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
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The word that keeps coming to me is “rest.” The past couple of years have been loaded with a lot of difficult and exhausting events. I retired from a demanding job in ministry, lost both of my paren, and had a stoke. Resting seems to be high on my a list.
NEAR. I am inspired by Mary’s song in which she proclaims the mighty being cast down, the lowly lifted up, the hungry are fed, and so on, and it’s all in the present tense.
The word that is unfolding for me is surrender – to the always birthing holy within me and in those around me.
My word this year is Belonging, “be-longing”.
“Conversion”
Containing whirling rainbow, migration, sky and the sacred path of beauty
To follow this year’s word “soup”
The word calling to me at this time is “beyond.” I want to move beyond Doing into Being, beyond what I know of this world into a greater understanding of its beauty and mystery. I am seeking a place where I can glimpse things beyond my understanding.
Stay
one word that comes into my heart for the new year ahead is ‘slacken’. within this one word so many others live – to slacken is a softening, slowing, surrendering into the river of what is. i am in deep need of the experience of slackening.
My word for 2026 is emerge. I have been slowly processing and ruminating on my life and the great questions, “how am I to be in this world”, and “what is mind to do?” Since I retired n 2023. Like a seed germinating deep in the winter snow covered fields, it is mine to slowly emerge into this new life.