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, and it's good to be with you today. First of all, I want to just take an opportunity to thank you for sharing the Infinitely Precious podcast or finding the Infinitely Precious podcast. We had a huge spike in downloads and listens last week. And I don't know if it was the topic or what it was.

But for those of you who are listening, I just want to say thank you. Thank you very much. And certainly, if you find these to be helpful to you, I encourage you to share them. They are available obviously on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or simply on the infinitelyprecious.org website for you to listen to. It is good to be with you today.

As I join you today, this podcast is being recorded before I'm about to take some time off and not on the podcast. It'll appear as normal. But because I'm going to be gone, I'm prerecording the podcast about five days in advance. And we're on the eve of All Saints Day. And there's a kind of a soft spot in me for this day when we remember those who have gone before us.

Now, admittedly this is from the Christian tradition, All Saints Day, but they're under that title anyway. But there are lots of other traditions. We'll say just a word about them. But I do think it's helpful in our lives to remember all those who have laid the foundation for who we are. This has been a particularly poignant year for me, one of the major saints in my own life, my father, died and passed on from this existence.

And yet, he is still so much a part of me, I can almost hear his voice. And so as we come upon this particular day when we remember those who have gone before, I just thought I might say something about how important it is for us to sort of recognize how we've become who we are. The saints that we knew and the ones that were a big part, perhaps even ones we never knew whose stories challenged or encouraged us, but also the saints who in their own quiet way walked through our lives and offered us a way to see ourselves that was bigger than us, that helped us remember we're part of something more. So I thought I would take this moment in the turning of these seasons for us to talk a little bit about this yearning, this longing to remember, to give thanks and to recognize those who have gone before but who did not end, their impact did not end with death. Their love goes on beyond that and it impacts us.

So, taking a moment to kind of remember what All Saints was most originally for the Christian faith, it was a day to remember the martyrs, those who had laid it all on the line for their faith, those who had died for their faith, given it all, all that they had. Their faith cost them everything. Their example was such that people would be deeply inspired that that's how important their faith was. It wasn't just something that they showed up for occasionally. They were willing to lay it all on the line for.

It's kind of interestingly enough, I've always kind of thought of All Saints Day, maybe not always, but in recent years I've come to think of it as kind of the heartbeat of the church. It's those who've gone before us, but we're in this long caravan, if you will, of folks. And there will be people who come after us who are even coming up after us right now. And those folks are looking to us, you and me, to as examples of our lives. Now, that's no matter what faith background you come from.

Each one of us can kind of lay the foundations for people to grow into loving, hopeful, welcoming, inclusive people. Help them become the human beings that meet the full potential of who they are. It's so easy sometimes for us to forget that there's more to us than what seems to be the case in the larger world sometimes. So, other traditions do this as well. In Judaism, a candle is lit each year on Yarzsite, which is the anniversary of a loved one's passing.

It's an opportunity for them to remember that person and says kind of, you are not forgotten. You are not forgotten. In Islam, prayers are spoken for the departed, Dua, a reminder that mercy continues on from and through us. In Hinduism, there's a remembrance of the ancestors affirming the living and departed and how they are bound together in kind of a gratitude and a thankfulness of a continuity. Buddhism, Oban, is celebrated with lanterns to guide those on beyond to the beyond.

And in more indigenous cultures. Many of you may be familiar with Dios de los Muertes, which is traditionally a Mexican celebration, but it brings together both the Catholic roots and indigenous roots in celebrating ancestors in a way that and they do it with lots of color and celebration. You know, to remind us of those whose love meant that we carry on that love. In their own way, each one of these traditions sort of says the bond of love does not end. The story of those we love continues in us.

So I encourage you to just take a moment to think of some of the people who have been the saints in your life. If you're anything like me, they're not just people carved in stone in some alcove of a building somewhere or a statue somewhere. They are people who are ensconced in your heart. Perhaps for you, they're your grandparents or, as in my case, my father who's gone on before. So much of his way of being a saint to me wasn't in the sermons he preached, but in the life he lived and the way he loved me and those around him.

I also think of people, other people in my life who have challenged me, who have pushed me to be more than I was, encouraged me, held me accountable. Those folks have been saints to me. Those are my saints. And I'm sure you have your I'm sure you have yours. They've been coming to you maybe as I've described some of the characteristics of my own saints.

I wonder who they are for you. Whose face rises in your mind when you hear the word saint? Who has left fingerprints of kindness on your very soul? Maybe take a moment wherever you are, this moment, to whisper a name and say thank you. Because remembrance in the end isn't about the past, it's about belonging.

It's about knowing that the web of love that has carried us still carries us and will carry into the future. And in times like the days we live these days, it is helpful to know that we can lay a foundation for a future that doesn't look like hate, that doesn't look like separation, that doesn't look like the inability to talk to one another. It can look like some of these saints from our lives, people who have spoken love and kindness and truth into our lives that have changed us. So as we in the Christian tradition which gave birth to me and gave birth to my faith in kind of expansive ways as I've grown up, as we come upon this day, All Saints Day, as you come from whatever tradition you do, and maybe you don't come from any tradition at all, I encourage you to lift those names, to let them speak into your life with hope. May their love and the remembrance of them steady you.

May their courage inspire you. May their memory call forth in you your own sacred strength to be who you are. And may you remember as well that you too are part of the unfolding sacred story of all that is. We are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses and we are part of that cloud of witnesses. So honor the part you play, that you can make in the world today, the difference of being you.

And in that vein, I want to remind you, beloved, you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are. Don't forget that. Until the next time, may peace be upon you. May the memories though they might be poignant and bring a tear to your eyes, are a little choke in the throat as it did for me, as I was talking about to Annie. May that love that surrounds you, support you and carry you and keep you until the next time.

Thanks for joining me, and I wish you all the best. If this has been helpful to you, I encourage you to do what you've done before. Share this. And as always, I always welcome your responses if you wish to share your thoughts with me. InfinitelyPreciousLLCgmail dot com.

Until our next time.