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Embracing Endings: Living Each Moment with Reverence · 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've been thinking a lot about endings recently and the endings that we can see, the endings that we don't realize are coming. Because both of those exist in our lives and they've existed side by side in my life in the last six months or so. Endings are rather beautiful and challenging times because when something that we know ends and we don't know what we're stepping into next, we're left with the uncertainty, and that uncertainty can turn into fear. It can become anxiety. It can become the running wild of our imagination about all the possibilities both positive and negative and we are drawn in to wondering about that future.
• 1:28
  So what I'm learning or what life is teaching me is something I wanted to pass along to you and perhaps you've seen the same thing and you will just hear this as an affirmation of what you're already discovering about self in the world and that is I am trying to treat each moment as a moment when I'm going to show up as the best self that I can in that moment. I encourage you to do the same and the reason is you don't know if this is the last moment. Now, to take a step back from that, this week has been filled with a couple of last moments for me. Earlier this week was my last weekly reflective moment that I made as the pastor of St. James on about a ten minute reflection I do on Tuesdays at noon.
• 2:27
  And yesterday, on Thursday was my last sacred reading as the pastor of St. James. I've been doing those as online stories, online pieces that people can engage as they choose wherever they are, whenever they are because I think that's how people engage things now wherever and whenever they are, whenever they can. They're not always available when things happen. So, being able to see them later is a wonderful opportunity for them to participate if not live, then certainly in the fabric of what was presented at that time.
• 3:11
  The difference was that those two moments I knew were the last time I was making a moment. And so, they gave me the opportunity to talk about what transitions look like. And I felt the emotion bubble up inside of me knowing that they were the last moments. I think when we know that this is our last meeting, last gesture, function in a particular place, it gives us pause. Is it have we put forth our best effort?
• 3:55
  What is it that we have produced in that moment? And it gives us the ability to try to say in our best possible way, farewell to those events, those relationships that are coming to an end. Earlier this year, it looked like for a period of time that my father was in the process of dying. And then it looked like he was in the process of rebounding. And then suddenly, he took a turn and did die.
• 4:27
  During that last little bit more than a month of his life, knowing that he was in a more tenuous space than he had been at any time I'd ever known him, gave me the opportunity to say, I don't want to avoid this time. This is an opportunity for me to put myself out there to take risks and to spend my time to make sure that I talk about all the things that might otherwise become unfinished business after he passed from this mortal realm. And so, I took the opportunities to have those conversations about death and about life and relationships and we were able to take care of all the unfinished business. And when he did die, I knew I had said everything that I needed to say. Were there more things to say?
• 5:37
  Sure. But I had said the things I needed to say, I had heard the things I wanted to hear and that saying farewell was okay. It hurt, it still hurts, I can feel even the motion bubbling up as I'm talking about them, but I knew that the ending could come and the reality of our own finitude was very real to me. And because it became very real, I tried to put my best foot forward and be as fully present as I could be and give my best to those moments we have, not knowing if they're the last moment. This last Tuesday, I knew was my last moment to do a moment for St.
• 6:30
  James. On Thursday, that was my last moment to do a sacred reading, a Thursday sacred reading as the pastor of St. James and that's after thirty three years of being the pastor. So endings happen. They are going to happen.
• 6:51
  Our lives are going to end. The work we're going to do is going to end. At some point I knew in the future my time at St. James as the pastor would end either with my retirement or death or the bishop doing what the bishop did this time which was to move me elsewhere. In all those cases, knowing the eventuality of an end is not the same as living the best moment we can right now.
• 7:20
  And what I'm trying to say, I think, what I'm trying to say to myself, the lesson that I gleaned from these last six months if nothing else is my life is finite. My time at St. James is finite, my time with my father was finite. Everything on this side of eternity is finite For me, this form in which I find myself right now will not last forever. And so, I am given pause and the opportunity in every moment to recognize to do my best in that moment.
• 8:07
  Now, I've talked about this before, my best in some moments is not nearly as good as my best in another moment, and that's okay because what I bring to any given moment, what you bring to any given moment is different. It's different. It's not the same. So knowing that we are invited, we are invited to treat each moment with a certain kind of reverence. This could be the last time I drive to work.
• 8:41
  This could be the last time I talk to someone who is important in my life. This could be the last word I say to a stranger that I pass on the street. It might be the last word that they hear. Knowing that, knowing the import of each opportunity I have to put my best foot forward, to be the best I can be in that moment, knowing that import invites me to take seriously every moment that I'm in. The moment when I am recording these podcasts to try to be the best self I can be.
• 9:23
  Every moment at work, every moment at play, every conversation with family members, even when I may be tired from a long day, Conversations with people I don't even know. To try to be the best within the boundaries of my own limitations in any given moment wherever I am. It's an invitation that life presents us because we never know if that's our last moment or the person with whom we're encountering this last moment, the last experience we'll have of that kind. So being able to reflect on endings that I knew were coming and got a sense of their impending nature invited me to reflect on the sense that every moment is an invitation to be the best we can be. Are you being the best you that you know how to be in this moment?
• 10:23
  Are you giving your best, putting your best foot forward and your best foot forward on a day that's been exhausting and has taken everything out of you and left you in a tough spot? Even on those days is your best may be not blowing up at a small infraction in your life, at a small irritant in your life. It may be holding back the words that want to flow from you, the words that are ugly, not saying them in a moment. That may be the best you've got. Someone pushes your last button, you know, the last straw that breaks the camel's back and what you want to say could be hurtful not only in the moment but over the long haul.
• 11:13
  And instead of saying it, your best in that moment may be to simply withhold saying anything. Our best looks different in any given moment Depending on our mood, depending upon our energy level, depending upon what's happened and led us up to this moment, depending on how we perceive the moment we are in, all of those things change what the best can be in this moment. And the best is not perfect. It's never perfect. You are not asked to be perfect.
• 11:47
  Even the biblical word for perfect, whether it's in Greek or Aramaic that Jesus uses is not a word about moral perfection. It is about being as mature, as complete, as engaged as you possibly can. That's what it means. To give your best is not to be perfect. It is to be as good as you can be in a moment.
• 12:11
  Can you be ripe in the moment? Can you be fruitful in this moment even if fruitfulness is withholding words that want to leap out of you? That's really the question of endings. Can we give the best so that this moment, were it to be the last, would be a moment that I did all that I could in that moment to be fully present, fully engaged, fully as kind and as good as I could be in that moment. Those are my thoughts this week as I'm pondering endings.
• 12:51
  About a month left right now until I have moved into a new house and am about to take a new position, a new pastorate at another church, Doolin Church in Falls Church, Virginia in The United States. As I make that transition, as I see a lot of lasts and endings in my life coming along, can I be the best I can be in those moments? All the emotions, everything else wrapped up, can I be that? Can you be that in whether it's an ending or whether you don't know if it's ending, can you be that? No matter which or what you find yourself doing remember you're infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are.
• 13:44
  Until the next time I join you, I wish you all the best.