letting a word from the Lord choose me...

Sometimes we just don't know until it happens: a blessing, a sorrow, a joy, a grief, or a word. Over the past three decades, I've been slowly practicing the spiritual discipline of "listening for a word." The wise and creative spiritual director, Christine Valters Paintner, puts it like this:

Beginning in around the third century CE, a group of monastics known as the desert mothers and fathers retreated to the deserts of northern Egypt, Syria, and Palestine to pursue lives of silence and prayer. A key phrase, repeated often among the sayings of the desert mothers and fathers, is "Give me a word." Rather than choosing a word, I invite you to let a word choose you. What does this mean exactly? How am I chosen by a word? It means releasing your thinking mind and expectations and resting into your heart....What if I trusted that a word would come when the time was ripe? What if I let go of the need to find something for myself and opened myself to receive what comes? If you find yourself obsessing over the “right” word, it is time to breathe and let go. Pay attention to synchronicities around you. Look for images that shimmer and make your heart stir with delight. Notice what is making you uncomfortable, calling you to grow beyond the known edges of your life. These are the places where your word will make itself known. Eventually.

When I was considering leaving ministry in Tucson, I kept "hearing" the call to trust the "unforced rhythms of grace." During my sabbatical 10 years ago, it was "tenderness." And when my congregation offered me an insulting and professionally unacceptable offer in order to save money, after stealing away for a week of silence, what I "heard" was the word "behold." Behold what the Lord is doing! Behold what the Scriptures are saying. Behold what options are unfolding. And as I beheld, it became clear it was time to let go - so I retired. After Covid, a denominational leader suggested to me that just because I sensed it was once time to let go of ministry... we're a people of the resurrection, so maybe there's new life yet to be discerned. And she was right: new life became my word as I returned to ministry first in Williamstown and now in Palmer.

Once again, we are away for a few days of silence and solitude - and beyond any plans or expectations - an from Dr. Valters-Paintner arrived to "let a word choose me" for Advent or the unfolding year. As I felt my heart smile it hit me: Oh, THAT is what this Thanksgiving retreat is all about: listening for a word to choose me. The good doctor writes:

For some of you, the word may come right away, but others may find the process much slower. Trust that perhaps it is the waiting itself that is being offered to you as wisdom and practice. The word comes as a gift. You will often know it through an intuitive experience, a more embodied sense of yes. The word (or phrase) is one that will work in you (rather than you working on it). Remember that a word that creates a sense of inner resistance is as important to pay attention to as one that has a great deal of resonance.

This rings true... so may it be so. Tonight we'll light a fire in the fireplace, eat pierogis and sausage, and sleep in a new place. Tomorrow we will explore. We'll rest and wander, listen and pray in anticipation of the Feast of Thanksgiving.