Somewhere on this blog I have a list of each Word of the Year since I started. While listening to the Abiding Together series on Cultivating
Peace
Beauty
Unity
As I listened Cultivate leapt out at me like a dodgeball to the face. Cultivate: to attend to, water, fertilize, weed, prune, be patient with. And then while looking for that list I realized that Cultivate was my 2022 word of the year, and while they can repeat or revisit it’s not quite time, and if I were to repeat Surrender would remain.
I’m currently teaching a binding class in an online platform. One of the beautiful things about this is completing a few things as I show my students the how-to’s of applying binding by machine. One quilt with a fun edge will get bias binding because of how that edge is. This edge has both outside and inside corners so applying the binding is a little different. I’ve added binding to the inside corner before and yet while I demonstrated the process eluded me. I had to think about the process for a few days and I finally got it. Whew.
After pondering for a bit about Cultivate and getting over my astonishment that I’d had cultivate as a word of the year. I visited Jen Fulwiler’s Word Generator getting Hold, which made me think immediately of grasp, which was an almost immediate, “That’s a No from me.” So I clicked Choose a New Word a couple of times until HOLD came up.
Cue background pondering: there is something rather beautiful about HOLD.
What am I holding that needs letting go?
What am I holding that needs attention?
What treasures do I hold?
Hold is related to cultivate and surrender.
Am I holding onto the Trinity?
Am I holding things that don’t belong to me?
Am I holding dear what does belong to me?
Am I holding Scripture in my heart?
Am I holding onto a “to-do” list that makes no sense?
Am I holding onto something that is preventing me from Holding onto the Trinity?
Happy Feast of Christ the King.
Enjoy this final week of the Liturgical Year.
God bless!
Teri
PS After I published this post this song came to mind:
A Quilter's Heart 