for the word that wants to be spoken to your heart.
The practices are not about resolutions or goal setting, they are not about achieving more in the new year or accomplishing tasks or goals. They are about listening for what is calling to you in a particular season of life. They ask us to trust a greater wisdom at work in the world than our own egos.
Through this book, you will be invited to release your thinking mind and enter into a space of receiving.
WIN A PRIZE – RANDOM DRAWING GIVEAWAY ENTER BY JANUARY 4th!
- One person wins a space in the mini-retreat Brigid’s Day (Imbolc) Deep Rest Retreat ~ Emergence with Christine Valters Paintner, Deirdre Ní Chinnéide, and Nóirín Ní Riain
- Two people win a space in our upcoming Way of the Monk, Path of the Artist retreat
- Two people win a space each in their choice of Self-Study retreats
- Three people win a Dancing Monk Medallion
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 11th we will announce the prize winners!
270 Responses
My word is passion.
My word is “Becoming” – Becoming aware and in so doing becoming who God sees me and calls me to be.
My phrase is ‘Reclaim Joy’. I have felt stifled spiritually and lost my joy. I desire to reclaim my creativity, longings and deep spiritual connection with great joy.
Abide
Obedience – it is a threshold act of listening in Divine Love to the calling of Love that ushers us with soles of peace and a heart opening wider and wider to embrace the ever expanding infinity of the Divine Creator, it little to do with blind compliance and everything to do with the liberation of the Heart and Soul’s true expression of the ‘self’ in union with, as God … in God.
Rooted: embodied learning from tree teachers; practices to ground into and to stay connected with sacred earth; living in harmony with the rhythm of seasons.
My word is Abundance. 2025 was a year of profound losses and grief; I continue to reflect in gratitude for the abundance of angels and graces which gift me with spiritual, physical, and emotional support, and I recall the words of Julian of Norwich’s body prayer: Await, Allow, Accept, Attend.
My word is “subsist,” for reasons both personal and collective. 2025 was a year of huge and wonderful new beginnings for me and also of devastating losses, so 2026 is about simply continuing. Subsistence is also a much-needed corrective to the greed of late-stage capitalism, which I’m focusing on practicing.
My word is a fun word! Platypus! It is a visual image of living “out of the box”.
My word is engage.