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What does it mean to truly inhabit a place, rather than just occupy it? In this episode of the Infinitely Precious podcast, James Henry continues the Inhabiting series, which has moved from our inner life to our work and now to the places where we live, travel, and worship. Speaking just before a trip to Portugal, James explores why physical location is not the same as presence. We can sit in a meeting, a classroom, or a beautiful café while our minds are somewhere else entirely.
James invites us to see place as more than scenery or a backdrop for our lives. Every place is a web of living relationships: the light on your desk, the air you breathe, the sounds before sunrise, the people, languages, and creatures around you. Drawing on a contemplative, Christian-rooted understanding of spirit as something we swim in rather than something abstract, he reminds us that the spiritual life happens in bodies, rooms, kitchens, streets, and neighborhoods. For anyone, there is only here.
You’ll leave with simple, practical mindfulness practices for being present wherever you are: walking slowly, listening before looking, sitting on the bench instead of rushing past it, noticing three sounds, watching how natural light falls, greeting another living being, and feeling the ground that holds you. Whether you’re traveling abroad or sitting at home, this episode offers a gentle spiritual practice for slowing down, paying attention, and coming home to the place you already are.
Remember, you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are.
In This Episode
- Why location is not presence, and how we can be physically somewhere while mentally anywhere else
- Where this fits in the Inhabiting series: from inner life and preciousness, to work, to place
- Why place is more than a backdrop or “set” constructed for our lives
- Seeing every place as a web of living relationships, from your home office to a town in Portugal
- Practicing presence while traveling, and at home
- Walking slowly and noticing sounds before sights
- Sitting on the bench: learning to pause without rushing on
- How to enter a room and receive it: light, sound, and atmosphere
- Why the spiritual life is embodied, in kitchens, streets, restaurants, and conversations with friends
- “There is only here”: a reflection on here, there, and being where you are
- A week-long invitation: notice three sounds, the fall of natural light, another living being, and the ground beneath your feet
- The guiding question: What is here that I have not yet noticed?
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Creators and Guests
What is Infinitely Precious?
Everyone is infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift they already are. Through affirmation and practice, each of us can begin to live from a place of recognizing our own preciousness and its extension in to everyone and everything else.
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.
James:Hello, beloved. It's me, James, and it's good to be with you for another week of the Infinitely Precious podcast. If you're enjoying the podcast, I encourage you to please share it with others and help them enjoy it too if you think it might be helpful. So we've been doing a series on inhabiting. We began with things like inhabiting our internal life, our own preciousness, etcetera.
James:There are lots of things about the internal life. And then we turned outward by inhabiting our work. Well, this week, I want to invite us to Inhabit Place, Inhabiting Place. And I want to say a little bit about that because it matters. By the time you hear this podcast, all things being equal, I'll be in Portugal.
James:When this drops, I will most likely be in a tiny town, Vienna Do Compolo, outside of Porto. And so I thought exploring what it's like not simply to visit a place, but to really inhabit the space of being there. What is it like for me? I can't tell you right now because I'm inhabiting a space that happens to be my home office as I'm talking to you as a part of inhabiting my work. But what will it be like to actually be physically and more than physically to be fully present?
James:Because I want to say to you first of all that location is not presence. We can physically occupy a place while mentally being anywhere else. I can be sitting in a meeting but being concerned about something I've got to do later on this afternoon. People could be sitting in a class while they're planning a date or what they're cooking for dinner. We aren't always where our bodies are, where we are physically.
James:So mentally, emotionally, spiritually, we can wander when physically we're in a place. And this is true about travel or at home. So I am hoping that wherever I happen to be at the time this drops in Portugal, that I will be inhabiting the place I am. Whether it's in the place we're staying, whether it's in maybe in a restaurant or on a walk down by the water, or just sitting in a cafe drinking a cup of coffee. I want to be there.
James:But the truth is I can be here at home and be just as less likely to be inhabiting a place as anywhere else. So, a place when I think about a place, I think of it as something more than scenery that's just constructed for me. So often I think when we look out from within, we're thinking that this space around us is just a backdrop, a set for our lives. And when in fact our lives are a part of all the things around us, all the things we see, all the places that we are. So a place is not simply a scene constructed for me.
James:When I am in, when this drops and is live, when I am in Portugal, wherever I am in Portugal, I want to be there in places that right now exist. They're just thousands of miles away from me because I'm on this side of the Atlantic. When I'm on that other side, I want to really be there. I want to meet the people. I want to enjoy the place.
James:I want to see what it's like. What I'm entering into is a web of living relationships, just like right where I am right now. I'm in a web of living relationships. There's a light over here that's providing light on this side of my face. I have a light that's supposed to be over here to provide a balancing light so I'm in balance.
James:It's not there, it's over here. So consequently, I'm in relationship to all the things around me, the air that I'm breathing, the walls that are here, the ceiling and above it the roof that is protecting me from the sun that's beating down. I am in a web of relationships right where I am and next week at this time, actually if you're listening to it, this week right where you are, I I'm going to be in a place in a web of relationships. People that I haven't met before, people that I have met before. I'm going to be listening to the Portuguese language going on all around me.
James:And while I might recognize some of it because I've been studying Portuguese in preparation for going there, I will just hear the words sometimes of people talking around me. I'll see the breeze. In the town we should be staying in on Wednesday, perhaps be just enjoying the we're near the ocean, the Atlantic Ocean. Perhaps we'll be getting some sea breezes coming in on us. I don't know, but there's a web of relationships there that already exist and of which I'll be a part and add to that web of relationships when I'm there.
James:So some of the things I think about when I think about the practice of inhabiting the place that you are is walking places slowly. For instance, that's just one. So often when we are walking, when we're not driving somewhere or riding some other form of transit, we are often on our way someplace else. So we are walking quickly. I imagine inhabiting as taking my time, noticing the things around me, not just how do I get where I'm going but what's going on around me right here.
James:Walking slowly. I'm noticing sounds before the sights. I'm listening. What do I hear? Oftentimes on a Sunday morning, I mean right now I could stop talking and just listen.
James:I can hear the fans that are blowing in my computer as it's cooling itself down while I'm recording this podcast. I can hear other things, but on a Sunday morning, as I sit in my chair, it's before the sun rises and it's further before the sun rises now as the days are shortening. I can hear things. I notice things and sounds because I can't see. It's dark and I'm sitting quietly with a cup of coffee just in held in my hand in the dark and I'm hearing things.
James:What would it look like to just sit somewhere without rushing on? So you're out for a walk, that slow walk, and you see a bench and you sit down and you just kind of notice what's going on. Return, listen, learn names, pay attention. When I come into a room, and I'm not always good at this but I'm learning to do this as I've been working on the Inhabiting series, I've been trying to practice inhabiting wherever I am. And when I come into a room, my office at work, you know, at building United Methodist Church or when I go into the conference room or when I had a series of meetings yesterday down at The Falls Church Episcopal Church, as I arrived in the room, I tried to look around just to see the room, what was there, just to receive it as the room, the place that I was in.
James:I observed it, how much light there was, what sounds were coming into the room. I might not be able to do that for a long time but I can certainly do it in the moment that I'm in. We are always somewhere. We're in a place. What would it look like for us if we could learn to really be in the place that we are?
James:You know, spiritual life is not an abstract movement. Know, we often think of spirit as something untouchable, unseeable, and yet we swim in the sea of spirit. Spirit inhabits us. Spirit is all around us. We're told spirit blows where it will and she is wild.
James:We are told those things and yet we imagine, and because it's imagined, we imagine it's abstract and it's real. The spiritual life happens in bodies, in rooms, in kitchens, on streets, in neighborhoods, at restaurants, in a conversation with a friend. All those places life happens in are right here. There is for any one of us who is listening to this right now, there is only here. For you, you can point over there and say, you know, there.
James:But where you are, there is only here. What would it look like to be here? You can be there later on, but you have to move over there. That's why it's there. It's a reference to there's here and there's not here and that not here is there.
James:What would it like to just be here for me to be here in this comfortable chair that I'm sitting in, my comfortable desk chair at the home office? So I invite you this coming week. I invite you as soon as the podcast ends, maybe even before it ends, you can turn it off now if you want, to notice three sounds, to notice the light and the way it falls, particularly natural light. How does it come in through your windows? How does it how is it falling when you're out for a walk?
James:I can see the light right here on my desk coming from my desk lamp coming towards me. I can see the shadows here on my desk if I just look down here. Notice another living being and it doesn't have to be a human being, can be, but perhaps you're outside and you see a squirrel or a bird or if you're paying close attention an ant or a beetle on the ground. You look off in the distance and perhaps you see a bumblebee or some other flying insect land somewhere pass by a beautiful spider's nest, spider's web. Notice the ground beneath your feet as you're walking.
James:Feel it supporting you as you land there. Ask yourself in all the places you find yourself, all the here's, what is here that I have not yet noticed? As we begin to take in more of where we are and become more present, we get to truly experience this life as it is. So I invite you to inhabit the place you find yourself. Thanks so much for joining me.
James:Remember, you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are in whatever place you find yourself. Several of you have asked me over time, are there ways that you can support the podcast financially? And if you want to, there is a financial link connected to the Infinitely Precious podcast site and you can simply make a simple donation there if you want. Everything about this podcast I want to remain absolutely without cost. There are some associated costs in producing it.
James:And since people have asked, I'm more than willing to say, if you'd like to give something to help support the podcast, you can. So know that there is a link and you can give to support the podcast if you wish. But whether you do or you don't, we're here for you. Thanks for being on the journey. And I wish you all the very best.