 By CML Practitioners
Each year, as the wheel turns, the practitioners at CML take a moment to reflect on the coming year and a choose a word that might be a source of intention or focus for the months ahead. Here are our choices for 2025. “Please” – Hillary Admittedly, I struggled to come up with a “Guiding Word” for the year ahead. I have been feeling a bit untethered since the election, without a guidepost to direct me towards my future dreams/intentions. I decided to turn to the primary being connecting me to the present moment—my two year old. “Max,” I asked, as he dove into a bowl of macaroni and cheese, “What is your favorite word?” “PLEASE!” he shouted, a mouth full of yellow. Sure, he was most likely confusing his “favorite word” with “the magic word,” but I decided to go with it. Thanks for acting as a guide, Max. Please take care of your body so that you can be as strong as possible this year, and in the four years ahead; Please take care of your mind—keep reading for growth and for pleasure; Please take care of your soul—sing from your gut, play your grandfather’s piano, pick up your paintbrush again, dust off your guitar, write a poem for a friend that you haven’t spoken to in a while; Please connect with your community—remind yourself of all the good people in your orbit, help advocate for human rights. Do not disengage. Do not lose hope or heart. PLEASE. “Immensity” – Laura Inspired by the poem “Big” by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, which found me on my birthday. This is, perhaps, the year to learn to be big. Spruce tree big. Cliffside big. Big as mesa, as mountain lake. Big as in cosmos, as in love. Being small has never served me—constricting, contorting, trying to fit into a room, into shoes, into a name. Let this be the year to escape all those little rules with those little shoulds, all those little cages with their little locks. Time to make of myself a key, time to lean into immensity. Time to supersize communion, time to grow beyond self. Time to open, to unwall, to do as the universe does, accelerating as it expands, not rushing toward something else, but changing the scale of space itself. This is the year to be big “Nimble” – Louisa Nothing has become clearer to me recently than how much the rules of the world seem to be in flux as we navigate yet another transitional stage in the human story. In this liminal time, as the old ways die but before new ones are born, it feels important to me to stay flexible and question any attachment, especially to expectation or outcome. I am using the coming year to “lighten the load” by releasing old beliefs that no longer serve, discarding projects that no longer feel vibrant, and ridding my home of unnecessary clutter. I want to feel as limber and pliable as possible so I can be responsive at a time when it feels that disruption, chaos, and the unexpected reign. “Community” – Marilyn Listen, learn, and implement trusted lived experiences. Be resourceful in finding trusted sources of information in this age of misinformation. It may take some digging, experimenting, and courage in connecting with new pathways. Recognizing community knowledge through intentional, authentic partnership and meaningful shifting of power to community can be a form of healing, including personal healing as well as healing of our families, institutions, and the greater national and global societies we are a part of. Never forget that we are stronger together than we are when we are divided. “Connection” – Pamela Connection is one of my most primary organizing principles. I live a life designed to facilitate and celebrate connection - and when faced with bad news or stressful times, my first instinct is to gather all my loved ones close to me to weather out the storm, hunkered down together against whatever comes. This year, I am going to challenge myself. I would like to experience connection expansively - meet more people, find more alliances, learn more systems. Stretch my arms to hold more than just my own and become a part of something larger.
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