Words To Guide Us In 2025
If you had to select one word to use as a guiding star in the coming year, what would it be?
That is one of the questions we explored at this year’s “Writing the Prologue to Your New Year” retreat which I offer each January. The retreat is a way of moving into a new year with greater intention and attentiveness. The practice harkens back to a tradition in which pilgrims would visit monks and monastic sisters living in the Egyptian desert, seeking a word to carry home to ponder and pray with.
The wisdom that emerges from the people who attend this retreat never ceases to amaze me. They are folks in various stages of life. And while the world itself might be on fire (literally in California as well as in war-torn countries), each person at the retreat was intent not only on becoming their best selves, but also helping to heal this broken world.
Especially inspiring were the people in their eighties. One 80-year-old artist chose as her word, “Rebirth.” She and two colleagues are about to start a new ministry, helping differently-abled people explore their spiritual yearnings through the arts. This is a woman who knows something about rebirth. She raised seven children of her own.
An 82-year-old selected the word “Gratitude,” saying she intends to record something for which she is grateful everyday in 2025. An 88-year-old chose the word “Possibility.” Her question each morning, she said, is “What is God asking of me today?”
Reflecting on the physical diminishments that often come with age, another of our group’s elders settled on the word, “Defang.” It means to take out the sting, to neutralize, to disarm. That is precisely what she said she intends to do whenever doubt creeps in that “there is anything left in me to bloom.” She found inspiration in watching an amaryllis transform from a simple shoot into a bright red flower.
One of the themes we explored at this year’s retreat was a concept that comes from Judaism, Tikkun olam: the actions we take to repair the world. The desire to care for the world was evident in many of the words selected, such as “Harmony;” “Resilience;” “Outreach;” “Peace;” “Accept;” “Serenity;” “Abide;” and “Grace.”
One recently-retired person selected ”Deeper,” reflecting her desire to go deeper into the activities she values, and do things she hasn’t done before.
“Arise” in the sense of ‘standing up,’ was another word that struck me. With the incoming Trump administration, many of us likely will be called to stand up for what we believe to be right, and against what we believe is wrong.
A couple of the more unusual words included “Elegancifying ,” in the sense of making things harmonious and beautiful, and “Sacralize,” to consider as sacred life’s ordinary moments, celebrations and challenges alike.
Another of the retreatants chose the word “Home,” after reflecting on the poem “Come Home to Yourself” by Meister Eckhart, as translated by Jon M. Sweeney and Mark S. Burrows:
If you want to discover the truth about God,
don’t strive for things that lie beyond you.
Draw your thoughts inward to the center, and
seek to become one and simple in your soul.
Let go of all that distracts you, all you desire,
and come home to yourself, and when you do,
you’ll become the truth you first sought.
As for myself, I considered several words, including “Dance” and “Komorebi,” a Japanese word that refers to being at ease with both darkness and light. I finally settled on “Revolution,” which connotes a dramatic change in thinking or behavior. I felt confirmed in my choice after reading a speech Dorothy Day had given in 1976 in which she spoke of a “revolution of the heart.”
“The greatest challenge … is to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us” Day said. “When we begin to take the lowest place, to wash the feet of others, to love our brothers [and sisters] with that burning love which led to the cross, then we can say, Now I have begun.”
There are likely many parts of my thinking and behavior that need a revolution. The good news is that the revolution need never end, it is always evolving, renewing, revitalizing.
Following the Prologue retreat, I attended an online talk by Kerry Kennedy, president of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, and daughter of the late senator. The talk was sponsored by the Beatitudes Center for the Nonviolent Jesus.
“Most of us won’t be able to change the course of history,” Kennedy said. Still, we can change small things over which we have control (serendipitously, one of the Prologue retreatants selected “Small Things” as her guiding words for the year).
Kennedy recalled the 1966 “ripple of hope” speech her father had given in Capetown, South Africa during the time of apartheid:
“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression.”
“We need to imagine the world we want,” Kennedy said.
Using any one of the words our retreat members chose as guides, we can imagine a better world. We can create ripples of hope in 2025.
What word would you choose to guide you in the coming year?
