April 22, 2025 • 14 mins
In this post-Easter reflection, James explores what it means to keep going when the path ahead seems to vanish. Drawing on his own spiritual practices—like journaling, meditation, and sacred reading—he invites listeners to “rock back on their heels” and ground themselves in the present moment. Rather than rushing to find clarity, James encourages embracing uncertainty with trust and openness, reminding us that we are infinitely precious even when we don’t know the way forward. This episode is a gentle companion for anyone feeling lost or unsure about their next step.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Intro (00:00):
Welcome to the infinitely precious podcast produced by
(00:03):
infinitely precious LLC. Yourhost is James Henry. Remember,
you are infinitely precious andunconditionally loved for the
gift you already are.
James (00:12):
Hello, beloved. It's me James and it is another day for
us to reflect together. Today isTuesday, two days after our
Easter celebration in theWestern Christian Church.
Celebration of resurrection andnew life and hope which
(00:36):
sometimes seems to bechallenging to find. It's not
the lack of faith necessarily oranything else.
It is that all of theinformation seems to be to the
contrary. And it's hard to fallback to a place where you can
(00:58):
feel the trust again. And thepath is no longer as clear
perhaps as it once seemed. WhenI signed up, at least when I
imagined that I signed up forthis journey of faith in the
(01:19):
tradition of Jesus following hispath, I kind of had the idea
that the path would always beclear. That I would always know
what might be next.
I don't know why I got thatidea, perhaps it was the folly
of youth. But I have noticed inmy journey of faith repeatedly,
(01:44):
not all the time but certainlyat various points in my life,
that the path I was certain wasahead was no longer visible. In
fact, it had disappearedaltogether. Maybe you've
experienced this if you're ahiker and you go into the woods,
I am occasionally a hiker, andthere are clearly marked or
(02:07):
blazed trails for you to follow,but you decide you're going to
go off on your own. You know,take that path less traveled if
you will, and the challengebecomes it's not always a very
clear path and it doesdisappear.
Maybe it was a deer path ormaybe it was some other kind of
path and it doesn't alwaysunfold the way you anticipated
(02:31):
it would, so then you have toretrace your steps to try to
figure out where you are. Whatdoes that have to do with this
idea that the path sometimesdisappears for us as we're
trying to move forward? Well Ithink that it's just absolutely
true for people of faith and forpeople without faith, for people
who are struggling to figure outwhat it is they see in this
(02:55):
world and whatever meaning theymight glean for themselves about
what matters. There are momentswhen you were pretty sure that
whether it was school or ateacher or perhaps your own
faith that told you the pathwaywhile narrow was one that you'd
(03:17):
be able to pick out. They don'talways tell you that there are
going to be those moments whenit's not clear what the next
step is and all you've got isthis moment right here, This
moment right now.
(03:37):
So what do you do when the pathahead disappears? When you were
so certain that this was yourcareer path or your relationship
path or your personal path oryour faith path and suddenly
that changes up on you. What doyou do? Well I'm just going to
(03:58):
share with you what I do. OnceI've figured out that I can't
see a clear path ahead, thereare too many potential
directions in which to go orthere seem to be no potential
directions in which to go or thedirections that are available to
me are not the path I want totake.
(04:21):
And there's all thepossibilities. What do I do?
Well, it comes back down tobeing where you are right now.
You can't quite glean what thenext step is on the path. There
are too many choices, there areno choices or the choices that
you have are not the choices youwant.
(04:45):
In that moment, I try to rockback on my heels if you will and
for me rocking back on my heelsis attending even more closely
than usual to my daily practice.Now maybe you don't have a daily
practice. Maybe you've beenthinking for a long time,
(05:06):
wouldn't it be good if I had adaily practice but you haven't
ever started it? Well, I don'twant you to feel guilty about
not having a daily practice. Idon't want you to feel guilty if
your daily practice is reallyonly an every other day or once
a week practice because youcan't quite get up to doing it
on an everyday basis.
This is not another opportunityfor you to beat yourself up. But
(05:31):
for me what it is is attendingto what I have found is the
grounding place for me. And forme that's my daily practice. So
just to my right, it's to theleft of the screen that I'm on
right now, there is a chair.It's where I sit every morning.
(05:54):
Every morning looks a little bitdifferent, but it usually
includes things like silentmeditation, journaling, quizzing
myself on my new Aramaicvocabulary words as I'm trying
to learn the language of Jesus,sitting quietly, just drinking
my cup of coffee, any of any orall of those things can be part
(06:16):
of my everyday pattern. Soyou've come to that place where
it's not clear what the nextstep is. If you can, you rock
back on your heels. You take amoment. If you have longer, you
take more than a moment perhaps.
Perhaps you pull out yourjournal and you start writing
(06:39):
about what has brought you tothis place. What it is that you
thought might be the next stepbut isn't anymore. What the
choices are and you begin tojust write free form without
trying to carefully considerwhat your answer is going to be.
Just letting your unconsciousand conscious dance together as
(07:01):
you write what is coming up.Just write about where you see
yourself right now, how you'refeeling about where you are,
what thoughts are rising aboutthat, what paths seem to be
available or not or whateverarises in you.
That's a practice using thejournal that allows you to kind
(07:23):
of maybe gain a little bit moreclarity in the midst of the
mist, the fog that surroundsyou. Perhaps it might become
clear at least the direction totake next, but maybe it won't.
Maybe it won't. Another practicethat I find very helpful is my
(07:44):
meditative practice And in thatmeditative practice, I use
centering prayer which isletting go of every thought as
it arises using a sacred wordwhich brings me back to my
intention. It's not a mantra.
I don't repeat it over and overagain. Sometimes I do because I
keep getting caught in mythoughts, but for the most part
(08:05):
it's about releasing myselfsimply into the openness, not to
grab the thoughts. Maybe you usea more mantra based practice
where you have a word that youuse, a mantra that you just use
over and over again to keep yourmind from chasing thoughts and
(08:27):
instead that mantram is yourfocus. Very, very intentional
practice like that. It'simportant to sort of clear your
space when the path disappears.
To sort of clear your mind ofany preconceived notions about
(08:47):
what you ought to do next. Whatis the next thing for you?
Because sometimes it's thosepreconceived notions that lead
you to believe that there isn'ta path for you and when you let
go of the preconceived notion,you find that it's clear what
you have to do, what the nextstep might be. We often bring a
(09:09):
lot of expectations into everymoment of our lives about what
ought to be next for us. And ifit's not our own expectations,
it's the expectations someoneelse has placed on us.
It could be a teacher. It couldbe our faith. Could be it could
be our parents. It could beculture itself. It could be the
(09:31):
nation in which we live.
It could be a rite of passage ata certain age that you're
supposed to do something at thatage. You imagine that is the
expectation. The opportunity torock back on our heels when the
path is unclear or disappearsaltogether is the opportunity to
say, oh my gosh, I'm making allthese assumptions about my life.
(09:55):
I've brought all thesepreconceptions into this moment
and I need to let them gobecause none of those
preconceptions is going to letget me to the next step.
Instead, I'm going to be openand trust that I've gotten this
far in life across various kindsof terrain.
(10:17):
The path was probably not alwaysclear and easy. Sometimes it was
rocky and mountainous and muddyand all those kinds of things.
Whatever your path has been,you've come to this moment. Can
you trust that the divine isenough, that you are enough in
(10:39):
this moment to get you towhatever the next step is?
Especially if you release allthe things that you were so sure
were next for you.
It's not an easy it's not aneasy path, it's not an easy
thing to do. In fact, I wouldsay this could be very
(11:01):
challenging, very challenging.But if you make it a regular
practice, I won't even saydaily, if you make it a regular
practice to sort of take stockof where you are, to listen to
yourself, to your intuition, toyour body. Does this feel right?
(11:22):
What is holding me back?
What is it that is keeping mefrom seeing a path ahead? And if
you can let go of whatever thatthose things are that are
keeping you from moving forwardthen you have the opportunity
and the opportunity to strikeout. Clearly you need to move
(11:45):
forward, you can't stay whereyou are forever. Well you could
try but you probably can't. Sofiguring out a step, tentative
as it may be, bold as it may be,is a place that you can try to
go.
(12:06):
Those are my thoughts for today.It's there are moments, I'm in
one of those moments when thereare a lot of things happening
and a lot of things trying tomake their way into my
consciousness, trying to help memake decisions or force me into
decisions whatever, and I amtrying to be careful about how I
(12:27):
make those and what they looklike. So I encourage you to do
the exact same thing. Find apractice that works for you.
Journaling might be really goodjust because it allows you to
clear the decks.
Meditation, letting go of allthe thoughts, recognizing what
the preconceptions about yourlife are. That's a possibility.
(12:50):
Another possibility might be todo sacred reading, something we
practice every Thursday on thissame channel, same spot at noon.
Any of those things arepossibilities. But do something
and don't just jump ahead.
(13:11):
Take us a moment to rock backand figure out what's keeping
you, what's holding you, andmaybe there's a path you didn't
even see before. So just somethoughts for this day for you, I
encourage you to take those up.I'd love to hear your thoughts
(13:31):
about them if you want to sharethem. If you have a topic you'd
like for me to talk about on aTuesday either in the podcast or
in the broadcast, you can sendit to me at
infinitelypreciousllc@gmail.comand I will certainly take a look
at it. Until the next timeremember you are infinitely
(13:53):
precious and unconditionallyloved for the gift you already
are whether you know what yournext step is on the path or not.
Go in peace my friends until thenext time.
Welcome to the infinitely precious podcast produced by
(00:03):
infinitely precious LLC. Yourhost is James Henry. Remember,
you are infinitely precious andunconditionally loved for the
gift you already are.
James (00:12):
Hello, beloved. It's me James and it is another day for
us to reflect together. Today isTuesday, two days after our
Easter celebration in theWestern Christian Church.
Celebration of resurrection andnew life and hope which
(00:36):
sometimes seems to bechallenging to find. It's not
the lack of faith necessarily oranything else.
It is that all of theinformation seems to be to the
contrary. And it's hard to fallback to a place where you can
(00:58):
feel the trust again. And thepath is no longer as clear
perhaps as it once seemed. WhenI signed up, at least when I
imagined that I signed up forthis journey of faith in the
(01:19):
tradition of Jesus following hispath, I kind of had the idea
that the path would always beclear. That I would always know
what might be next.
I don't know why I got thatidea, perhaps it was the folly
of youth. But I have noticed inmy journey of faith repeatedly,
(01:44):
not all the time but certainlyat various points in my life,
that the path I was certain wasahead was no longer visible. In
fact, it had disappearedaltogether. Maybe you've
experienced this if you're ahiker and you go into the woods,
I am occasionally a hiker, andthere are clearly marked or
(02:07):
blazed trails for you to follow,but you decide you're going to
go off on your own. You know,take that path less traveled if
you will, and the challengebecomes it's not always a very
clear path and it doesdisappear.
Maybe it was a deer path ormaybe it was some other kind of
path and it doesn't alwaysunfold the way you anticipated
(02:31):
it would, so then you have toretrace your steps to try to
figure out where you are. Whatdoes that have to do with this
idea that the path sometimesdisappears for us as we're
trying to move forward? Well Ithink that it's just absolutely
true for people of faith and forpeople without faith, for people
who are struggling to figure outwhat it is they see in this
(02:55):
world and whatever meaning theymight glean for themselves about
what matters. There are momentswhen you were pretty sure that
whether it was school or ateacher or perhaps your own
faith that told you the pathwaywhile narrow was one that you'd
(03:17):
be able to pick out. They don'talways tell you that there are
going to be those moments whenit's not clear what the next
step is and all you've got isthis moment right here, This
moment right now.
(03:37):
So what do you do when the pathahead disappears? When you were
so certain that this was yourcareer path or your relationship
path or your personal path oryour faith path and suddenly
that changes up on you. What doyou do? Well I'm just going to
(03:58):
share with you what I do. OnceI've figured out that I can't
see a clear path ahead, thereare too many potential
directions in which to go orthere seem to be no potential
directions in which to go or thedirections that are available to
me are not the path I want totake.
(04:21):
And there's all thepossibilities. What do I do?
Well, it comes back down tobeing where you are right now.
You can't quite glean what thenext step is on the path. There
are too many choices, there areno choices or the choices that
you have are not the choices youwant.
(04:45):
In that moment, I try to rockback on my heels if you will and
for me rocking back on my heelsis attending even more closely
than usual to my daily practice.Now maybe you don't have a daily
practice. Maybe you've beenthinking for a long time,
(05:06):
wouldn't it be good if I had adaily practice but you haven't
ever started it? Well, I don'twant you to feel guilty about
not having a daily practice. Idon't want you to feel guilty if
your daily practice is reallyonly an every other day or once
a week practice because youcan't quite get up to doing it
on an everyday basis.
This is not another opportunityfor you to beat yourself up. But
(05:31):
for me what it is is attendingto what I have found is the
grounding place for me. And forme that's my daily practice. So
just to my right, it's to theleft of the screen that I'm on
right now, there is a chair.It's where I sit every morning.
(05:54):
Every morning looks a little bitdifferent, but it usually
includes things like silentmeditation, journaling, quizzing
myself on my new Aramaicvocabulary words as I'm trying
to learn the language of Jesus,sitting quietly, just drinking
my cup of coffee, any of any orall of those things can be part
(06:16):
of my everyday pattern. Soyou've come to that place where
it's not clear what the nextstep is. If you can, you rock
back on your heels. You take amoment. If you have longer, you
take more than a moment perhaps.
Perhaps you pull out yourjournal and you start writing
(06:39):
about what has brought you tothis place. What it is that you
thought might be the next stepbut isn't anymore. What the
choices are and you begin tojust write free form without
trying to carefully considerwhat your answer is going to be.
Just letting your unconsciousand conscious dance together as
(07:01):
you write what is coming up.Just write about where you see
yourself right now, how you'refeeling about where you are,
what thoughts are rising aboutthat, what paths seem to be
available or not or whateverarises in you.
That's a practice using thejournal that allows you to kind
(07:23):
of maybe gain a little bit moreclarity in the midst of the
mist, the fog that surroundsyou. Perhaps it might become
clear at least the direction totake next, but maybe it won't.
Maybe it won't. Another practicethat I find very helpful is my
(07:44):
meditative practice And in thatmeditative practice, I use
centering prayer which isletting go of every thought as
it arises using a sacred wordwhich brings me back to my
intention. It's not a mantra.
I don't repeat it over and overagain. Sometimes I do because I
keep getting caught in mythoughts, but for the most part
(08:05):
it's about releasing myselfsimply into the openness, not to
grab the thoughts. Maybe you usea more mantra based practice
where you have a word that youuse, a mantra that you just use
over and over again to keep yourmind from chasing thoughts and
(08:27):
instead that mantram is yourfocus. Very, very intentional
practice like that. It'simportant to sort of clear your
space when the path disappears.
To sort of clear your mind ofany preconceived notions about
(08:47):
what you ought to do next. Whatis the next thing for you?
Because sometimes it's thosepreconceived notions that lead
you to believe that there isn'ta path for you and when you let
go of the preconceived notion,you find that it's clear what
you have to do, what the nextstep might be. We often bring a
(09:09):
lot of expectations into everymoment of our lives about what
ought to be next for us. And ifit's not our own expectations,
it's the expectations someoneelse has placed on us.
It could be a teacher. It couldbe our faith. Could be it could
be our parents. It could beculture itself. It could be the
(09:31):
nation in which we live.
It could be a rite of passage ata certain age that you're
supposed to do something at thatage. You imagine that is the
expectation. The opportunity torock back on our heels when the
path is unclear or disappearsaltogether is the opportunity to
say, oh my gosh, I'm making allthese assumptions about my life.
(09:55):
I've brought all thesepreconceptions into this moment
and I need to let them gobecause none of those
preconceptions is going to letget me to the next step.
Instead, I'm going to be openand trust that I've gotten this
far in life across various kindsof terrain.
(10:17):
The path was probably not alwaysclear and easy. Sometimes it was
rocky and mountainous and muddyand all those kinds of things.
Whatever your path has been,you've come to this moment. Can
you trust that the divine isenough, that you are enough in
(10:39):
this moment to get you towhatever the next step is?
Especially if you release allthe things that you were so sure
were next for you.
It's not an easy it's not aneasy path, it's not an easy
thing to do. In fact, I wouldsay this could be very
(11:01):
challenging, very challenging.But if you make it a regular
practice, I won't even saydaily, if you make it a regular
practice to sort of take stockof where you are, to listen to
yourself, to your intuition, toyour body. Does this feel right?
(11:22):
What is holding me back?
What is it that is keeping mefrom seeing a path ahead? And if
you can let go of whatever thatthose things are that are
keeping you from moving forwardthen you have the opportunity
and the opportunity to strikeout. Clearly you need to move
(11:45):
forward, you can't stay whereyou are forever. Well you could
try but you probably can't. Sofiguring out a step, tentative
as it may be, bold as it may be,is a place that you can try to
go.
(12:06):
Those are my thoughts for today.It's there are moments, I'm in
one of those moments when thereare a lot of things happening
and a lot of things trying tomake their way into my
consciousness, trying to help memake decisions or force me into
decisions whatever, and I amtrying to be careful about how I
(12:27):
make those and what they looklike. So I encourage you to do
the exact same thing. Find apractice that works for you.
Journaling might be really goodjust because it allows you to
clear the decks.
Meditation, letting go of allthe thoughts, recognizing what
the preconceptions about yourlife are. That's a possibility.
(12:50):
Another possibility might be todo sacred reading, something we
practice every Thursday on thissame channel, same spot at noon.
Any of those things arepossibilities. But do something
and don't just jump ahead.
(13:11):
Take us a moment to rock backand figure out what's keeping
you, what's holding you, andmaybe there's a path you didn't
even see before. So just somethoughts for this day for you, I
encourage you to take those up.I'd love to hear your thoughts
(13:31):
about them if you want to sharethem. If you have a topic you'd
like for me to talk about on aTuesday either in the podcast or
in the broadcast, you can sendit to me at
infinitelypreciousllc@gmail.comand I will certainly take a look
at it. Until the next timeremember you are infinitely
(13:53):
precious and unconditionallyloved for the gift you already
are whether you know what yournext step is on the path or not.
Go in peace my friends until thenext time.
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