Here it is the end of the third week of Advent, which also happens to be the shortest day of the year. As I am a short woman this is highly appropriate that I share a few snippets of the year and the twenty-twenty-five word of the year.
Institute for Spiritual Direction – is as challenging as it is delightful. This challenging is a good thing as it permits opportunities to look at life and experience in new ways, seeking the Creator.
Quilting and Sewing – this is always an opportunity for growth. I love teaching quilters the whys and wherefores of free-motion quilting, offering a strong base from which to develop this new skill.
It’s been a long time since I’ve made vestments (usually Deacon stoles) and I’ve made 2 stoles and 1 dalmatic this year. One stole was quilted!
Vocations Ministry at our parish. I’ve long had a love for vocations and there are promptings that I follow to let someone know. It’s both delightful and a little scary at the same time. Part of the delight is this is then in someone else’s basket to say yes or no as they see fit, my work here is done.
Writing. Oh there’s been a lot this year and very little shared. It’s mostly reflecting on what we’re reading/learning in ISD. The delight though is deep and the Rotten Poets Eldlest Daughter made an appearance. At some point I will share the poem I wrote as part of my reflection on grief.
Word of the Year
Somewhere I have a list of my words since I started doing this. Last year I chose tenacity and play and ended up with ruah. Sometime I will return to tenacity because it’s such a good world. Ruah is dynamic and ever present. The Holy Spirit is ever present, prompting, guiding, urging, teaching, asking me to Breathe. Our silent retreat in May as part of the Institute for Spiritual Direction is one of the clearest experiences as it was a place of struggle, of wrestling to understand a particular passage of Scripture and still not quite getting there.
Ruah. In the first experiences of group Spiritual Direction, the Breath of God the invitation to silence, a place of rest, listening and simply being.
Ruah. Silence. God can and does speak through anything. The stillness and silence are the places where I, where we, can listen with greatest clarity. It is also a difficult place because there is both the being quiet and still and the vulnerability of facing ourselves for who we are and who we are created to be and the disparity there. Our Baptism shifts this radically and we are in the process of discovering what this means and how to live in that radical shift of our personhood within our own experience.
Over the last several months, maybe six months the word for 2025 has slowly and clearly formed in my being and I do think, no I know, it’s with the prompting of the Holy Spirit, through these experiences that led me to this one.
Surrender
I love that surrender came early for me this year. The first hints of it were in May at our Silent Retreat. Oh to surrender fully to the beautiful gift of silent listening. I’d like to say stay tuned for more on this however, I don’t know what writing and blogging will look like next year.
As a bit of a lark I also did Jen Fulwiler’s Word of the Year generator and got this:
Happy Christmas Friends!
Teri
A Quilter's Heart 