💬 CROWDSOURCING: What is your word for 2025?

It's not a destination, it's a direction. It's not a goal, it's a guide. It's your word for the year, and it's drifting up from some holy place within you.

I asked ChatGPT: “What is a New Year’s Resolution?” This is what it had to say:

A New Year’s Resolution is a personal commitment or goal that someone sets at the start of a new year, often with the intention of improving their life, habits, or mindset. The tradition symbolizes a fresh start, encouraging self-reflection and intentional change.

It’s a good definition, and I think it reflects why most such resolutions are abandoned by the third week of January. It has to do with the words “improving” and “change.” The premise of a typical New Year’s Resolution is that you don’t like something about yourself or your life, so you’re going to fix it.

Self-rejection is not sustainable fuel for sincere self-improvement.

In fact, we want to get away from the concept of self-improvement altogether. There’s a certain self-loathing already embedded in it.

“We can desire to become the Beloved,” writes Henri Nouwen, “only when we know that we already are the Beloved.” We are becoming that which we already are. You “couldn’t be one bit better,” Father Gregory Boyle tells gang members in rehabilitation, before they are rehabilitated. Once they believe it, they don’t change, they just become the beauty they’ve always been but neglected to be.

This is why choosing a word for the year is wiser than choosing a resolution for the year.

To do so is to already be a little kinder toward oneself, a little more openhearted to what already is, a little more surrendered to the unpredictability of what’s ahead. It acknowledges that the best things in life have all been unforeseen, and the best things in us have barely been seen.

• It’s not a destination, it’s simply a direction.

• It’s not a goal, it’s merely a guide.

• It’s not about achievement but embodiment.

• It’s not full of pressure but of possibility.

• It’s not a revising, it’s a revealing.

To choose a word to focus on this year is to enter in the mystery of the year, rather entering into a cage-match with the year.

So, how does one choose a word for the year?

I suppose it’s possible to choose a word for the year, but more often than not, it feels like the word chooses you. I love what Frederick Buechner has to say about listening:

We have a holy place within us that gets messed up in a million ways. But it’s there, and more and more I find myself turning inward toward that and trying to learn how to be quiet…to exist somehow in the fullness and unspeakableness of the present and to let whatever is down in the holy place drift up.

How do you choose?

Let whatever is down in the holy place drift up.

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What is your word for the year?

This is how Crowdsourcing posts work:

1. In the comments, in all caps write your WORD then, if you wish, share some details about how and/or why you chose this word. (If you have more than one word you’re deciding on, leave two or more comments rather than putting them in one.)

2. Choose one other commenter whose word resonates with you and let them know by responding to their comment.

To get us started, I’ll mine in the comments.

Looking forward to hearing from you all! Can you imagine how encouraging and edifying this comments section is going to be today???