Joy in 2020: The Dawn of Advent
For the last five years, I’ve adopted a fruitful spiritual practice of choosing a word of the year—or, rather, letting a word choose me. For an entire year, I meditate on that word. I study its etymology. I form its letters with my body. I let each letter lead me daily to new words. I seek out poems and other writing that feature the word and gaze at images related to the word with an open heart. I rang in 2020 feeling less than well. I’d had pneumonia in the waning days of 2019, and although I was feeling better by New Year’s, I was still not totally myself. I struggled more than usual with finding a word of the year, but ultimately, the word “joy” kept returning in the quiet moments when I let my heart sit with the question. Finally, I embraced it, somewhat unwillingly. Early in 2020, I had booked a much-needed trip “home” with my eldest daughter for my spring break. I put the word “home” in quotes because I’ve now lived in Minnesota for longer than I lived in my hometown, a...