Words for the Year

As many of you do, I come up with a word for the year. For those unfamiliar with the process, it’s really more that a word “finds” you. A word jumps out from what you read or maybe what you hear. It evokes positivity for you and speaks to your best intentions. You may use it as a touchstone for the coming year, maybe as a hopeful foreshadowing. I’ve known people of faith to choose a word they can add to their toolbox of spiritual support. However you use your word, creating a visual - a collage on a large index card, a painting or drawing, or maybe just a doodle in a journal - can be an encouraging reminder.

I had picked a word, but decided it didn’t work for me after I came across a further reading regarding the origin and interpretation of the word. Since then, more than one word (and a phrase) eventually found its way to me - a constellation of words, as it were. Thus, my choices for words-of-the-year.

Geography of the spirit. I’m a map freak, so I love the idea of a spiritual terrain. It’s a complex territory and one that I’m continually exploring.

Re-mind. As in renewing, rejuvenating, re-thinking. Changing up, re-assessing the ideas and thought processes that don’t serve me well. Recalibrating my focus.

Transformation. Old habits released, or at least looked straight in the eye. Discovering new ways or altered ways of coming at life’s daily stuff.

Navigate. Trying to find my way through the uncharted waters. Calling up winds to free me from the Horse Latitudes. Embarking sometimes in the peregrinatio without sail or oars with the belief that I’ll find my way to the harbor I’m intended to find.

Contend. Contend as in stretching out or striving after. Maybe a bit of fight when it’s called for.

It could be my constellation will require a collection of illustrated cards or a single larger piece. Often, in the creative process, the images - photos, collage elements, illustrations, artifacts - also make themselves intuitively known.

Do you have a word for your year?