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. So good to get a chance to be with you here on the Infinitely Precious podcast. I'm so glad you are my companion and I am yours. We've been doing a series recently, the Ripening Series.

There are about nine ripening practices that I have sort of brought into my life. I use the word ripening because I don't believe that we often are in a static place. That is our state of being not so static. We're moving towards ripeness or away from ripeness. And in Aramaic, the word good, it finds its deepest roots in ripe.

And the word for evil, that we often translate evil anyway, finds its deepest roots in unripeness. Aramaic was the language of Jesus and I've been trying to study it and maybe to understand Jesus a bit more. So having said that, we've already looked at three ripening practices in our time here. Today we take up a fourth ripening practice. Ripening Enoughness.

We've talked about ripening view, ripening intention, and ripening action. All of these are ways that we can move in the direction of being right, of finding those ways that we can belong and participate in this infinite place that we're a part of that the divine has made and in which we participate. So when I think about ripening enoughness, it's probably I could probably say this about each one of them at any given time, but ripening enoughness is one of the things with which I struggle most. Recognizing that I'm enough just as I am. Just as the person that I am.

That I don't have to earn something or reach something in order to be enough. I don't have to accomplish certain tasks to be enough. But there is a part of me, an inner part of me, that struggles to wonder if I am enough. There are a lot of things going on in my life. I'm one year into tenure in a new pastoral posting.

And it feels good. But I followed someone who had been there for twenty five years, who had done a good job, who was beloved. And when you follow someone like that, who has been around for a while, who knows the congregation, knows the people and whose congregation knows them, there can be bumps in the transition. And you can begin to feel like you're not enough. I knew because I knew my predecessor well, we've known each other for more than thirty years, that I would never be able to fill his shoes.

But in the end, when we take another job, when we take some job that was once someone else's, our job isn't to really fill the shoes of those people, but to be ourselves in that and fill our own shoes. But sometimes we forget that when we move towards unrightness in the world of enough, of being enough. So I wondered as I arrived if I would be enough, if being me was enough. And the truth is it was, and it is, and it will be. It's a matter of ripening into recognizing that the I am that I bring into this moment is more important than the I do that I bring into this moment.

The things that I'm capable of doing. I'm certainly capable of a list of things that are pastoral, but I don't do them the same as my predecessor or some of them as well. So the truth is you can begin to feel like you're not enough because you don't quite meet certain expectations that are outside of you. And learning to recognize the enoughness within is something as I say, I have worked with, worked on for a fair portion of my life. I recorded this is the second time I've recorded this podcast because the first time I wasn't satisfied.

I went back and listened to it. I transcribed it. I read it. And there were a couple of little places that for me didn't truly capture, weren't quite transparent or authentic enough for this podcast. So there was a sense of a lack of enoughness.

I almost if you were looking at me, if you're listening to this, if you're looking at me you would see me smile because I recognize that this re recording is, I'd like to believe it's not a statement about what I think about my enoughness, But I didn feel like the last podcast was quite enough so I wanted another chance to go with this. And the wonderful thing about recording the Infinitely Precious podcast is provided there s more time, I can always rerecord if I feel like I really left something out. But most of the time you hear a first, you know, a first production. Not so much because I'm in a rush to get it posted, but because I'm satisfied. I am enough.

How do you feel about yourself? Do you feel like you're enough just as you are? You know, one of the premises under which I began this whole Infinitely Precious podcast and the Infinitely Precious blog that accompanies it and it is built around the idea that you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are and that already are giftedness is being enough. In this moment, you can't be more than you are. You certainly can probably be less than you are.

If you can't quite bring yourself into the moment, but you can be who you are and who you are is enough. The interrelatedness of all the practices, the ripening practices is this: if I have a ripening view and see myself as a part of all that is. Recognizing that I play a part in something that is much larger than I am. A ripening view coming to see myself as a part of all that is and yet a unique piece of it all ties into whether I see myself as enough. Ripening intention if I enter this moment with the intent to be who I am, to be present as fully as I can be in this moment by letting go of the things that distract me from this moment, that ripening intention, it's interrelated with the idea of ripening enoughness.

Just like ripening action. Not trying to do more than we can, but simply to be so present in the moment or aware in the moment that the little things that we do, the tiny kindnesses and the small acts that we perform in our everyday life reinforce the connectedness of all that we are and all in which we participate. Which leads us to this idea of enough. In all of those things, we are enough. There are in addition to some of those other things that I mentioned, you know, a new posting, having moved from another place where I had served for thirty three years.

And so it was a whole change of people that from people I knew to people I didn't yet know. In the midst of all of that, we've talked about this in the podcast before. My father got sick and then he died. We moved. My wife's mother was also getting sick and then she died.

And lots of transitions and caring for my own mom from a distance. I wonder sometimes as I look at the things that are on my list to do in a given day if I'm enough for that, if there's enough of me. And ripening enoughness says approach it with intent to do as much as can be done and look for ways to ripen the action that you take in any given moment. And that will in itself be enough. That again it's not the I do but the I am.

God has taught me, the divine has said to me, I am enough because I am myself who I am. So that is probably my cutting edge ripening area in my practice. If I'm being completely honest with you and maybe it is for you too. Maybe you in your life don't feel like enough. There's some area of your life that you're not quite accomplished enough.

So I want to invite you in the coming week before next time together, perhaps the next ripening practice, or perhaps we'll talk about something else in a sort of an interim breaking period. I don't know what will be next. But think about ripening enoughness. Are there places in your life that you can identify that you don't feel like enough? And where is that voice coming from that tells you you aren't enough?

That you aren't quite good enough, fast enough, yourself enough, or maybe you're too much of yourself enough. Where does that voice come from that keeps you from recognizing you were made to be you and being you is enough? That s a ripening practice coming to see that. So take some time to reflect on that. Where do the voices in your life that say you re not enough come from?

And can you let go of some of those voices? Or can you see that those are voices perhaps that are triggered from your childhood? Someone who perhaps suggested you weren't enough and you let that in because you didn't have any other defense. And now you're still hearing that message forty years later, twenty years later, ten years later, and it's shaping who you are. I want to say to you, whether you can hear me or not, that you are enough.

You are made to be you. You are infinitely precious, unconditionally loved for the gift you already are. I am too. And I have to say that to myself sometimes and I have to catch myself when I speak of myself as less than because that self talk is not moving in the direction of ripening but the opposite direction altogether. So my friends, you are enough.

You are infinitely precious. You are unconditionally loved for the gift you already are. You are enough. So practice ripening in that, looking at your own life and seeing how you might see yourself as enough just for who you are. Until the next time, I wish you all the very best.