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. It's good to be with you another week. Thanks so much for listening to the podcast. Always appreciate all of you who are listening and sharing the podcast.

So feel free to share it if it has meaning for you. I have just returned personally from a trip to Ireland. It was my daughter's wedding in Tipperary in a place called Clock Jordan at the Clock Jordan House. It was a lovely place. And the time in Ireland gave me an opportunity to ponder perspectives, to think about how changing a setting from the everyday, the familiar, the patterns of a lifetime that are lived here in a particular place offer me the opportunity to see life in a different way and to reevaluate the life that I'm living.

Not so much to think, oh my gosh, my life is empty or pointless, but to say what is it that I appreciate most about the patterns of my life? What are some things that I can discover through living a different pattern of life such as being on a trip, being on a trip to a different place. Heck, even driving was a metaphor for a different perspective because I was driving on the left hand side of the road. It was truly an opportunity to see life in different ways. One of the things I noted about Ireland is the long history.

Where I visit I live very close here in The United States to our nation's capital, and I can visit buildings that have several 100 years' worth of history behind them. But at least in one place, we stayed in well, several places. Clock Jordan House where the wedding was, we stayed in a farmhouse that's been in continuous use for the last eight hundred years since around 1200. That was kind of impressive. Now, of course, it's been upgraded and things have been changed in those eight hundred years, but I was staying in a house that was 800 that had an eight hundred year history.

Later, we stayed in a refurbished castle that had an eight hundred year history. And we walked across the street to an abbey that was the oldest abbey in Ireland. It was no longer in use. It was destroyed under the rule of King Henry VIII. Cromwell destroyed this Franciscan monastery from the that was built in the '12 and 1300s.

But to walk through the ruins of that building and to see it was powerful. It was a powerful experience of history. To celebrate my daughter's wedding was to look at what marriage is, about how each one of us brings a perspective into life. And then when we marry, when we enter into relationships, particularly ones that are committed like marriage, then we're invited to see the world with different eyes. We're invited to make compromises, changes, opportunities to accommodate and invite in the other who is different than ours.

I listened to the vows that both Hannah and John wrote for each other. And they spoke about how being engaged in the relationship they were in offered them the opportunity to really see life from a new perspective, to really stretch themselves and to grow and to learn to love someone who's different than they are and to share that experience. I wonder for all of us who live in this world what it looks like to break with the familiar, at least on occasion, to kind of see what we appreciate most about our lives. The funny thing is, it wasn't that long ago that I did some talking on the podcast about transitions, about how I was making a transition from a place where I had served for thirty three years and was coming to a new place. And now, I'm in that new place and have been in that new place for just over four months and have developed new patterns, new patterns that have begun to shape my life.

So, it was an opportunity to reengage my life with differing patterns. And yet, after four months, there are patterns that I'm used to. Getting up in the morning, preparing coffee, having breakfast, and for us, it's a fairly usual kind of breakfast. In all the different places we stayed, there were different kinds of breakfast. And coffee in Ireland is different than coffee in The US.

We could get Americano. We could get cappuccino. We could get latte. But the idea of a drip or pour over coffee like I experience here is not the same. It's different.

It gave me an appreciation about how we all approach this life and follow the patterns that seem most appropriate to us, that time shapes those patterns, but how also seeing things through the eyes of different cultures, through the diversity of this beautiful world in which we live invites kind of a different way of seeing. We were traveling on very small country roads on occasion wondering if we'd come around the corner on roads that were just wide enough for the car, just a little bit wider than the car. And how would we fit another car if we encountered one coming from the other direction? How would we appreciate this long history that we were now engaged with and a part of? And the welcome and friendliness of the folks that we encountered when we were in Dublin, when we were in Cock Jordan, when we were in Galway, heck, when we were in a tiny town called Lusk.

In all of those places, we met friendly and encouraging people who were very welcoming to us despite the fact that we were from a different place. It's good to see the world through different people's eyes because sometimes the habitual way we want to see the world and the silos through, you know, in which we maintain our lives allows such a limited vision of all that is around us. A couple of weeks back, we talked about how everything ordinary can be sacred. But in order to do that, we sort of need to see it from a different perspective. And going to a different country for me was a different perspective.

The food was different, not better, not worse, just different, and different flavors. The customs were different. It was fascinating. We took a tour of a brewery. The brewery lives in Dublin.

And when began to when the Guinness family began this process, the father the great grandfather of Guinness began by signing a four thousand year lease. Imagine having the perspective to believe that what you're about to begin producing was going to be around for that period of time, long after you. That kind of broadening perspective, the way of seeing the world in newer and unique ways, an invitation to revisit the ways that we have traditionally seen the world and perhaps to see it with new eyes, new appreciation. On one of the days in Ireland, we went and saw the Cliffs Of Moor. And to see the Cliffs Of Moher was to see a piece of history that has been shaped by the forces of nature.

Much in the same way as when Linda and I went and saw the Grand Canyon here in The United States, The forces of nature had shaped the beauty of that canyon, carved it away bit by bit, time after time over thousands of years. And the same thing is for the Cliffs Of Moher. Even with the long history of the peoples of Ireland compared with the short history in The United States since its founding as The United States through the colonization. I'm not talking about the indigenous people who have been here for much longer than that. It gives a sense of perspective.

It invites a revisitation of what is and what really matters in life. I don't know that much is going to change with my return here to The US, to Falls Church, Virginia. But I do know that I have come to appreciate by stepping away some of the patterns of my life, some of the way it flows, but also that mine is not the only way that the world flows, that the folks in Ireland flow in a different kind of way. And I suspect by extension, every place I would go, the world flows in a slightly different way. And that each of us is enriched by the fact that there are so many ways of seeing the intersections of life in everyday kinds of ways.

So my friends, thanks for joining me today. Remember, you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are. And I encourage you in the days ahead, take a moment to step back, to look at the world. Maybe you can't take a vacation, but maybe you can take an hour here or there just to take a walk and see the world from a different perspective. Read about life in another place, or engage with a person from a different place and kind of learn a little bit from each other about the differences that shape us because we live in this great, big, beautiful, infinite universe in which we all play a part.

And while there is one huge connectivity to all things, each one of us is a piece of that connectivity and brings something unique to it. So, whatever unique thing you bring, whatever unique thing your neighbor brings, it's an opportunity for you to be present, to engage in a different way of seeing, and to appreciate what a gift your life is as it is, but a gift it is to have all the other perspectives as well. Thanks so much for joining me. I hope you'll have a great week.