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 have you joining me for another episode of the Infinitely Precious podcast. I'm so glad to be your companion and that you're mine. This week is the second in a series about my ripening practices. And this week, when this podcast actually drops, I will actually be in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, where I will be working with the Appalachia Service Project to make homes warmer, safer, and drier.

I don't yet know what my assignment will be. I know who the members of my team are who are traveling together, adults and youth members of Dual In The United Methodist Church and will be heading there. So as I'm reflecting, thinking, preparing, the next of my ripening practices is ripening intention. In the midst of the changes of our lives, it is so very, very easy and it will be for me. We'll be sleeping in I won't be sleeping in my own bed obviously.

We'll be in various rooms at a community center in Greenbrier County. I'll be on an air mattress in a sleeping bag in a room that may or may not have air conditioning. I will be working every day as a part of a team to repair homes, to make them warmer, safer and drier, to take direction, to be in relationship and connection with the people that are there, not only the team that comes with us, but the family with whom we'll be working, as well as all of the other groups that will likely be at the Greenbrier West Virginia Center. And to make that sense of connection, I need to be intention, intentional. So ripening intention, it's beginning to intend to note and to experience our connection Christologically, our connection to one another as part of all that is.

And so it's my intent as I go there in the midst of a newness, it's a new year with Appalachia Service Project for me. This will be my eleventh summer going. The first 10 were primarily with another church. Initially, a couple of us from St. James went with Arlington Temple United Methodist Church because they had a large group that went every year.

And then we began to develop our own identity as a group. And then we took the St. James crew to Appalachia Service Project as just as St. James. A couple of years in there, there was a break for the pandemic and some other things.

So this is my first time going as a member of a different congregation. So I need to be intentional about my, being present with the folks that are on my particular team. There are six of us on my team, with, those who are going all together from Dulan United Methodist Church. So there's about 16 of us that are going from Dulan. And with the ASP summer staff, none of whom I've ever met before, but I'm sure I'm going to appreciate their spirit, their leadership, their encouragement, excitement, the thing they bring.

But in order to do that, I need to be very intentional in the way that I show up. I need to not think about how ASP was two summers ago. Not to think about how ASP was for me in the summers, for instance, when I was on staff as a chaplain, when my relationship was different. I need to show up intentionally as myself in this space and intentionally be with the people that I'm with. The family I've never met before that will be working on their house.

The staff who I've seen pictures of and read bios of but I have never met before. People I'll know, people I won't, that we'll have gathered in this town for a purpose. And I need to be intentional to stick to that purpose. Not to live in the past or the future, but intentionally show up in the moments that are before me with a plan to do my best being there. Very much an intentional experience from my part.

Finding that my personality of course can be strong. I may have sort of a contemplative presence with these podcasts that I do because I've sat with the topic and dealt with it personally before I begin to talk about it. But I can in moments of nervousness, in new situations and new settings, I know about myself, that I can show up in a sort of boisterous way. As you know, as I whatever insecurities, whatever triggering mechanisms I have from my childhood when I was not so good at interacting with other people. I felt awkward and outside.

Sometimes I would be over exuberant in showing up. It'd be very easy for me to do that in a new setting, just triggering some of the old responses of the childhood sized James who isn't, who I carry inside but who needn't be the one who handles these. And in order to show up as myself, as I am now, in the best way I can, I need to let my intention be ripening? The experience of presence. Because without that kind of intention, I forget who I am.

I forget whose I am. And when I start to do that, I feel like I have something to prove. Some part of me has something to prove. And I don't have to prove anything at all. Just showing up and being me is all that any given moment asks.

It's the same for you. Whatever you're doing in the week that this podcast drops, wherever you are, all you need is yourself to show up. You may not feel that way, but the truth is before there was any sense of separation or differentiation, you belonged. Before anything else, all of us belonged. We belonged to everything.

Before we began to define ourselves over and against one another. And if we enter into every situation intentionally, setting aside perhaps some of the messages we have received about life itself, some of the triggering ways that we respond that aren't so healthy anymore. With intention, with ripening intention, we can grow into showing up as ourselves, being ourselves, being present where we are. And that I think is worth it, is worth the time. So the next time we'll be talking about another ripening presence, but this time you'll be hearing this while I'm away in Greenbrier County, West Virginia.

I invite you to just show up with intention wherever you find yourself. And I'm going to do my best to do the same. So until the next time, please remember you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are. And I will be back next time.