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Love, the Fabric of the Universe · 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 this week on the Infinitely Precious podcast, I wanna talk to you about love. You may think I talk about it all the time. I know that I talk about it all the time.
• 0:29
  And I think it's worthy of talking about. But in the last couple of weeks, I had an opportunity to be a part of something that invited me to experience love in a deeper way. Before I get to talking about that, I just wanna say thanks for joining me on the podcast. I encourage you to share the podcast if it's meaningful to you with other folks. Thanks for all of you who have shared the podcast with others so we can reach people with this message of infinite preciousness and unconditional love for the gift each of you is.
• 1:10
  So about two weeks ago, almost two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to perform the wedding for my daughter and now son-in-law. There was something about that day from the moment I got up and had breakfast and got ready and went down to the place where we ate breakfast, ate breakfast and then got ready because everyone I got mixed information about exactly when I was supposed to be there for pictures. But I took my journal down and all the materials so I could prepare to celebrate their wedding. And as I was sitting there, it occurred to me that weddings are moments when we sort of peel back the outer skin of the universe, if you will, and see beneath it to the very love that is the fabric of the universe in which we find ourselves. One of my favorite twentieth century mystics, Pierre Teillard de Chardin talked about love is the fabric that makes up the universe.
• 2:43
  From the very beginning to the very end, it is the fabric of everything. It is the energetic presence of all things. In the first chapter of Paul's letter to Colossi, the Colossian letter, particularly in verses 15 through 20, which is an early church hymn, if you will. Paul talks about how the whole universe is held together in Christ. There was something about the day of my daughter and son in law's wedding.
• 3:26
  Something about the nature of time itself where it just seemed to slow down. It seemed to have a richness where I could savor each moment of the day and then to find myself standing before these two people who I love, one who I've loved for her whole life and one who I've come to love over the last several years, There was something transcendent about it, something divine in the moment and in the day itself. As I began to see love as something that is truly incarnate. It's not just some warm, fuzzy feeling we feel deep inside ourselves. It's more than that.
• 4:28
  It is the moments we savor and catch a glimpse of all that keeps us moving forward, that holds us together even now. I don't know how you think about love. I don't know how you experience love. But for me, in those moments, there was something almost tangible, something I could touch and see and know as if the divine spark was ablaze, in that moment. You and I both know that we live in a world where it's hard sometimes to find those divine moments.
• 5:20
  We don't always see them. And because we don't always see them, we wonder if they're really there. And then in a moment like this, a moment when it just sort of becomes that slow motion experience of each and every moment. I began to wonder in the period of time after that if it isn't possible to peel back the layers of the universe more often to see the blazing love underneath it, that which holds all things together. Just a couple of weeks ago on the podcast, I talked about the sacred ordinary moments of life.
• 6:16
  And it seems to me those are the moments when we experience and catch a glimpse of love as it really is all around us all the time, that it is the very fabric of holding all our molecules together. It's the energy that carries us into each moment. It's the energy that allows us to tell someone we love them. It's the energy that brings us into a room with our closest friends and family members to declare our vows with one another. And in that sacred moment when I stood there, I saw it.
• 6:59
  I felt it. I knew it. And I knew that it was knowable in times other than just those moments that are the majestic mountaintop moments. That wedding was a mountaintop experience certainly for me. But you can't live on the mountain.
• 7:21
  You come down from the mountain, you come into our everyday life. Is love only experienceable, only available to us in those extraordinary moments like a wedding or the birth of a child or some other extraordinary happening? Or is the tangibility of love something we can touch not only in those unique moments like my daughter and son in law's wedding, but isn't it possible to touch that at other times when we just feel especially close as if, we could almost hold love in our hands. And perhaps it is not only something we could hold in our hands but is our hands when we hold the hand of someone who needs to be reminded of presence in a quiet way. Maybe love is that look that you get from the stranger who sees the pain on your face and looks with that compassion upon you and love is carried in that look.
• 8:49
  Maybe it's in that moment when you just greet your neighbor in the morning, but you have to slow down time enough to truly be present in that moment. And perhaps that's what a time like a wedding or a birth or some other special celebration is. It's an opportunity for us to glimpse what our lives could be like really all the time if we're really there. My daughter was very sweet and said to me several times in the days leading up to the day I was the celebrant for the wedding, dad, I don't want you to feel any pressure. I have certainly done hundreds of weddings in my life But there is something unique and special about your own wedding when I married my wife over thirty three years ago.
• 9:54
  But there is something special about celebrating the marriage of someone that you know and love very well. So, I was appreciative of her saying don't feel any pressure. And I'm not so sure it was pressure as it was a sense of presence. Not pressure,
• 10:15
  Intro: but
• 10:15
  James: presence. The sense that what I really needed to be that day was there to speak the words into the time of the ceremony that really spoke to my heart, the words that came from my heart. And when John and Hannah shared their vows, which they had written for one another, for them to share their heart in committing to one another, those moments are the precious moments of our lives. Love can be tangible. Perhaps in every moment.
• 11:04
  I think the mystics would say it can be if we're really in the moment. Perhaps that was the model of Jesus. What made love present in Jesus was that he was wherever he went. He was with the person who everybody else pushed aside when he saw them at the side of the road and stopped to talk or when they touched the hem of his garment or when they were overwhelmed with grief at the loss of someone close to them or when they were frustrated by the way they were treated because of the illness they had or any number of things Jesus was in those moments and that's what made love real. Perhaps then the invitation of thinking of love as the very fabric of our lives is an invitation to look for love, to be present in every moment and realize love is already there.
• 12:22
  What does it feel like now? What does it look like now? Where am I seeing it now? So I guess my challenge to you and to me, yes, look for love in those magical places, in those sacred moments like weddings and other places where love is present. But look for love in the simple everyday things, the everyday conversations, the everyday moments, your breakfast cereal, your cup of coffee in the morning, your lunch with a friend or even by yourself, when you gather with other folks that you know and love and when you gather with other folks that you're hoping to get to know and maybe one day love.
• 13:22
  Look for love wherever you are. Practice being present wherever you are. Be mindful that every moment is a gift and love is present as if indeed it is the fabric of all things. And I believe it is. It is present in every moment in you, as you, with you, among you, in all the places you go.
• 13:47
  So look for love wherever you go and remember this, you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are. Until the next time, my friends, I wish you the best.