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Choosing Tenderness in a Heavy World · 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 it's time for another week with the Infinitely Precious podcast. I don't know about you, but I am feeling the heaviness these days of the world. As I look around and I see the violence, particularly perpetrated by government agents against protesters, two of which recently have ended in death for the protesters, I feel an added heaviness. Add to that just the general state of the world in which we live and the ongoing rhetoric of fear and uncertainty.
• 1:05
  And it leaves us in a place where the world feels heavy. And sometimes in the midst of that heaviness, I think that one of the things that happens to us is we try to carry more than ours is to carry. We are each given a place to carry. We are given a post to stand, if you will. Now, for some of us, it looks like what's going on in Minnesota in protests and in other places.
• 1:45
  Places where clergy kneel and are arrested at an airport or where protesters gather in the street to try to block ICE from taking away their neighbors, to protest it when it happens to bring attention to it. There are people for whom that is their call to stand in those tough places. Some might argue that that's all of our call. But we are each called to hold the space we are given in the way we're given to hold it. I'm not saying or trying to cop out about the choices that we each have before us.
• 2:35
  How we protest and how we celebrate and how we stand up and hold space in this world is important. As I've said before, inaction is indeed just that, inaction. And often shows a complicity and a condoning of the way things are. So I thought today, the midst of trying to figure out what to do if you're not the person who is standing on the front lines in Minneapolis or if you are elsewhere in our country, if you are trying to find a place of peace from which to stand, this podcast is probably more directed to you. It's not to say that if you're one of those folks who are marching that this podcast isn't for you.
• 3:32
  I do think that when we practice the better, when we enter into the fray and we stand nonviolently, stand with a place from a place of inner peace, from a place of inner love, not just a place of anger. Anger burns us out. Anger makes us reactive. But a kind of anger that rises up and invites us to love and to do so in a way that is standing for what we believe. So when you are carrying the heaviness wherever you find yourself, I encourage you to take a moment to name it.
• 4:21
  What are you feeling, this weight that is on your shoulders? And one of the simple things I do sometimes is I just take a moment to catch my breath and feel the tension in my shoulders. For me as a person, I have discovered that my tension, my stress, it lives in the tightness of my shoulders. And they tighten reflexively without me even realizing it. So, when I catch that they have tightened, I roll them a little bit and I try to take a step back and catch my breath and recognize I'm feeling it right now.
• 5:01
  I'm feeling the stress. I'm feeling the heaviness. I feel it in my body because our bodies tell a story to us. Our bodies have built in warning systems that will tell us, oh, you're getting tense. Now, maybe for you, you feel it in your gut, or maybe you feel a tightening of your jaw, furrowing of your brow.
• 5:23
  You know what your the signs of your stress and heaviness are for you. Look for those. Catch your breath and look for those. Am I feeling it now? Am I feeling it now?
• 5:42
  And is there a way for a moment just to catch, I am feeling stressed, I am feeling heavy? Take a breath. Roll the shoulders. Loosen the gut if that's where it's tight. Unfurrow the brow.
• 6:01
  Untighten the jaw and clench the jaw. Maybe just move it a bit, loosen it a bit, and recognize that practicing the better is first letting go of all the stresses that are tightening you up. Acting from a place of tightness makes you feel less tender in the heaviness of the world. Second of all, look at your own finitude, your own limited nature. What is yours to do?
• 6:38
  What can you bring to the table? What is the practicing of the better for you? If it is going to your local protest, by all means do that. But if your practice is something smaller but no less significant, like remaining tender for instance in the midst of a heavy world. Remaining tender, choosing love, choosing a smile, choosing kindness in response to others around us rather than out of our own stress and heaviness to carry that into the way we interact with others.
• 7:21
  We can choose to remain open and to feel the pain, to feel the heaviness as much as is ours to hold and to return to the world love, to hold a space that is loving, that is graceful, that is open. And that's a hard practice. That is a hard practice. It requires a kind of grounding and body awareness as well as spiritual awareness of yourself in order to engage the world when you're feeling that heaviness, when you're feeling overwhelmed. So my friend, this journey that we're on together is not promised as an easy one, but it is one in which we can learn what our limitations are, what our gifts are, what we bring to the table, how we can encourage our friends when they need encouragement, when they're feeling heavy.
• 8:36
  How can we encourage ourself and not become despondent in a world that clearly seems at times to want to burn itself down, where the tension is in our lives, in our world, in our newsfeed, palpable. We can find a way to the other side and choose an action appropriate to us that is standing for what we believe from a place of grounding, not from a reactionary place. Earlier today, after reading more about the death of an ICU nurse, a 37 year old man who was filming, who was then diminished in his human personhood by people who just wanted to blame him for being there rather than take responsibility for their part in causing what happened. And, you know, that's our propensity, blaming someone else rather than taking responsibility. Blaming the victim became the way of doing it.
• 9:57
  Earlier today, I just wanted to find somebody's newsfeed and just blow it up if they were saying something counter to what I believe about it. That's what I wanted to do. I could feel it rising in me. I even found myself combing for a good newsfeed I could jump right into and say whatever words were on my mind at that moment. And instead, after a few moments, I realized what was happening.
• 10:26
  Sometimes we don't notice it right away. Sometimes it takes a little time. I noticed what was happening. I caught my breath. I noticed the tension in my shoulders.
• 10:42
  I pulled out my journal and I began to write about what I was feeling because that was a healthy way for me to recognize that I was feeling the tension. I was feeling the heaviness. I was feeling reactionary. And I needed to express myself in a way that allowed me to be free to act not from a reaction place but from an appropriate response place. Needless to say, I didn't post anything.
• 11:14
  I didn't write anything. For a while, wanted to. And even now, I can feel that little visceral spot inside of me, wherever it is, wanting to come out, wanting to just give back the violent rhetoric, to meet violence with violence. Violent words are violent words. They're another form of violence.
• 11:40
  To meet them. And instead, I chose instead to try to be more tender in a heavy world. Can you choose that for yourself? Can you choose in this moment to catch your breath, to find the tension if it exists in your body, the anger, the visceral feelings that seem to rise in these heavy moments. Can you find them?
• 12:07
  Breathe into that space. Breathe into that space and choose tenderness in a heavy world. It is a hard choice. It is a hard choice. And sometimes tenderness is standing in the freezing temperatures outside in a protest.
• 12:29
  Sometimes it's like a group of monks walking for peace across the country. Sometimes it is being kind when you are overwhelmed. Kind to your neighbor, kind to your family member, kind to the stranger, kind as you can be. Choosing tenderness is not easy. But for me, it's practicing the better.
• 12:54
  So choose tenderness with yourself and with all those who surround you. It's an invitation. There may be times you can't choose tenderness. And remember, even in those moments, you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are. And in the moments when you do react, again, let it go, recognize where it came from, and remember once again, even in the moments you chose to be reactive, you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are.
• 13:36
  Thanks for joining me. Thanks for being on this. If this has helped you and you want to share it, please feel free. It has been as it always is good to be with you.