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Inhabiting Wonder · Infinitely Precious

• 0:00
  Intro: 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.
• 0:12
  James: Hello, beloved. It's me, James, and I'm back for another episode of the Infinitely Precious podcast. So very thankful for you joining me. I'm glad to be your companion and to have you as mine. Whether we see each other or know each other personally or simply these words speak into our lives, we are companions as a part of this big and beautiful world in which we live.
• 0:37
  So as we continue the Inhabiting series, today I wanted to talk about inhabiting wonder. Wonder. Not wander, which is to go from place to place perhaps without apparent aim. Wonder, that sense of awe that overtakes us. And I think wonder happens before some other things happen in us.
• 1:05
  But then oftentimes those other things come along. One of the first things that we learn to do as little people, as we're growing up, is to name things and it becomes an instinct. Oh, look at that beautiful painting. Oh, look at that large oak. Look at that green grass.
• 1:26
  We want to describe it. We want to name it. We encounter something beautiful like an amazing sunset and we say, Look at that amazing sunset or that beautiful crimson sky, and we name it so we can quickly identify it and catalog it in our brain. I think wonder happens before that, before the moment when we name it. How the instinct to name happens, it's natural.
• 1:59
  But what would it be like to just be in the presence of that which is without needing to name it or describe it, just to see it. One of the words I'm learning I'll still be in Portugal at the time that this podcast drops. One of the words I'm learning in studying Portuguese is which is rooted in the word which is an eye. But is to look. If you want someone to look at something, yeah.
• 2:39
  My pronunciation of the word. What would it be to simply look without then describing what it is we are looking at? You sit with the Mona Lisa and instead of having to call it the Mona Lisa you just look at the dance of colors without having to name what the colors are or how they dance or what the brush strokes look like. Any of that just to look at it. Because I think that naming makes us feel like that once we've named it we've finished it we finished seeing it.
• 3:17
  Oh that's the Mona Lisa I've seen it. That's the sunset. I've seen it. There's an owl in the tree. I've seen it.
• 3:26
  Even I often name the pine tree that is my companion out the window and I call it my pine tree, my friend at the pine tree. In naming it, it's like, have I finished seeing it? See, wonder comes, as I said, I think, before explanation. Children often begin with wonder. I think in some ways when Jesus encouraged us to be more like the least of these children, he was talking about the ability to just be in awe.
• 3:59
  Isn't it amazing that you and I are breathing right now? Isn't it amazing that our hearts are beating that where I am, the sun is shining? Or wherever you are, it may be raining. Isn't it amazing just to be there? Wonder happens and we're just awed by it.
• 4:21
  Have you ever looked at the sky without a word being able to emit from your mouth, particularly a night sky in a place where there's no light pollution and suddenly all the stars are like there, but they're so far away and so infinite. There's nothing you can say. Just be drawn in. Wonder asks not only what is it, but what is this like? If we can learn to pay attention without trying to possess the thing because I do think naming things, is a way of sort of capturing it.
• 4:57
  Oh, that's a sunset. I've captured the beauty of that sunset. These days, because we all seem to carry portable, know, cameras in our pocket in the form of phones, instead of being in the moment and just wondering at it, we take a picture of it so we can wonder at it later. Instead of just being caught in the wonder, we want to capture it. We want to attend to it and keep it with us.
• 5:24
  Sometimes trying to preserve the experience keeps us from actually having the experience. If you're a person that like me sometimes likes to take selfies, how often have you gotten so caught up in taking a selfie with everybody else that you're not even really in the moment with the everybody else that you're taking a selfie of. I'm not saying don't take selfies, I'm simply saying that sometimes our desire to preserve the moment takes us out of the wonder of just being in the moment. So when I think about wonder, I think wonder restores something ordinary into our lives. And let me say what I mean by that.
• 6:20
  Familiar things can become invisible to us. They're always there so we just walk past them. We don't notice them. And if we can catch the wonder of being in the space we are, the stars are amazing. The trees, There are no words.
• 6:46
  The the plethora of kinds of, life that we share here on the planet, and who knows, in the infinite universe. But they become invisible when we just name them and move on. Wonder makes the ordinary unusual again. It makes it strange again and therefore alive again. Wow.
• 7:16
  To give, something that's just become a backdrop for us, life again, at least in our minds. It always had life, but we had robbed it of that life by making it invisible. Wonder begins to open us to mystery. Mystery is not merely what we have not figured out yet. Reality may be inexhaustible.
• 7:46
  I have heard it said and I think it's a wise saying. I heard it was Richard Rohr who said it when I was studying with him, but it's also in several of his books, but he said, you know, mystery is not unknowable, Mystery is infinitely knowable. Mystery doesn't mean we can't know. It means that I can know it this way in this moment, but in the next moment I might see it from another angle in another way. And wonder opens us to that.
• 8:31
  And suddenly the tree becomes the partner, becomes the shade, becomes the friend, becomes something more, something beyond merely being a beautiful pine tree in my backyard or side yard as the case may be. Wonder keeps us open to the things that are bigger than we are. It keeps us open in a way that we get to experience this life as not something that we're going through the motions in. Wonder allows us to experience, wow, this is literally a new day. This is literally a new moment that has never existed before in this way.
• 9:22
  I remember once taking a walk in the woods and when I was in the woods, what I discovered, what I experienced was it suddenly came to me. I was hearing in the distance, it was a summertime. I remember hearing in the distance lawnmowers and blowers in the neighborhood. I remember the birds around me singing and a squirrel in the tree chirping. And I could hear my feet hitting the pathway as I was walking.
• 9:55
  And it suddenly concurred to me that this cacophony of sound had never happened to this way before and never would happen this way again. Now, I'm putting words on it now but in that moment, it was just the wonder of realizing this is a unique, irreplaceable, and unrepeatable moment. Like, those exact sounds, those exact moments will never exist again for me or for anyone else in a given time. So what do we do with this? How do we make this real in our own lives?
• 10:36
  I want to invite you, yes there's always an invitation, to spend a few moments with one ordinary thing as though you were with it for the very first time. I remember when I first saw and imagined and realized the power of kintsugi, the art of broken pottery. It's a Japanese art of taking broken pottery and then melting gold and putting it back together. And the broken pottery is once again sort of whole, but you can see all the broken places. You can see it all.
• 11:15
  And when I first saw it, it was such a wonderful way of understanding how nothing is irreparable in the universe but at the same time, when we are repaired, when we find forgiveness, when we do let go, we are changed. There is something transformed. When I look at my Kintsugi bowl, that sits here on my desk, it fills me with wonder. Now over time it's become invisible on my desk. Why?
• 11:48
  Because I just look at it and see it because it's been there so long. What would it be like to spend a few moments with something ordinary? It doesn't have to be kintsugi. It could be just watching a bird. It could be holding a rock in your hand.
• 12:03
  I used to like to do that in my morning sits. Just hold a rock from a place I had been that I had gathered up and brought home. And what would it be like to hold it and realize it, encounter it as if for the first time. Wonder begins when we allow ourselves simply to receive without naming. It's the instinct to name that often makes the moment claimable.
• 12:31
  It allows us to imagine that we can possess the moment because we have named it this sunset, this sunrise, this high noon, and suddenly the wonder of it is gone because we have tied it down with our words. What would it be like to let ourselves begin to simply receive? To sit in front of a painting without having to name who did it or the colors that are in it, but simply receive it as an image in front of us. Well, dear friends, those are my thoughts about inhabiting wonder. I hope you have a week filled with wonder, a moment, a lifetime filled with wonder in all honesty.
• 13:19
  Remember always that you're infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are. And if you wish, I have mentioned that I received some requests. Can we help support the podcast? Can we help support its hosting service and things like that? How can we support that?
• 13:42
  There is a link now on the Infinitely Precious podcast website. That's a link, a secure link that you can make a donation if you want to support the podcast. You don't have to and we're going to keep offering it. I'm going to keep offering it for free, putting my voice out there. But if you would like to help defray the costs of what that takes, you're welcome to give and I invite you to do so.
• 14:09
  But know that your infinitely precious and unconditionally loved is the gift you already are, whether or not you do. So thanks so much for joining me. I wish you all the best. Our next podcast, I should be back in country and back again from this very place actually, but having experienced something else. So until the next time, all the best to you.