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Transcript

Inhabiting Rest · 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 so good to be with you today for another episode of the Infinitely Precious podcast. We've been doing a series about inhabiting the space in which we find ourselves. We began with an inward movement.
• 0:28
  And with last week, Inhabiting Work, we began to move outward. And so we're going to be talking about today is inhabiting rest. Now, immediately upon saying let's inhabit our rest, we already run into this kind of strange thing that we have a hard time doing nothing. Maybe not all of us. Maybe some of us are really good at doing nothing.
• 1:03
  But for most of us, I think that we're sort of programmed in this society, in this world in which we live to believe that we've got to be producing or being productive at doing something. And I want to suggest to you that there's something to doing nothing. We often say we need rest, but when we stop, we often reach for another task. And that's just kind of a symptom of what happens to us in this kind of trying to do nothing, to truly rest. We even find it to be true when we lay down at night to go to sleep.
• 1:50
  If there are tasks still waiting to be done, we often find our brain racing to try to solve them, even though solving them is virtually impossible when you're laying flat on your back trying to go to sleep. It doesn't stop our brains from wanting to do it. It just is that coming to inhabit that space that I'm going to call rest, that we were going to call rest is not as easy as it sounds. And there's a difference between stopping work and truly learning to be present, to inhabit the rest we are getting. Oftentimes, our brain is still on our most recent thing that we were working on or planning for the next time we'll be able to sit down and do something.
• 2:45
  Sometimes it's even difficult for me to inhabit the space I'm in when I'm resting because there are so many other things. And what is rest? Well, I'm glad you asked that question or that I asked myself. I want to say first of all that rest is not preparation for more work. It is not simply an opportunity for us to recharge so that we can be productive again.
• 3:14
  Making rest just another productivity tool is failing to see rest as rest. Rest is merely another way to get more out of work. We talked about inhabiting work last week, all the kinds of ways that we work when we're fully engaged. But when we're resting, we don't need to be in preparation for the next opportunity to work. We can simply be present in the rest.
• 3:47
  So what is the value of rest itself? If rest matters, why? How? What difference can it make? Well, the first thing I want to say is when we rest, it allows us to ask the question, who am I when I'm not producing?
• 4:10
  It would be very easy, and we often do this in our society. People in my line of work often identify with the work that they do. So who they are is often aligned with that profession, that job, that work that they do. There is some aspect of their life that involves productivity that is defining. But who am I when I'm not producing?
• 4:38
  Oftentimes, I think when people get to a place of retiring, of stepping back, of changing jobs, of being fired from a job that they held as important in their lives, they begin to ask who they are because they've never asked that question before. Rest invites that question, who am I when I'm not producing something? Do I matter? And that gets right down to that intrinsic worth that we talked about in the very, very first episode of the Inhabiting series and that I say to you at the end of every episode. Learning to inhabit the gift that we are, the preciousness that we already have, our intrinsic value is there.
• 5:28
  And when we're resting, the intrinsic value has gone nowhere at all. And if it's truly intrinsic to us, if I truly am Infinitely Precious and unconditionally loved for the gift I already am, it's not about my next sermon, my next podcast. It's not about my next meeting. It's not about my next Bible study or any kind of work that I might do. It is something more than that.
• 5:56
  It is what is inborn to me. What makes me me? Who am I when I'm not producing? Can I still see myself as precious when I'm resting? And that's a great question because I'm still just as precious when I am resting.
• 6:18
  And I know that intellectually, mostly, but sometimes I think I ought to be doing something. And sometimes it's natural knee jerk reaction. We're sitting down to rest and we're reaching for our phone. It's it's the hardest thing I do on my Sabbath day which for me is Friday. Not to reach for my phone and hit the button that would take me to the mail that I use at work.
• 6:46
  It's the hardest thing I do because I just want to do it or I want to find something to do to occupy my time to produce. There are so many things to do around the house. And on Sabbath, it seems to those things seem to call out to me. Can I be precious while I'm doing nothing? Can I receive myself as a gift when I'm not giving anything away?
• 7:14
  I'm simply being here. Because that's what inhabiting rest looks like. Recognizing you don't have to be doing something to be valuable because you're precious just because. You don't have to be doing something to be loved because you're unconditionally loved, doing something or not doing something. You are a gift.
• 7:40
  And what makes you a gift is you, not what you do. I do think it's hard. Rest is an opportunity for us to receive. Work moves us on an outward trajectory. Giving, we give our effort, our energy, our creativity, and all of those things into the moments in which we are finding ourselves working.
• 8:05
  When we rest, we receive. Rest helps us to receive. It helps us to be in a posture of receiving. There's nothing I'm doing and yet I'm breathing. There's nothing that I'm doing, and yet my body is continuing to function.
• 8:28
  Breath, body, presence, connection, all of those exist whether I'm doing something about them or not. And rest actually allows me to receive my sense that I'm already connected to all things. So often when I'm busy inhabiting work, and it's not about comparisons, but when I'm inhabiting work, sometimes I'm so involved in all the things that I might be doing that I am not simply noticing the connections that are happening all around me and rest. When I sit in rest every morning as part of my meditative practice and prayer and I look out the window, I'm able to receive my connection to the pine tree that I've talked about before in podcasts. I receive that sense of connection, the interconnectedness.
• 9:24
  Not only that I breathe out carbon dioxide and it brings to me oxygen, that relationship. But we're part of this world. We're part of this universe. We share it. We share that space.
• 9:39
  The life of the pine tree matters. My life matters. And I see that connectedness. I feel the subtlety of the presence of spirit in my life when I slow down enough to feel the gentle breeze on my face. It doesn't have to be a gale force for me to notice it.
• 9:55
  It can be a gentle breeze. It can even be a sort of a doldrum, non moving air, sort of a static space. But I can notice that when I slow down, when I rest. So I can receive those things. I can receive that sense of connection that already exists before I sit down just unnoticed.
• 10:22
  So, I often make reference to the fact that the biblical, first one of the first establishments of why we have a Sabbath happens in Genesis in the first chapter. In that whole first creation story, when on the seventh day, the seventh day, the one who made it all, who was central to setting everything in motion, stops and rests. And the universe keeps going. I often wonder sometimes, if I don't do everything that has to be done, will the world keep spinning? Now I don't think it...
• 11:13
  It doesn't come to the conscious front of my mind, but there's some part of me that thinks that if I dare slow down, something will get... Be left undone. How can the origin, the creator, the one behind it all, the great architect of all that is, the great unfolding step back and stop, at least according to the biblical story? And I can't. The infinite can stop, but the finite can't.
• 11:48
  The world does keep spinning. The sun does come up. Even when I am not attentive to making it happen. It happens with or without me. So I find it helpful to remember that the Sabbath is an invitation to true rest, not only for me but for those around me.
• 12:14
  Rest is an embodied confession, if you will. I'm not holding the universe together. I used to tell a story. It used to be true. It's not true anymore because I don't do it anymore.
• 12:29
  But I used to greet the morning, get up and walk into the bathroom, had a fairly large mirror and I would look in the mirror in the morning, first face of the morning, then I see and say, there is a God and it is not you. Just as a reminder, I think Sabbath, I think rest and learning to inhabit it is an invitation to see that while I am an intrinsic part of this universe, that I matter and that what I do as a part of this universe, there is a place I am meant to hold, a post that I stand as the person I was made to be, the gift that I am. That the universe does not depend on my constantly producing, it allows space for me to step back and to receive the gift that the universe itself is, to receive the gift that I myself am. The sights, the sounds, the sunshine, the rain, the snow, the sleet, the hail, whatever comes, to receive them as part of life. The life that I participate in, the life that goes on around me, sometimes because of me, but in spite of me, and all moving at the same time.
• 13:58
  It is a beautiful place to be. I invite you to take a little time this week. Maybe it is five minutes, maybe it is one minute, but let us go for five. Maybe it is twenty minutes, maybe it is an hour. And don't let it be productive.
• 14:16
  Don't turn on the television necessarily. Don't turn on the radio unless you want to. Just listen to some music. Don't try to produce anything. Just look out the window.
• 14:27
  Listen to the sounds around you, be present in the room you're in, take a moment, just look around at the wall and what you see. Be present in the space where you find yourself. Maybe rest is not stepping away from life, but discovering that life is already right where I am, right here. Practice it. Give it a try.
• 15:00
  Try inhabiting rest this week. And remember, whether you rest or not, whether you inhabit it or not, that you are truly, infinitely, precious, and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are, not because of what you produce, but simply because you are. What a gift you are. Remember that, and thanks for joining me today. Until the next time.