While running errands and trying to decide whether to even make time to contemplate a “word of the year” for 2025, a word found me. “Sacred.” This word is an invitation to presence, or mindfulness, or prayer without ceasing—whatever you call that awareness of life in oneself and in every bit of everything. Inside this wealth of aliveness is soul-rest, humility, compassion, and curiosity.

In her book The Artist’s Rule, Christine Valters Paintner repeatedly explores sacredness, suggesting that we consider our “life story as a sacred text,” and life as an invitation to “discover the sacred in all things, all persons, all experiences.” It is much easier for me to let stained glass be sacred and catching up on emails be secular. Let Jesus love me, but let me appropriately dislike my neighbor.

“Sacred” requires that I hold space for what is difficult or repulsive. It demands that I return to myself over and over, to the wholeness of belonging. Worst of all, it is an invitation to relinquish judgment—of myself first, and of everyone and everything else.

But if all ground is holy ground, what then? Paintner writes, “growth happens in any context and … any situation in which we find ourselves can offer the fullness of grace.” Any situation. God everywhere. Kitchen sink, coffee shop, marital discord, frosty grass, leftovers for lunch, heart disease. I think sacred awe is quiet. Or maybe innocent like a child, un-brittle, open.

Although “sacred” is gentle, it is not soft. It knows God’s upside-down kingdom, and is relentless about including “outsiders” until none are left. This radical inclusion happens at every level—inside me, where I try to sort out the acceptable and unacceptable parts; in my family, where it’s easy to reward whoever has the best behavior; in my community, where I gravitate toward people who agree with how I do life; in my country, where the shared umbrella of freedom is torn to shreds by those of us who can’t bear to take refuge beside our enemies; in the world, where shared humanity is forgotten in the quest for survival, or seniority, or security.

“Sacred” also includes a call for me to know who I am and what I’m about. Paintner quotes Richard Rohr, speaking about a sacred “yes” and “no,” by which he means “that affirmation or negation that comes from a deep place of wisdom and courage, even if it creates conflict or disagreement.” I do not like this. But the longer I live, the more apparent it becomes that living in harmony with what is life-giving will result in dis-harmony with the tall and manicured stack of what-life-was-supposed-to-be. Curiosity holds all things lightly.

Rohr continues, “The sacred yes is not willful or egocentric, but rather is willing and surrendered. The sacred no is not rebellion or refusal, but always the necessary protecting of boundaries.” A willful yes and a rebellious no—these are familiar. “Surrender” is bitter herbs. I predict this beauty of sacred walls and doors will take a lifetime to assimilate.

Trump’s inauguration was emotional. I didn’t watch it. I don’t know anything about it. By emotional, I mean it brought out powerful emotions in millions of Americans. Inauguration day didn’t feel like just another day. It felt momentous. There is space for this, too, in the sacredness of 2025. Politics cannot escape the inclusive expanse of God’s sacred breath.

Personally, I worry more about loving my mother than I do about executive orders. Yes, that is my privilege speaking, and also my choice. It would be simple to apply “sacred” in broad strokes and avoid attending to whether I treat my children’s experiences with reverence, and my spouse’s foibles with kindness. Must I see the sacred in cat hair and dust, codependence, kids sick at home? Yes, yes, let it be so. I will be a woman of extreme sacredness, surrendered (not always willingly) to the eye surgery that tunes my eyes to see an extremely sacred world.

Here’s to reverent attention in 2025.

Postscript: These songs by JJ Heller have a way of returning me to sacred vision. Big Love, Small Moments and The Best Thing