Welcome to the Infinitely Precious podcast produced by Infinitely Precious LLC. Your host is James Henry. Remember, you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are.

Hello, beloved. It's me, James, coming to you to share some thoughts with you again. I hope you are finding, your feet, finding some grounding space, some centering space for yourself in the midst of what may seem to you like a lot of chaos. It seems that way to me anyway. And when it does, I can begin to feel a bit overwhelmed.

I don't know about you, but for me, that is the case. A lot has been going on in a very short period of time. A lot of it, that I see happening in the world seems to have, it has a mean spirited feel to it. It has an arrogant an arrogance in the way that it feels. And as such, it it makes it hard to process for me.

It makes it difficult to process. I have to practice letting go a lot. A lot of grounding work on my own. And I realized as I talk to people and as I read various people talking about their own struggles, I I realized that this is not, so to speak, a sprint. It is more of a marathon.

And when you prepare for a marathon, I'm not speaking from personal experience. I'm speaking from the experience of friends who've shared it with me. Over time, you build stamina. You start with short runs that eventually get longer, and the closer you get, you do several really long runs in preparation for the day when you're gonna run 26.2 miles. That you build strength over a period of time.

You don't just go out and run a marathon tomorrow. And why that matters is because in this world where the chaos just seems to flow around us right now, it's just constantly, you cannot help but when you read the news or hear about something else new that's coming out, you cannot begin to wonder how, but wonder how you're going to cope with this and what you can do. I've talked in the past about doing what is yours to do. But if you are overwhelmed, as many of us get at various points by all the things that are happening, it can get to a point where it's difficult for us to do even that which is ours to do. It's hard to let go of all the many details coming out all at once.

And that may be the intent, all along is to overwhelm us in such a way to overwhelm the world in such a way that we can't, wisely respond. We can react. Now I see lots of reactions. I see a lot of name calling, people pointing fingers, and the like about, what they see as, problems and, the people behind those problems. I wanna suggest to you that while that may temporarily make you feel better, it's not a long term solution.

I'm not saying I haven't stooped to that. I haven't fallen to that place. But there's a lot of name calling in the world, and I I wanna say that it it doesn't help me in the long run to let myself be drawn into that, to that way of thinking. Instead, in the long run, I need to develop a way to recover from what overwhelms me, from what seems to come at me, and create, in the midst of my overwhelm, things like anxiety and uncertainty. I was talking with my son about that, dinner time tonight.

But as I think about it, as I ponder it, I wonder what we might do to prepare more for a long haul than just a quick run around the block. To realize that each of us, if we're going to do that which is ours to do, we have to find a space where we can reground, reframe, reconnect. Last week, I talked about in my podcast and in my weekly moment about taking a pause, breathing, and then reengaging, re, you know, making certain that, you know, we were grounded before we do that. Well, I wanna suggest to you once again that that is important, that finding your breath. The more I read about, practices that would have been common at the time of Jesus among the folks like him who would have spoken Aramaic, Breathing is something very close.

It's not a mistake, that the earliest word that is spirit is that is used in the Semitic cultures, Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic, that the word that's used in all of those represents not only spirit, but it also represents breath, wind, air. It is that space that connects us all, this atmosphere in which we find ourselves. And so part of getting back to our breath is getting back to a place where we recognize, first of all, our connection with self, slowing our breath down, catching ourself in the space where we are, but also that we are sharing this atmosphere, that we are connected to many others. We're not alone in this struggle, in this chaos. Some people are reveling in it.

I know people who think that this is exactly what needs to happen in the world. And then there are people, a lot of more I seem to know personally, who are not experiencing it that way at all, who are not finding a calm space, who are finding this overwhelming, daunting, and, emotionally exhausting, physically exhausting, mentally exhausting. Well, to catch our breath for the long run, we have to start small. So maybe one thing you can do, put your hand, put your hand on your heart, Breathe in and out. Breathe in and out.

The Aramaic word for spirit, breath, wind, and air is ruha. Maybe it might make you feel closer to Jesus. You use the same word that he would have used, the word ruha. Maybe you just wanna use spirit. Maybe you to remind all of the meanings there, you might want to breathe in and out to the word spirit, breath, wind, air.

I think that Jesus would have used a word like that partially because it was his cultural word, but it's it's also because it brings us back to that most basic of all, sustenances we need. You know, we can't go very long without water. We can go a little bit longer than that without food, but we can't go very long at all without air. We need that breath, that wind, that spirit, that air that connects us to each other and that keeps us functioning. We need to engage that.

And maybe if we begin our day every day with just a few sacred breaths. Every breath is sacred. Every breath is holy. But if you focus on your breath, maybe even before you get out of bed in the morning, unless you get up, you have to get up immediately and rush somewhere, just pay attention to your breath as you wake up. You can be thankful for your breath.

You can notice the breath. You can recognize that in the first century, they would have thought, as very interlinked and connected as air, wind, breath, and spirit all connected. Use the same word for it. And would have then had the freedom when they heard the word ruha in a as a part of a sentence or a teaching to reflect on what it might mean if if it was about air. What would it mean if it was about wind?

What would it mean if it was about breath? What would it mean if it was spirit? How are they interconnected? How do they blow where they will? How do they underpin all of the life we live?

That practice can be one that can help you find life. It can bring you back to the moment. It's a practice that I found meaningful for me. I don't know if it will be meaningful for you, but it's worth trying. In the midst of this chaos, you've gotta prepare for the long run.

And as any runner will tell you, regulating your breath, paying attention to your breath is gonna be important because you're going to need it to keep going. Slow yourself down, maybe start your day, maybe at lunchtime before you even begin to eat your lunch, even if you're in a crowded cafeteria, talking to somebody. You can take just a moment to close your eyes, catch your breath, pay attention to where you are, wherever you are, whenever you are. You're always breathing. You can always pay attention to the breath, if only for a few seconds to bring yourself back to a place of grounding.

That's my thought for today. In the midst of, what may seem like chaos and uncertainty and anxiety and, that leads to a feeling of being overwhelmed, take a moment to prepare yourself for the long run, for the for the for the distance running rather than just the sprint. Because we need to engage. We need to be involved in the world. But we have to have to kinda be sure we're centered and grounded and coming at this not as reaction, but as a response, as an action, as an opportunity to do what's ours to do.

Remember, no matter what, you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are. Until the next time.