Sabrina Reyes-Peters

#AdventWord 2021: Promise

The most common refrain for me in 2021 has been, "wow, my brain is so tired."

I lost the previous draft I had been working on, because I decided to close the browser to fix another problem, and forgot to save. I had to use google to remember the phrase "imposter syndrome" a few minutes ago. If we want to speak in left/right brain language, though, the left side of my brain is very strong. I am imagining one very strong bicep and another puny bicep. While my categorical, rational proclivities are very strong, especially since I use them at work, I am feeling the lack of creative, right brain activity. That lack has been compounding strong feelings of sadness, grief, stagnation, and imposter syndrome, not to mention physical symptoms like fatigue.

I don't usually rely on external prompts for my own blogging. I have used them perhaps twice in my entire blogging history (which is like 20 years, if you count MySpace!) But for this liturgical New Year, Advent 2021, I am trying something different: #AdventWord. Advent Word is a list of words for each day in the Advent season, providing prompts for written or visual meditations. I am hoping that using prompts will wake up my hibernating right brain. You can find the list of words for 2021 and other information here: https://adventword.org/en/home/.

My tendency with using liturgical themes is to make them into a biblical or theological lesson. I am going to try and resist that impulse here, without putting that impulse off limits completely. I also don't know if I will be able to post every single day, but I will try.

PROMISE.

Have you ever felt God?
heard God, seen God?
Deliverance seems far off
Promises made long ago
seem distant;
I reach with my fingers,
stretching my arm,
standing on my toes,
but I cannot see,
hear,
smell,
or feel
any promises yet.