My Three Words for 2024
At the end of 2021, I saw a friend post about her “three words” for the year. She had picked them in January, and in December, she reflected on what she had learned and what those words meant to her throughout the year. In 2022, I decided to do the same thing.
In 2022, my words were prayer, kindness, and water. The third word fell into place at the last minute. We came home from vacation on New Year’s Eve to a flooded house. Because of freezing temperatures, a pipe in our ceiling had burst. It had probably been spewing water for 14-15 hours before we got home. That year, we lived in hotels and temporary housing for 11 months. Instability and uncertainty became themes for us. A lot of other negative things happened that year, but there were many positives as well. Our third son, Callen was born in the summer. I started a new job and taught my first college writing class (theme: kindness, empathy). I learned more about myself (including things I didn’t want to learn). Having these three words helped to anchor me, giving me something I could focus on in the midst of all the upheaval.
In 2023, my words were wisdom, heaven, and light. I read several collections of wisdom sayings and proverbs, and something about reading in that genre puts me in a more reflective, receptive state. Because I’m working on a writing project about a bereaved father who visits heaven in his dreams, “heaven” was more of a research word for me. It was interesting to learn about the various religious, scientific, and literary perspectives on the afterlife.
Each year, I buy a new journal specifically for my three words. I write my own reflections—long or short—on various aspects related to those words. I write quotes from other sources. Throughout the year I try to engage with media (books, movies, music, the Bible, etc.) that involve those words. My goal is to learn more, reflect more, and have my thinking changed about those words.
For 2024, my three words are hospitality, city, and insects. Below are my initial reasons for choosing these words, and what I hope to learn through their enhanced presence in my life this year.
Hospitality
Each year, I try to choose at least one word that is some sort of spiritual practice. This is good for my soul for two reasons: (1) it reminds me that I have much to learn about the word in question, that, as confident as I feel, I don’t know as much as I think I do; (2) it prompts me to practice this practice more in my life, and in a more thoughtful, loving, contemplative way.
I first learned the word “hospitality” in elementary school. The Sunday school teacher had given each kid a verse to memorize and recite in front of the church—one verse per book of the New Testament. My verse was Titus 1:8, which began, “Rather he must be hospitable….” I vaguely knew that “hospitable” meant welcoming, but I was more focused on getting the words right than understanding the meaning of the verse.
A few years ago, I was at a ministry conference with my new interns. The speaker asked us to discuss in our groups what hospitality was. One of the interns said that my logistics work demonstrated my hospitality. In my mind, hospitality meant friendliness and warm welcomes, helping guests or newcomers feel comfortable. While I strive for that, I’m shy around new people and don’t always exhibit the warm-friendlies. But the intern changed my mind. He said, “Because of my schedule conflicts, you changed our team meeting times to accommodate me. That was hospitality.” To me, logistical work was necessary tedium. Changing the meeting time was something that had to be done. It was a shifting of time blocks on a chart. But it was also a way to welcome this new intern, to affirm his value to our team.
There is hospitality in the moment and there is hospitality in the preparation. There is hospitality that honors the dignity of each person, both guest and host, stranger and kin, friend or enemy. There is also hospitality that reinforces and asserts hierarchy, oppression, injustice. There is hospitality that can be done within the heart and the mind. There is the “hospitality industry.”
Currently, I am reading Christine D. Pohl’s 1999 book, Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition. Here are two quotes I’d like to share: “Hospitality … is a concrete expression of love … love that attends to physical and social needs” (31). Earlier, she says “Hospitality as a framework provides a bridge which connects our theology with daily life and concerns” (8). Hospitality isn’t just an intellectual exercise, but a practice that challenges us to expand the boundaries of our love for particular human people. This will be the challenge to me this year: not just to reflect on and learn about hospitality, but to practice it—and therefore understand it in a far more profound way.
City
Every city has its own magic. When I was growing up, Seattle, Olympia, Tacoma, and Portland were very magical places to visit. The infrastructure was massive compared to the small town where I grew up—skyscrapers, bridges, freeway junctions. And of course the one-of-a-kind attractions to experience. I like being in new places, exploring unknown landscapes. Once I become familiar with a place, however, the magic fades. Seattle traffic has certainly dimmed my view of the city. After living in Seattle for over ten years now, it has lost some of its magic. There are still places where the magic suddenly stuns, however, and whenever I explore a new neighborhood or park, I feel a renewed sense of wonder.
Cities are easy to understand from a distance: they are monoliths in the imagination, stereotypes, givens. But up close, cities are monstrous: large, unwieldy, resistant to categorization. Cities are never static, but always changing. There is always something under construction or revision or repair. Businesses come and go, neighborhoods change for better or worse (depending on who you ask). Can we really define a city, when every day it is a different city?
My commute to work involves driving over a tall bridge and seeing a view of the Seattle skyline. When I pay attention, I notice the skyline looks different each morning. This is not just because in Seattle, there are a million cranes building new skyscrapers. The weather does interesting things to the skyline as well. The fog sometimes turns the landscape to watercolor. Sometimes the sun shines down in such an array that it looks like there is a beam for every tower. Sometimes I can’t see the skyline at all because of the thick rain.
Cities are ideas, cities are cultures. Cities are negotiations between many different cultures and ideas. Cities are people. Cities are infrastructure. Cities are land and landscape. My goal this year is to ruminate on the concept of a city, and Seattle in particular, so I can settle into the stories I write that involve Seattle as a setting or as an idea.
One book I plan to reread this year is Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. The gist of the story is that Marco Polo describes for Kublai Khan several cities he has encountered in his travels. The book is a mystical, theological, poetic, beautiful, perplexing rumination on cities, on memory, on life and death, on love. Here is a passage I marked during my first read-through a couple years ago: “You take delight not in a city’s seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours. Or the question it asks you, forcing you to answer, like Thebes through the mouth of the Sphinx” (44).
Insects
This is the first time one of my words-of-the-year has been an animal. I chose it for a number of reasons:
I want to learn more about insects in general and in particular. I want to be able to appreciate the insects around me, even the annoying ones. I want to learn about unique and interesting insects.
I’m writing a series of monster tales, and what better monster material than some of the creepiest animals “that creep upon the ground”?
Last year, I watched a video of someone talking about their “biblical conspiracy theory,” which was really just a light-hearted close reading of various biblical texts to produce an interesting idea. The video creator asked people to put their own “biblical conspiracy theories” in the comments. I read through them, because I’m always interested in fun readings of scripture, and came across one that was particularly compelling: what if angels are actually insectoid in form? We get weird descriptions of angels (six wings, multiple eyes) humans that encounter them are usually terrified. Also, there are quite a few passages in scripture where angels and insects work in concert (e.g., the plagues in Egypt; Israel’s entry into Canaan; the locust army in Joel). I’m not suggesting that all insects are angels or that angels are always in the form of insects. But I think it would be an interesting study to see the biblical connections between God’s “winged messengers” and insects.
Deuteronomy 1:44 (KJV): “The Amorites, which dwelt in the mountain, came out against you, and chased you, as bees do, and destroyed you in Seir, even unto Hormah.” The Hebrew word for “bees” in this verse, דברה deborah, is related to the Hebrew root דבר dbr, which in its verb form means “to speak” and in its noun form can mean “word, matter, thing.” The phrase “The word of the Lord” often uses dbr to denote “word.” In English, we say the Ten “Commandments,” but in Hebrew it is actually the Ten “Words” (debarim).
In Deuteronomy 1, Moses narrates the Israelite’s travel through the wilderness to the promised land. When, 40 years prior, the people had refused to enter the land of Canaan, for fear of the giants that lived there (cf. Numbers 13:33, “to ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them”), God declared that they would wander 40 years in the wilderness. The people did not like this consequence, so changed their minds and went armed to fight against the Amorites. But it was too late; God’s command had changed. Now God commanded them not to go up into Canaan. The people did anyway. The Amorites defeated them, chasing them “as bees do.” The play on words here suggests that the Israelites were not just chased by bees (דברה) but by the word/commandment (דבר) of the Lord.
Okay, that’s enough about insects!
My words this year are hospitality, city, and insects. Some of my posts may reflect these topics as the year progresses.
There will overlap between these words, too. Cities can be places of hospitality and inhospitality. Cities may seem to conquer and control the natural environment, yet insects can still thrive in urban settings. And perhaps I can learn to be more hospitable to insects, a vital community in God’s creation.
So, here’s to bugs, cities, and hospitality this year!
I encourage you to consider what word or words you might choose for yourself in 2024. What do you want to reflect on? What have you wanted to learn more about? What words would help you focus your time and effort this year? What words could bless you in unexpected ways? And how might these words nurture new understanding as they intersect? Feel free to let me know what you choose!