Place of the Year: A Parish Practice
By Juli Kalbaugh, Director of Operations
The New Year gets a bit of a bad rap these days.
And I totally get it. Resolutions can feel exhausting or unrealistic. “New year, new you” is definitely not what we are going for. And I think it’s honest to say, “Let’s not pretend a calendar change fixes anything.”
But recently, when Tim asked me how I feel about New Year’s, I felt a surge of energy as I blurted out and clapped my hands, “I love all things New Year!”
It’s true. Well, mostly. My pajama loving, early-to-bed-self could do without the midnight hoopla. But I DO love:
-any excuse for a fresh start.
-the sense of a closed chapter.
-the natural pause for looking back and looking ahead.
And, I’m completely obsessed with Top 5 lists. (High Fidelity, anyone? If you know, you know.)
Give me the reflections and the intentions. The words of the year. The goals and the hopes. I’ll take them ALL.
But, no matter if you are a New Year’s naysayer or a fresh-start fan like me (and no matter what day of the year you’re reading this) I want to invite you to join me and Parish Collective in a new practice.
From Word to Place
Many of us engage in, or have heard of, the practice of choosing a Word of the Year. Rather than a resolution or a goal, it’s a way of naming our hopes with a little more lightness and a little less pressure. A word can help orient us, bring us back to what matters, and offer a gentle focus when we feel scattered.
But this year, I wondered what it might look like to choose something a little more concrete.
What if I chose a Place of the Year?
Not a symbolic place that represents what I hope for.
Not an aspirational destination of somewhere I hope to be or go someday.
Just a real, ordinary, local place. A place woven into my everyday life. A place I already visit or pass through.
I’m thinking of something like:
A block I walk
A building I pass
A street I drive
A neighborhood I live in
A local business I frequent
What if I let that be a place I intentionally return to again and again over the course of a year?
Why a place?
Because I think it might actually be life-changing. Not in a goal-oriented, accomplishment type of way, but more in the boringly ordinary way that you don’t notice at first, until one day you do, and you realize something is different.
Most of us already care deeply. We want to be faithful, generous, and present in the lives we’ve been given. The problem isn’t a lack of desire; it’s that our days are full, our attention is fragmented. (I’ve literally been writing this in my living room and have not been able to write longer than two minutes at a time without interruption. If you know, you know.) And we’re constantly being nudged toward whatever comes next. Even the things we care about most can start to feel abstract when we never quite slow down long enough to stay with them.
More and more, I’m convinced that affection doesn’t grow through urgency. It grows through presence, familiarity, and time. We can only love what we’re willing to know, and we’re changed in return when we spend enough time with people and places to let them affect us.
Choosing a place of the year is a way of saying that I’m willing to stay long enough to notice what I might otherwise overlook. It’s a quiet commitment to let a particular place teach me as I learn to pay attention to its rhythms, to learn its seasons, to begin noticing its stories. When we’re always moving on, we rarely learn these things. We skim the surface of places that could have formed us more deeply if we’d only stayed.
This kind of knowing takes time. It takes returning when nothing especially interesting seems to be happening, learning names slowly, and beginning to recognize patterns like who shows up, who doesn’t, what feels full of life, and what feels tender or fragile. Attention is what slowly turns proximity into relationship. It’s what allows affection to grow. It’s what grounds faith in something real and lived, rather than abstract or idealized.
There’s also a kind of relief that comes with this practice. Something freeing about not needing to decide what a place will become, or what you’re supposed to do there. Choosing a place of the year lets me loosen my grip a bit and slow my tendency to turn every good intention into a plan or an outcome. I can instead begin asking quieter questions: What’s already happening here? What might I notice if I slowed down enough to see it?
At the same time, it feels like it carries a bit of risk. I don’t get to curate the experience or control what I’ll encounter. Some days might feel boring, some might be uncomfortable. I might notice things I wish I hadn’t, but I also might find my affection growing in places I didn’t expect. And that’s often where formation happens for me, not in the moments I plan for or manufacture, but in the regular moments that ask me to keep showing up.
A Different Way to Begin
As this year unfolds, there will be no shortage of invitations to set goals, optimize our lives, and check things off a list. And let’s keep it real, I’m going to do plenty of that, and I’m not-so-secretly going to love it! I am, after all, a fresh-start fanatic.
But choosing a place of the year shifts the invitation. It’s not centered on me. Instead, it gently turns my attention outward, like someone pulling up a chair, patting the seat beside them, and saying, Come and sit. Take a look. Stay awhile.
So here’s a question to carry with you into this year:
What place might be asking for your attention right now?
And what might begin, not because you tried harder or planned better, but simply because you showed up, returned again and again, and paid attention long enough for familiarity, affection, and faithfulness to take root?
A Place-ful Prayer
God of presence and place,
You meet us not only in big moments,
but in boringly ordinary places
like streets and shops, blocks and buildings, homes and neighborhoods.
As we choose where to pay attention this year,
help us notice where You are already at work.
Slow us down enough to see.
Make us curious enough to listen.
Root us deeply enough to stay.
Give us wisdom to choose places where our presence can be faithful,
and courage to step away when staying would cause harm.
Teach us to move with humility,
to honor stories that are not ours,
and to receive more than we try to fix.
May our attention become affection.
May our familiarity grow into care.
And may our small, repeated acts of presence become a quiet offering of love.
Amen.
A Simple Way to Try Choosing a Place of the Year
This doesn’t need to be complicated. Start small. Let it fit into the life you already have.
Choose one place that’s already part of your everyday rhythm: a block you walk, a coffee shop or playground you visit, a park you pass through, a store you frequent. You don’t need to add something new. That’s the whole point, begin with what’s already there.
Return to it regularly. There’s no required frequency. What matters is coming back often enough to notice what changes, what stays the same, and what begins to feel familiar.
Pay attention to ordinary things. Learn someone’s name. Write it down if you need to. Use it the next time you see them. Notice patterns: who shows up, when does it feel busy or quiet, what feels full of life, what feels tender or overlooked. You might keep a simple note in your phone or a small journal of what you’re noticing, nothing fancy.
Ask gentle questions when it feels appropriate. Introduce yourself. Invite someone to tell you a story about the place. Ask: how long they’ve been there, what they love about it, what’s changed. Listen more than you speak.
And a word about discernment: safety matters. This practice is not about forcing yourself into spaces where you feel unsafe or deeply out of place, or ignoring the realities of power, race, and history. Pay attention to how you feel in a space and how your presence is received. Sometimes faithfulness looks like staying. Other times it looks like choosing a different place.
Above all, let this be about attention, not achievement. You don’t need outcomes for this to matter. Simply returning, noticing, and staying curious is enough.
