Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast: Recent Episodes
Thirdspace
Join Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise from Thirdspace for weekly conversations that ask how we might bring ourselves to life with as much courage and wisdom as we can. We start each episode with inspiring sources and then dive deep together into the questions and possibilities they open up. Find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, YouTube and FaceBook, at http://www.turningtowards.life and at http://www.wearethirdspace.org
*We begin with Ella Dessington’s poem “Where Words Kneel” and reflect on freedom, trust, safety, belonging and the limits of language. How language is always provisional, changing as we use it and inquire into its meanings. How fixed definitions can distance us from our living experience, and how relationships can remain alive through return, listening, apology, openness and the willingness to let one another change. An invitation to slow down, question what’s certain and stay with ourselves and one another until language becomes gentle and humble enough to meet experience.
This week is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace*.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Episode Overview00:00 Introduction
06:19 Ella's Poem: A Reflection on Language and Experience
10:20 The Challenge of Language in Expressing Experience
17:37 Speaking from Experience
23:12 Change and Relationship
29:25 Complexity and Reflection in Communication
34:04 The Practice of Slowing Down
Our source for this week:
Where Words Kneel
Freedom is a restless word.
The moment we believe we have found it,
it begins quietly building walls around itself.
Not because freedom deceives us,
but because language longs to settle,
while life refuses to stay still.
Trust follows close behind.
We speak of it as though it were something earned,
something possessed, something carefully placed between two people like a bridge.
Yet every bridge eventually becomes a structure,
and every structure forgets it was first imagined
to help someone cross.
I keep wondering whether words suffer
from the same temptation as empires.
They arrive to serve, then slowly begin governing.
Not with force, but with definition.
Not with violence, but with certainty.
Safety.
Freedom.
Trust.
Belonging.
Each begins as a living experience, until we ask it to carry more than any word can bear.
And still,
beneath all the naming,
life keeps escaping.
Relationship does not speak in nouns.
It speaks in returns.
In the hand that reaches again.
In the apology that arrives tomorrow.
In the silence that makes room instead of closing the door.
In the quiet decision to remain available after certainty has left the room.
So I wonder if freedom has never been the absence of constraint.
I wonder whether freedom is what becomes possible
when neither of us
is required
to remain
who we were
when we first began speaking.
And I wonder whether listening
has never been the search for better language.
Maybe it is the slower practice
of staying with one another
until language itself grows gentle enough,
humble enough,
to kneel
before experience.
Ella Dessington
Photo by jason hu on Unsplash
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Join Us Live in 2026
Foundations of Integral Development Coaching, led by Lizzie and Justin
Sept 9-10 2026, Online, Book HereOur two-day immersive introduction to integral development coaching, led by Lizzie and Justin from Turning Towards Life. An opportunity to begin to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
You can read more 'Foundations' and book a place here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
You can hear us talk about the philosophy of our coaching programmes here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching
And our year-long Professional Coaching Course details are here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
*In this episode of Turning Towards Life, we open into a conversation about living and dying, the memory of those who matter to us, presence, and love. Speaking from the freshness of recent losses, we explore how those we love can remain vividly alive in us, and how this can become a way of carrying them forward as a blessing.
This week is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace*.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Episode Overview00:00 Welcome and the practice of being alive
02:24 Poem: “To Be” by Roberta Morrow
05:00 Grief, love, and Sylvia’s presence
10:40 “May her memory be for a blessing”
18:37 Practicing presence with those we love
22:39 Old photos and making the past present
28:51 Living as a blessing to others
31:45 Closing reflections and gratitude
Our source for this week:
To be.
Wild in our arriving,
We are born flesh of the forest.
Held by the red of the earth,
Carried by the bluest stream.
Each day is the death of the last,
Each morning a chance to be again.
To be.
To truly be.
To press our hearts to the dirt,
To hold our children fiercely.
To laugh from the depths of our bellies until tears press at our seams.
To look to the sky and know we will be guided by the wings of the wise hawk…
To let our loved ones die.
To hold them close as they die.
Our love journeys with them,
So they may be, again.
Roberta MorrowPhoto by Dasha Urvachova on Unsplash
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Join Us Live in 2026
Foundations of Integral Development Coaching, led by Lizzie and Justin
Sept 9-10 2026, Online, Book HereOur two-day immersive introduction to integral development coaching, led by Lizzie and Justin from Turning Towards Life. An opportunity to begin to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
You can read more 'Foundations' and book a place here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
You can hear us talk about the philosophy of our coaching programmes here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching
And our year-long Professional Coaching Course details are here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
*Following a very welcome request from a listener, we return to a conversation about the strength to be open and affected by others, to reshape ourselves from what we receive, and to influence others only after being influenced by them. And how that capacity underpins trustability, the extension of safety to one another, purpose, and staying-with appropriately in each kind of relationship.
This week is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace*.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Episode Overview00:00 Continuing the conversation on relational power
05:40 This week's source
09:38 Recognition, commitment, and change
17:30 Purpose in relationship
21:23 Making room for sense making
26:17 Strength, repair, and time
29:03 From safety to trustability
35:11 Keeping the questions open
Our source for this week:
It is not our power to remain unaffected, or even the power to control others, that makes our lives richer and more valuable. It is our amazing capacity to be affected by the incredible richness and complexity of the relational web in which we live… Relational power includes three components: (1) the ability to be actively open and affected by the world around us; (2) the ability to create ourselves out of what we have taken in; and (3) the ability to influence those around us by first having been affected by them… Everything actual exercises some power - either to affect or be affected. [But] there is a crucial, life-shaping difference between the power to control others and the strength that enables us to be active and open to the world around us. There is an equally vital difference between the power to control others by shutting them out of our lives and the power to engage the lives of others in ways that enrich us all… The world of the individual who can be influenced by another without losing his or her identity or freedom is larger than the world of the individual who fears being influenced. The stature of the individual who can let another exist in her or his own creative freedom is larger than the size of the individual who insists that others must conform to their own purposes and understandings.
From Process Relational Philosophy, Chapter 8 on ‘Relational Power’,
by C Robert MeslePhoto by Yuri Antonenko on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026
Foundations of Integral Development Coaching, led by Lizzie and Justin
Sept 9-10 2026, Online, Book HereOur two-day immersive introduction to integral development coaching, led by Lizzie and Justin from Turning Towards Life. An opportunity to begin to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
You can read more 'Foundations' and book a place here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
You can hear us talk about the philosophy of our coaching programmes here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching
And our year-long Professional Coaching Course details are here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
*On presence, embodiment, and choosing life-giving attention in the midst of our lives. How we might transform our experience into ‘drops of sunlight’ that help us stay in contact with life as we meet despair and the counterfeit comforts that promise relief but leave us diminished. An invitation to notice what brings freedom and love, both within ourselves and in relationship with others.
This week is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace*.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Our source for this week:
Cast All Your Votes For Dancing
I know the voice of depression
Still calls to you.
I know those habits that can ruin your life
Still send their invitations.
But you are with the Friend now
And look so much stronger.
You can stay that way
And even bloom!
Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions’ beautiful laughter.
Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From the sacred hands and glance of your Beloved
And, my dear,
From the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.
Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins
That may buy you just a moment of pleasure,
But then drag you for days
Like a broken man
Behind a farting camel.
You are with the Friend now.
Learn what actions of yours delight Him,
What actions of yours bring freedom
And Love.
Whenever you say God’s name, dear pilgrim,
My ears wish my head was missing
So they could finally kiss each other
And applaud all your nourishing wisdom!
O keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions’ beautiful laughter
And from the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.
Now, sweet one,
Be wise.
Cast all your votes for Dancing!
Hafiz
Translated by Daniel Ladinsky
Photo by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026
Foundations of Integral Development Coaching, led by Lizzie and Justin
Sept 9-10 2026, Online, Book HereOur two-day immersive introduction to integral development coaching, led by Lizzie and Justin from Turning Towards Life. An opportunity to begin to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
You can read more 'Foundations' and book a place here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
You can hear us talk about the philosophy of our coaching programmes here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching
And our year-long Professional Coaching Course details are here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
*It is not our power to remain unaffected, or even the power to control others, that makes our lives richer and more valuable. It is our amazing capacity to be affected by the incredible richness and complexity of the relational web in which we live… A conversation about the remarkable power that comes with staying open to others.
This week is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace*.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Our source for this week:
It is not our power to remain unaffected, or even the power to control others, that makes our lives richer and more valuable. It is our amazing capacity to be affected by the incredible richness and complexity of the relational web in which we live… Relational power includes three components: (1) the ability to be actively open and affected by the world around us; (2) the ability to create ourselves out of what we have taken in; and (3) the ability to influence those around us by first having been affected by them… Everything actual exercises some power - either to affect or be affected. [But] there is a crucial, life-shaping difference between the power to control others and the strength that enables us to be active and open to the world around us. There is an equally vital difference between the power to control others by shutting them out of our lives and the power to engage the lives of others in ways that enrich us all… The world of the individual who can be influenced by another without losing his or her identity or freedom is larger than the world of the individual who fears being influenced. The stature of the individual who can let another exist in her or his own creative freedom is larger than the size of the individual who insists that others must conform to their own purposes and understandings.
From Process Relational Philosophy, Chapter 8 on ‘Relational Power’,
by C Robert MeslePhoto by Yuri Antonenko on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026
Foundations of Integral Development Coaching, led by Lizzie and Justin
Sept 9-10 2026, Online, Book HereOur two-day immersive introduction to integral development coaching, led by Lizzie and Justin from Turning Towards Life. An opportunity to begin to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
You can read more 'Foundations' and book a place here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
You can hear us talk about the philosophy of our coaching programmes here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching
And our year-long Professional Coaching Course details are here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
*We can rely on the wisdom and expansiveness of our own hearts to hold and respond to the complexity of the world, though it's easy to ignore this as we pursue our strategies of trying to be right, or be in control, when it's hard to see a way through grief, or confusion, or anger, or self-righteousness. An invitation to do what leaves do - absorb the fierce energy that shines upon them and turn it into nourishment, beginning with wonderful words by our friend Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.
This week is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace*.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Our source for this week:
A Different Holding Pattern
March 3, 2022
If I am to hold the world in my heart,
then let me hold it the way leaves hold sunshine,
trapping the energy not for the sake of holding it,
but to transform it into nourishment.
Though the process isn’t simple, it’s common.
All around the globe, in every season,
leaves hold and synthesize
whatever the day gives them.
On a day when the energy of the world
seems too much to hold,
let me bid my heart turn
like a leaf to the sun
and make sugar.
The way Rilke turned grief into sonnets.
The way Sibelius turned war into song.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Photo by Brittany Lee on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026
Foundations of Integral Development Coaching, led by Lizzie and Justin
Sept 9-10 2026, Online, Book HereOur two-day immersive introduction to integral development coaching, led by Lizzie and Justin from Turning Towards Life. An opportunity to begin to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
You can read more 'Foundations' and book a place here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
You can hear us talk about the philosophy of our coaching programmes here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching
And our year-long Professional Coaching Course details are here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
When we're in difficulty, or people who matter to us are in difficulty, we often rush to find out how to make the problem go away. That's just fine for some issues we face... for example just before recording today's episode we had to fix an audio issue which would have prevented us getting this episode out. But many other kinds of difficulties are not so amenable to such an approach and, in any case, trying the 'fix' them might mean having to exile part of ourselves, or treat something that is deep and poetic as if it were shallow and trivial. So instead of trying to 'cure' an issue we face, Thomas Moore's source this weeks invites us into an ethic of 'care', in which we "might take the time to watch and listen as gradually it reveals the deeper mysteries lying within daily turmoil. Problems and obstacles offer a chance for reflection that otherwise would be precluded by the swift routine of life." This week is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
**Our source for this week:
Care vs Cure**
A major difference between care and cure is that cure implies the end of trouble. If you are cured, you don’t have to worry about whatever was bothering you any longer. But care has a sense of ongoing attention. There is no end. Conflicts may never be fully resolved. Your character will never change radically, although it may go through some interesting transformations. Awareness can change, of course, but problems may persist and never go away.
Our work in psychology would change remarkably if we thought about it as ongoing care rather than as the quest for a cure. We might take the time to watch and listen as gradually it reveals the deeper mysteries lying within daily turmoil. Problems and obstacles offer a chance for reflection that otherwise would be precluded by the swift routine of life. As we stop to consider what is happening to us and what we're made of, the soul ferments, to use an alchemical word. Change takes place, but not according to plan or as the result of intentional intervention. If you attend the soul closely enough, with an educated and steadfast imagination, changes take place without your being aware of them until they are all over and well in place. Care of the soul observes the paradox whereby a muscled, strong-willed pursuit of change can actually stand in the way of substantive transformation.
Thomas Moore
from Care of the Soul
Photo by Lucas George Wendt on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026
Foundations of Integral Development Coaching, led by Lizzie and Justin
Sept 7-8 2026, OnlineOur two-day immersive introduction to integral development coaching, led by Lizzie and Justin from Turning Towards Life. An opportunity to begin to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
You can hear us talk about our coaching programmes her here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching
You can read more 'Foundations' here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
And our year-long Professional Coaching Course here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
*When our lives change in an instant, when we find ourselves in relational difficulty, when circumstances shift and we no longer understand what to do... what then? In this week's source, Ingrid Goff-Maidoff invites us to trust the inherent openness and holding power of our hearts as both a support and as a pathway. And that's our conversation this week - how to we learn to trust the many-chambered heart that was given to each of us without our having to do a single thing? And what might it be to respond to the hugeness of life, with all its intense joys and searing difficulties, with the qualities that our hearts can bring?
This week is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace*.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
**Our source for this week:
My Heart Opened and I Went In
One day I looked around
and all my certainties we gone.
(While once I'd thought I knew some things
now there was nothing to be sure of.)
How could life go on, business as usual?
Shattered, I looked for bits of the lost threads.
Whenever I found one, I would grasp hold
and add it to a frail weaving back of the old ways.
But my weaving was too loose,
and so it scattered like a cobweb
on the first strong wind.
To be empy handed, empty of reason-
was this safe? How would I survive it?
I had no choice.
My heart opened and I went in.
Ingrid Goff-Maidoff**ingridgoffmaidoff.com
Photo by Mohammed Amine El yassari on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026
Foundations of Integral Development Coaching, led by Lizzie and Justin
Sept 7-8 2026, OnlineOur two-day immersive introduction to integral development coaching, led by Lizzie and Justin from Turning Towards Life. An opportunity to begin to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
You can hear us talk about our coaching programmes her here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching
You can read more 'Foundations' here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
And our year-long Professional Coaching Course here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
How much of each us gets excluded when we constantly compare ourselves to one another, and to the expectations we're handed by our culture. And how much we exclude the gifts of others by the very same process. Is there a way we could give up inappropriate comparison and in so doing learn to include so much more everyone's talents and gifts, and the supportive ground of life itself?
In this conversation we talk about different kinds of learning, mischief, the attitudes we take that portray us as 'better than' or 'worse than' others, and what it is to deeply and gladly welcome the many kinds of difference and intelligence that are available in the world.
This week's Turning Towards Life is from May 2023, remixed and represented as we are in the midst of teaching the final session of this year’s Professional Coaching Course. It’s hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Our source for this week:
People ask me
why I am happy.
What can I say ?
I stopped trying to be
the sharpest tool
in the shed.
Once I gave that up,
I could rest in all this love.
Relaxed, I opened the door,
stepped out and discovered
the whole bliss garden
I'd been missing.
Ingrid Goff-Maidoffingridgoffmaidoff.com
Photo by Lucio Patone on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026
Foundations of Integral Development Coaching, led by Lizzie and Justin
Sept 7-8 2026, OnlineOur two-day immersive introduction to integral development coaching, led by Lizzie and Justin from Turning Towards Life. An opportunity to begin to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
You can hear us talk about our coaching programmes her here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching
You can read more 'Foundations' here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
And our year-long Professional Coaching Course here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Some people have the patience to sit with the right problem instead of fixing the wrong one. They ask the question that actually needs asking, don’t accept our stories at face value, and get to the real thing waiting to be said. They see what we’re actually struggling with, not the account we offer. They are quiet, patient, kind, curious, and deep enough for us to speak about what matters. They know when to wait and when to act. This capacity lives between and within us. It can grow and be practiced. And the world needs it now.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Our source for this week:
The real AI
To quote the great Steve Wozniak, “Actual Intelligence.” The kind we’re born with and can develop if we choose. It’s worth more now than ever before. Alas, it’s rarely taught in school.
The difficult work of making choices.
The act of curation.
The responsibility of putting your name on it.
The judgment to ask the right questions and skip the other ones.
The imperative to ship useful work.
The pursuit of good taste.
The patience to sit with the right problem rather than solving the wrong one.
The generosity to create for someone specific.
Seeking justice.
Offering dignity.
Knowing when to stop.
Investing in deep empathy, not a shallow substitute.
Taking initiative and doing the reading.
Being patient, or impatient, depending on what’s needed.
Ignoring the noise.
Making something that matters.
Caring.
Seth Godin
seths.blog
Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026
Foundations of Integral Development Coaching, led by Lizzie and Justin
Sept 7-8 2026, OnlineOur two-day immersive introduction to integral development coaching, led by Lizzie and Justin from Turning Towards Life. An opportunity to begin to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
You can hear us talk about our coaching programmes her here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching
You can read more 'Foundations' here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
And our year-long Professional Coaching Course here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Inspired by William Martin’s poem ‘Journey’s End’, we wonder together about what it would be to each receive the one, precious, unique life that we are rather than trying all the time to be something or someone else. What happens when we let ourselves soften into receiving everything that has, since the beginning of time, led directly to each of us, seeing ourselves and one another as the sacred presences that we are? And what might the words of someone towards the end of their life offer us to help us do that?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Our source for this week:
Journey's End
I’ve reached the end of my journey.
Not at all a giving up on life,
simply no more striving,
seeking, searching, trying,
maintaining, growing, gaining.
No more reading to improve myself.
No more spiritual practices seeking God.
No more interest in insights.
I’m at the Still Point of the journey’s end
seeing for the first time that it is where
I’ve always been.
Deep breath, happy sigh,
quail strutting on the wall.
William Martin
williammartin.org
Photo by Paulo Pescada on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026
Foundations of Integral Development Coaching, led by Lizzie and Justin
Sept 7-8 2026, OnlineOur two-day immersive introduction to integral development coaching, led by Lizzie and Justin from Turning Towards Life. An opportunity to begin to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
You can hear us talk about our coaching programmes her here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching
You can read more 'Foundations' here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
And our year-long Professional Coaching Course here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
We're unable to record a new episode this week so we have remixed the sound and video on one of our favourites, from 2022, about a topic that we're thinking about a lot right now - time. So often our lives are ruled by 'clock time' - we're counting off how long there is to get something done, or we're aiming for a time-bound goal, or we're measuring time wasted or time used productively. But although this is the dominant way of understanding time for many of us, it is only one way of relating to the flow of things. What if, instead of filling time with work or play, we turned things around and allowed time to flow into our activity? And what if instead of trying to secure ourselves against an unpredictable future, we took up a playfulness with the unfolding of time itself? A conversation about living into our lives as an infinite unfolding, rather than a finite game.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Our source for this week:
What Is Time?
There are two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play…
For an infinite player there is no such thing as an hour of time. There can be an hour of love, or a day of grieving, or a season of learning, or a period of labour.
An infinite player does not begin working for the purpose of filling up a period of time with work, but for the purpose of filling work with time. Work is not a way of passing time but engendering possibility. Work is not a way of arriving at a desired present and securing it against an unpredictable future but of moving towards a future that itself has a future.
[So] infinite players cannot say how much they have completed in their work or love or quarrelling, but only that much remains incomplete in it. They are not concerned to determine when it is over, but only what comes from it…
A finite player puts play into time.
An infinite player puts time into play.
James Carse, from ‘Finite and Infinite Games’
Photo by Joe Pregadio on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026
Professional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
You can hear us talk about the programme here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching
And you can read more about it here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
*What might become possible if, even for a moment, we let ourselves feel cherished… allowing ourselves to feel the care of others as a living presence in our bodies? And what happens to our way of being in the world when we use this as a doorway, returning us to connection, to belonging, to the quiet rhythm of being human together?
In this episode, we turn toward a luminous poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, and into a conversation about imagination as a way to recover our capacities as we respond to the world. We explore what it means to remember we are held, how that remembrance changes the way we meet one another, and why it may be more foolish not to imagine a world that can be shaped by our care. Along the way, we find ourselves asking: if even one of us begins to live as though we are cherished, what kind of ripple might that set in motion?*
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction and Community Engagement
03:33 The Power of Imagination
10:08 Cherishment and Connection
17:12 The Ripple Effect of Cherishment
22:14 Choosing Connection Over Isolation
30:20 Creating Community Spaces
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Our source for this week:
A Great Shining
inspired by Maya Stein’s 10-line poem form
What if, in this moment, every person on earth thinks of someone who makes us feel cherished,
known, safe? What if we let ourselves linger in this moment of connection? What might happen inside
each body? What might happen in the world as in unison our breaths begin to even and slow? Would
the pulsing of our hearts begin to synch, the way heart cells in a petri dish come to keep time with
each other? What is earth if not a great experiment in which we are all both observer and observed?
How long could it last, this rhythmic communion between jailor and prisoner, oppressor and
oppressed, between fighter and fighter, maker and destroyer, parent and child, liar and believer, all of
us thinking of love? Foolish, perhaps, to imagine such impossible moments. But more foolish not to
imagine such things. Even now, I’m thinking of someone. It feels like the moon is inside me.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Rosemerry's Website wordwoman.com Rosemerry's Poetry ahundredfallingveils.com
Join Us Live in 2026
Professional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
You can hear us talk about the programme here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching
And you can read more about it here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Identity, integrity, and how we come to understand ourselves through attention, discernment, reflection and relationship. Drawing on Parker Palmer’s The Courage to Teach, Justin and Lizzie talk about the life-giving values of curiosity, seeing one another, and the possibilities that arise when we create opportunities for us all to express and inquire into our inner lives together with honesty, courage, wonder and care.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction to Turning Towards Life
02:20 The Aliveness of Conversation
04:48 Exploring Identity and Integrity
10:28 Circles of Congruence
16:22 The Importance of Community
22:19 Curiosity and Connection
27:08 Cultural Context and Personal Responsibility
32:33 The Power of Seeing One Another
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Our source for this week:
Identity and Integrity
By identity I mean an evolving nexus where all the forces that constitute my life converge in the mystery of self: my genetic make up, the nature of the man and woman who gave me life, the culture in which I was raised, people who have sustained me and people who have done me harm, the good and ill I have done to others and to myself, the experience of love and suffering - and much, much more.
In the midst of that complex field, identity is a moving intersection of the inner and outer forces that make me who I am, converging in the irreducible mystery of being human.
By integrity I mean whatever wholeness I am able to find with than nexus as its vectors form and re-form the pattern of my life. Integrity requires that I discern what is integral to my selfhood, what fits and what does not - and that I choose life giving ways of relating to the forces that converge within me: Do I welcome them or fear them, embrace them or reject them, move with them or against them? By choosing integrity, I become more whole, but wholeness does not mean perfection. It means becoming more real by acknowledging the whole of who I am.
Identity and integrity are not the granite from which fictional heroes are hewn. They are subtle dimensions of the complex, demanding, and lifelong process of self-discovery. Identity lies in the intersection of the diverse forces that make up my life, and integrity lies in relating to those forces in ways that bring me wholeness and life rather than fragmentation and death.
Parker Palmer, from ‘The Courage to Teach’
Photo by Dalelan Anderson on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026
Professional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
You can hear us talk about the programme here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching
And you can read more about it here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
How do we learn to be honest about our lives… to look closely, to say truthfully what we see, and to turn with reverence and respect to all that has been and the path that unfolds before us? Said another way, what does it take to say ‘yes’ to our lives, in spite of everything?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction to Reverence and Connection
05:27 Exploring Rilke's Poetic Insights
11:22 The Journey of Self-Reflection
21:10 Embracing Spaciousness in Life
26:11 Confronting Mortality and Vastness
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Our source for this week:
I Am Much Too Alone in This World
I am much too alone in this world,
yet not alone enough
to truly consecrate the hour.
I am much too small in this world,
yet not small enough
to be to you just object and thing,
dark and smart.
I want my free will and want it accompanying
the path which leads to action;
and want during times that beg questions,
where something is up,
to be among those in the know,
or else be alone.
I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection,
never be blind or too old
to uphold your weighty wavering reflection.
I want to unfold.
Nowhere I wish to stay crooked, bent;
for there I would be dishonest, untrue.
I want my conscience to be
true before you;
want to describe myself like a picture I observed
for a long time, one close up,
like a new word I learned and embraced,
like the everyday jug,
like my mother’s face,
like a ship that carried me along
through the deadliest storm.
Rainer Maria Rilke
English translation by Annemarie S. Kidder.
Photo by Vida Huang on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026
Professional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
You can hear us talk about the programme here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching
And you can read more about it here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Cultivating both joy and sorrow within us. Seeing what they are made of, so that we can approach them with reverence rather than trying to control them or banish them. And finding out that that the more we go on in lives, the more we can know and the more we can have faith that we can meet what life brings us.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction and Context
03:05 The Inner Child and Magic in All Creatures
06:10 Delighting in Life and Connection
09:12 The Role of Time in Our Experiences
11:46 Reverence Towards Sorrow and Joy
14:44 The Complexity of Joy and Sorrow
17:50 Intention and Commitment to Experience
20:49 Community and Shared Language
23:56 Conclusion and Gratitude
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Our source for this week:
Blessed is the person
who delights in seeing
the inner child in every one
and the magic in all creatures
who does not shun difficulty
and can turn with equal reverence
toward sorrow and joy
who can trust fear as
the balsam of courage
and pain as an instrument
for opening the heart
who can pause to notice
the delicate lustre of a lichen
and the undulations of the light
who dares to make hope
an axiom of being
and is strong enough
to be changed by love.
Maria Popova, from The Almanac of Birds
Photo by Ramona Edwards on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026
Professional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
You can hear us talk about the programme here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching
And you can read more about it here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
*“The circumstances of our lives don’t have to be perfect in order for us to feel like we’re alive. The world and the people and things in it are calling for our participation - our granting everything significance and feeling and knowing our own significance too.”
A conversation about our choices as we relate with who and what is around us, and how we might live our way into the sacredness of everything, including ourselves.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction to Turning Towards Life
01:20 Exploring Healthy Power
04:52 The Significance of Encounters
10:42 The Invitation to Relationship
17:39 The Power of Significance
22:06 Covenant and Responsibility
28:02 Living in Relationship
29:57 Finding Fulfillment in Ordinary Moments
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Our source for this week:
The Baal-Shem teaches that no encounter with a being or a thing in the course of our life lacks a hidden significance. The people we live with or meet with, the animals that help us with our farm work, the soil we till, the materials we shape, the tools we use, they all contain a mysterious spiritual substance which depends on us for helping it towards its pure form, its perfection. If we neglect this spiritual substance sent across our path, if we think only in terms of momentary purposes, without developing a genuine relationship to the beings and things in whose life we ought to take part, as they in ours, then we shall ourselves be debarred from true, fulfilled existence.
It is my conviction that this doctrine is essentially true. The highest culture of the soul remains basically arid and barren unless, day by day, waters of life pour forth into the soul from those little encounters to which we give their due; the most formidable power is intrinsically powerless unless it maintains a secret covenant with these contacts, both humble and helpful, with strange, and yet near, being.
Martin Buber
Photo by Linh Pham on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026
Professional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
You can hear us talk about the programme here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching
And you can read more about it here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
*“If I don’t want to be that person who uses power for the sake of power just because I can, and because I can frighten people, and because people do what I say because they’re scared… then what power am I using? How do I find creative alternatives to power struggles - to use my power as a person to enable something to happen, but not because of fear?”
An exploration of how we can use the great powers that come with being human with intention, responsibility, care, and creativity, so that we can help shape a world we actually want to live in.*
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction to Turning Towards Life
01:22 Exploring Power Dynamics
06:11 Healthy Power vs. Coercive Power
11:40 Intention and Responsibility in Power
17:28 Seeing Systems of Power
20:54 Conclusion and Future Conversations
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Our source for this week:
Both men and women suffer when power is exercised for its own sake by rule- and authority-bound women and men. Powermongers usually win their own games; they are operating on home territory. To go beyond power and the structures that support it usually involves quietly stepping aside. We do not step aside to disengage but to evolve creative alternatives to power struggles.
We may not be able to do as much as we would like about the way things turn out on sociopolitical battle-grounds, that often require well-coordinated strategies involving many people. However, we can certainly begin with ourselves. We do not have to react in kind. We can learn to choose how we want to respond.
Who are your inner powermongers? What do they say? How do they keep the rules?
Marion Woodman, from ‘Coming Home to Ourselves’
Photo by Eddie Kopp on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026
Professional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
You can hear us talk about the programme here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching
And you can read more about it here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
How can we love - people, life, the world - in a way that allows us to genuinely contribute? And how is that different from the kind of love that is really a strategy to have ourselves feel ok? That second kind of love might be better understood as a way that we try to control life or other people - we’ll love just as long as we get back exactly what we hoped for. The first kind of love is wilder and more surprising and, as author Maria Popova says, the great wonder is ‘how it continues to hold as it continues to change’.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction to Turning Towards Life Podcast
04:23 Exploring the Source: Maria Popova's Poem
06:17 The Nature of Love and Neediness
12:45 Distinguishing Love from Control
19:41 Loving Kindness as a Disposition
27:47 The Essence of Lovingness
31:31 Reflections on Love in Today's World
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
You can find our source for this week, as well as the video of this conversation, on our website here: www.turningtowards.life/home/love-is-always-wilder-than-you-supposePhoto by Bob Brewer on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026
Professional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
You can hear us talk about the programme here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching
And you can read more about it here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
When we think of ourselves only as isolated, separate individuals, we lose sight of the vast life that came before us, which gave us birth, and the vast life which will come after us. Even though we will all, without exception, eventually be forgotten, there is no knowing how the gifts we bring flow on into the life we leave behind us. And there, perhaps, there is both solace and also inspiration - that what we do, and whose lives we touch, matter far beyond anything we can see or tell.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction and Context
03:06 Exploring Parker Palmer's Wisdom
11:56 The Nature of Existence and Relationships
21:00 Essence and Contribution in Life
26:47 Embracing the Mystery Together
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Here's our source for this week:
The Great Weave of Nature and Humanity
Sooner or later, everything falls away.
You, the work you’ve done, your successes,
large and small, your failures, too. Those
moments when you were light, alongside
the times you became one with the night.
The friends, the people you loved
who loved you, those who might have wished
you ill, none of this is forever. All of it is
soon to go, or going, or long gone.
Everything falls away, except the thread
you’ve followed, unknowing, all along.
The thread that strings together all you’ve
been and done, the thread you didn’t know
you were tracking until, toward the end,
you see that the thread is what stays
as everything else falls away.
Follow that thread as far as you can and
you’ll find that it does not end, but weaves
into the unimaginable vastness of life. Your
life never was the solo turn it seemed to be.
It was always part of the great weave of
nature and humanity, an immensity we
come to know only as we follow our own
small threads to the place where they
merge with the boundless whole.
Each of our threads runs its course, then
joins in life together. This magnificent tapestry –
this masterpiece in which we live forever.
Parker PalmerPhoto by Bernd 📷 Dittrich on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026
Professional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
You can hear us talk about the programme here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching
And you can read more about it here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Crossing thresholds in life - birth, death, loss, love, discovery, confusion - is inevitable. How can we do this in a way that recognises the mystery of each of life's great transitions, and which honours how each changes us? And how can we be ones who are wise, compassionate and courageous as we witness and accompany others through those inevitable transitions, without turning away? We recorded this conversation in front of a live audience of Thirdspace alumni, at our March 2026 Retreat.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Celebrating Togetherness and Community
04:15 Exploring Thresholds: A Journey of Change
08:33 Navigating Life's Unforeseen Transitions
12:36 The Power of Connection in Times of Change
16:33 Navigating Life's Thresholds
19:07 The Importance of Rituals
22:10 Community and Connection in Transition
25:09 Grounding in Everyday Rituals
27:55 Witnessing Each Other's Journeys
31:02 Embracing Vulnerability and Seeking Help
34:14 The Spirituality of Everyday Life
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Here's our source for this week:
Thresholds [Part 1]
*A threshold is not a simple boundary;
it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms and atmospheres.
Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience
or a stage of life that it intensifies towards the end into a real frontier
that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up.
At this threshold a great complexity of emotion comes alive:
confusion, fear, excitement, sadness, hope.
This is one reason why such vital crossings were always clothed in ritual.
It is wise in your own life to be able to recognize and acknowledge the key thresholds:
to take your time, to feel all the varieties of presence that accrue there,
to listen inwards with complete attention
until you hear the inner voice calling you forward.
The time has come to cross.
To acknowledge and cross a new threshold is always a challenge.
It demands courage and also a sense of trust in whatever is emerging.
This becomes essential when a threshold opens suddenly in front of you,
one for which you had no preparation.
This could be illness, suffering or loss.
Because we are so engaged with the world,
we usually forget how fragile life can be and how vulnerable we always are.
It takes only a couple of seconds for a life to change irreversibly.
Suddenly you stand on completely strange ground
and a new course of life has to be embraced.
Especially at such times we desperately need blessing and protection.*
John O'Donohue
Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026
Professional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
You can hear us talk about the programme here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching
And you can read more about it here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Our 440th episode considers what it is for each of us to dare to bring our unique form of expression to the world. How we might take the ways we've learned to belong in our lives - which may have supported us and constrained us - and give enough space around them that we can be our own voice, rather than an echo; what ways of supporting one another are called for, so we can help one another do this; the kind of openness, curiosity, sensitivity, welcome and daring it can take to encourage others to be a voice of their own; and how welcoming in this way might be a way to learn and at the same time an act of deep service to life.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction and Listener Engagement
02:54 Exploring the Poem 'The Artist' by Bobby Morrow
06:00 The Process of Letting Go and Transformation
09:04 Art as a Reflection of Truth and Identity
11:46 The Role of Belonging in Personal Growth
14:42 Radical Amazement and Curiosity in Relationships
17:47 Creating Safe Spaces for Expression
20:57 The Necessity of Community and Connection
23:37 Conclusion and Reflections on the Journey
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Here's our source for this week:
The Artist
Breathing life into the artist
Is a deadly mission.
It will cost you this version of yourself,
perfect and all knowing.
As you die, tell me
what’s it to cry with curiosity?
To write with your frightening tears?
To feel fully?
This is what it is to breathe life into your words.
Becoming the artist is a deadly mission.
To roll the stone away and be alive in your truth takes an everydayness.
We practice and build,
We fall and find our feet,
We create masterpieces,
We wash them away.
I know you worked so hard
on this sense making,
Those sensible makings have carried you.
But still I ask.
What is this world without your art?
How do you love without your truth?
Bobby MorrowPhoto by Simi Iluyomade on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026
Professional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
You can hear us talk about the programme here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching
And you can read more about it here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
A conversation about the qualities that seem absent in us, that we long for so greatly, and the way they are already present in us because that is what humans are. How we find our courage, or integrity, or creativity or love not so much by trying to fill the absence from outside but by walking our way, patiently, into them in our everyday way of moving through life. All inspired by a wonderful poem 'Keeping Things Whole' by Mark Strand
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Celebrating Community and Connection
06:05 Exploring the Poem: Keeping Things Whole
11:56 Understanding Presence and Absence
18:07 Longing and Movement in Life
23:53 Cultivating Inner Qualities
29:52 Finding Wholeness in Everyday Life
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Here's our source for this week:
Keeping Things Whole
In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
Mark StrandPhoto by Klara Kulikova on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026
Professional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
You can hear us talk about the programme here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching
And you can read more about it here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 3, from September 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
A call to our imaginative capacities when we are caught in conflict with one another... our capacity to uncover new stories and new ways of understanding that bring us into a different kind of relationship with ourselves, with each other, and with the something we seem to be in conflict about. Imagination as a path to choice, invention, discovery and as a counter to our familiar ways of keeping ourselves safe, habitual and automatic. All inspired by a luminous poem by Joy Harjo.
In our conversation we talk specifically about Turning Towards Life - Live - Season 2, which begins in March 2026.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction to Turning Towards Life
04:01 Exploring Joy Harjo's Work
08:28 Navigating Conflict and Self-Discovery
13:59 The Nature of Conflict and Imagination
25:09 The Sacredness of Everyday Experiences
30:34 Redefining Forgiveness in Context
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Here's our source for this week:
Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings
Part 4
REDUCE DEFENSIVENESS AND BREAK THE DEFENSIVENESS CHAIN:
I could hear the light beings as they entered every cell. Every cell is a house of the god of light, they said. I could hear the spirits who love us stomp dancing. They were dancing as if they were here, and then another level of here, and then another, until the whole earth and sky was dancing.
We are here dancing, they said. There was no there.
There was no "I" or "you."
There was us; there was "we."
There we were as if we were the music.
You cannot legislate music to lockstep nor can you legislate the spirit of the music to stop at political boundaries—
—Or poetry, or art, or anything that is of value or matters in this world, and the next worlds.
This is about getting to know each other.
We will wind up back at the blues standing on the edge of the flatted fifth about to jump into a fierce understanding together.
Part 6
AND, USE WHAT YOU LEARN TO RESOLVE YOUR OWN CONFLICTS AND TO MEDIATE OTHERS' CONFLICTS:
When we made it back home, back over those curved roads
that wind through the city of peace, we stopped at the
doorway of dusk as it opened to our homelands.
We gave thanks for the story, for all parts of the story
because it was by the light of those challenges we knew
ourselves—
We asked for forgiveness.
We laid down our burdens next to each other.
Joy HarjoPhoto by Alexey Demidov on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026
Professional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
You can hear us talk about the programme here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching
And you can read more about it here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from 4 March 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
When we make mistakes or take a wrong turn, it's understandable that our first move might be to blame others, or try to defend ourselves, or do all we can to avoid the feelings of shame or disappointment that come our way. What those responses do, though, is close us off to our human capacity to learn and to be creative in the midst of our difficulties. So what does it take to turn towards the 'holes we fall into' with a kinder, more expansive spirit, and to grow ourselves a little bit bigger so we can respond? And, perhaps most importantly, what does it take to do this not on our own, but together with others?
In our conversation we talk specifically about Turning Towards Life - Live - Season 2, which begins in March 2026.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction to Turning Towards Life
03:01 On Reflection and Learning
05:46 Exploring Portia Nelson's Poem
09:11 Personal Reflections on Mistakes and Relationships
11:58 The Importance of Responsibility and Kindness
15:07 Navigating Relational Patterns and Habits
17:56 The Power of Choice and Agency
20:53 Understanding the Dynamics of Relationships
23:50 Finding Purpose in Conversations
26:46 The Role of Community in Growth
29:54 Conclusion and Invitation to Join the Journey
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Here's our source for this week:
Autobiography In Five Chapters
I
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost … I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes me forever to find a way out.
II
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place
but, it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
III
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in … it’s a habit.
my eyes are open
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
IV
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
V
I walk down another street.
by Portia Nelson
Join Us Live in 2026
Professional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
You can hear us talk about the programme here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching
And you can read more about it here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from 4 March 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
A conversation which begins with a beautiful and stirring song from MaMuse [a link to the song is in the show-notes]. How might we imagine light inside darkness, and call to the light in ourselves and in one another, even as we feel grief and worry and sadness? And how might we bring our imaginative capacities to invite one another into relationships of mutual care, for each other and for the world, especially in a time which often wants to teach us to fear one another instead?
In our conversation we talk specifically about Turning Towards Life - Live - Season 2, which begins in March 2026.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction to Intentional Practice
02:56 Exploring the Source: 'I Am Home in the Holy'
05:52 The Power of Mutual Care
09:05 The Invitation of Community
11:46 Navigating Grief and Tenderness
14:51 The Role of Language in Connection
18:02 Cultivating Joy and Playfulness
20:55 The Ground Holding Us
23:46 The Importance of Togetherness
27:08 Closing Reflections and Invitations
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Here's our source for this week:
Home in the Holy
I am home in the holy
I’m stepping in fully
To the shift
To the change
To the ground
That’s holding me.
I’m alive to the midnight,
Wide eyed in the twilight
Giving up
Giving in
Giving over to the mystery
May my life be an offering
To serve our mutual flourishing
We are in the care of one another
I keep my inner fires burning
Fuel the passion and the yearning
To give these gifts
To keep on learning
Without end
MaMuseMusic
Video of the full song is herePhoto by zenad nabil on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026
Professional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
You can hear us talk about the programme here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching
And you can read more about it here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from 4 March 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
How do we counter the stories in ourselves that render our lives flat, meaningless and mechanical? And how might we find sources of life inside ourselves and around us that support our participation, relationship and contribution, especially when we are feeling afraid or disoriented? A conversation about the everyday, about a radical appreciation of the sacredness of everything, and about breathing ourselves bigger to meet the one life that is offered to us.
In our conversation we talk specifically about Turning Towards Life - Live - Season 2, which begins in March 2026.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction and Connection
02:12 Exploring Creative Processes and Literature
03:21 Introduction and Overview of Turning Towards Life
06:26 Exploring the Improbable Nature of Existence
09:50 The Illusion of Control and the Power of Wonder
14:12 Finding Sacredness in the Ordinary
19:44 Engaging with Life's Complexity and Meaning
24:27 The Invitation to Expand Beyond Habitual Responses
28:26 Reflections on Time and Choices in Life
31:45 Closing Thoughts and Future Conversations
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Here's our source for this week:
On the Calculation of Volume
*It seems so odd to me now, how one can be so unsettled by the improbable. When we know that our entire existence is founded on freak occurrences and improbable coincidences. That we wouldn't be here at all if it weren't for these curious twists of fate. That there are human beings on what we call our planet, that we can move around on a rotating sphere in a vast universe full of inconceivably large bodies comprised of elements so small that the mind simply cannot comprehend how small and how many they are. That in this unfathom-able vastness, these infinitesimal elements are still able to hold themselves together. That we manage to stay afloat. That we exist at all. That each of us has come into being as only one of untold possibilities. The unthinkable is something we carry with us always. It has already happened: we are improbable, we have emerged from a cloud of unbelievable coincidences.
Anyone would think that this knowledge would equip us in some small way to face the improbable. But the opposite appears to be the case. We have grown accustomed to living with that knowledge without feeling dizzy every morning, and instead of moving around warily and tentatively, in constant amazement, we behave as if nothing has happened, take the strangeness of it all for granted and get dizzy if life shows itself as it truly is: improbable, unpredictable, remarkable.*
Solvej Balle, from ‘On the Calculation of Volume’, Vol 1Photo by Mario Losereit on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026
Professional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
You can hear us talk about the programme here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching
And you can read more about it here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
There's a certain kind of faithfulness in ourselves and in one another that is required if we are to address both the joys and the real difficulties of our lives. It's something beyond mere appreciation or even love, but a kind of fierce commitment to the sacredness of being a human. It allows us to be loving, to be tender, to say what's true, to recognise what is, to name suffering, to call on one another's capacities to respond. It requires us neither to diminish (ourselves or others) nor to inflate (others or ourselves), but to relate to one another with actual hope. It's a faithful attending to the aliveness and sheer awe-inspiring unlikeliness of being here that allows us to meet life and one another with deep respect and deep care. And it's embodied beautifully by our source, which in this episode comes from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.
In our conversation we talk specifically about the Thirdspace Professional Coaching Course, which next begins July 2026. You can hear all our other conversations about this programme at www.turningtowards.life/coaching
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Welcome and Introduction to Turning Towards Life
02:42 Exploring the Poem: 'In Case You Don't Know Already'
05:52 The Significance of Self-Recognition
08:52 The Power of Faith and Luminosity
11:41 Navigating Shadows and Clouds
14:44 The Role of Connection and Tethering
17:44 Faith in the Face of Darkness
20:48 The Depth of Human Experience
23:52 Faithfulness in Relationships
27:01 Conclusion and Reflection
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Here's our source for this week:
In Case You Don't Know Already
One day you will wake
and discover you are a sun,
radiant, fueled by your own core,
capable of luminosity so great
you blaze through lightyears of darkness.
You will know your own power
and it will never occur to you
not to trust it, not to share it.
You will not be able to forget
your own magnitude.
Nor will such glory be a burden.
You will simply shine
because that is who you are.
No need to apologize.
No reason to be jealous
of any other sun,
of any other star.
On that day,
you will see how it is
you have always been a sun,
even in the darkest days.
Then, you were also the clouds
and the great shadow
that made you stop
believing in your light.
You are, in fact,
what makes the day itself—
you are that integral,
that crucial,
that bright.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommerwww.wordwoman.com
Photo by Braňo on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online
Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'.www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
Professional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
You can hear us talk about the programme here:
www.turningtowards.life/coaching
And you can read more about it here:
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Thirdspace turns 21 years old today, and so we take this opportunity to reflect together on one of our central commitments: learning to respond ever more to the world with wisdom, creativity, and compassion. We talk about what it is to be an integral development coach, and what it is to learn to coach with these commitments in mind, especially during these times. And we reflect on the joys and opportunities of being intentionally of service to others and to the world around us.
In our conversation we talk specifically about the Thirdspace Professional Coaching Course, which next begins July 2026, and the Foundations of Coaching 2-day programme on February 9-10 and May 11-12.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction to the Year-Long Coaching Programme
04:31 Understanding Integral Development Coaching
11:47 The Importance of Community in Coaching
18:29 The Role of Service in Coaching
26:04 Awe and Wonder in Coaching Relationships
32:09 Conclusion and Invitation to Join the Programme
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Here's our source for this week:
"Despair is the covering of our love for our world, and we crack it open by speaking it so that our love can act. So the key is not being afraid of our pain for the world."
"This is the story of the transition from the Industrial Growth Society to a Life-Sustaining Society... More and more people come to see how interwoven we are as peoples and recognize that solidarity with one another is a way through these crises. So we join together to act for the sake of life on Earth."
"When we open our eyes to what is happening, even when it breaks our hearts, we discover our true size; for our heart, when it breaks open, can hold the whole universe."
Joanna Macywww.joannamacy.net/work
Photo by Justin Wise
Join Us Live in 2026Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online
Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'.www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
Professional Coaching Course, begins July 2-5 2026, OnlineOur year long programme, an opportunity to learn to support others in deep, life giving discovery and development.
www.wearethirdspace.org/professional-coaching-course
Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Perhaps we are so afraid of grief because we have forgotten how vast we humans are and can be. When we forget this, we mistake ourselves for a tiny receptacle, unable to imagine that we can meet life as it is. And then how little we let in, and how frightened we get of feeling the immensity both of our sadness and of the wonder of being here. In this episode we consider what it is to let ourselves widen, to relax our defendedness and our clinging-on so we can find ourselves in the sacredness that is both love and grief together, and meet one another - and life - there.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction and Overview
02:20 The Source of Inspiration: Mark Nepo's Poem
06:47 Exploring Love and Grief
12:31 The Interconnection of Emotions
18:41 The Holiness of Life and Death
24:57 Embracing the Fragility of Existence
30:29 The Invitation to Expand Our Hearts
37:47 Conclusion and Reflection
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Here's our source for this week:
Adrift
Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.
This is how the heart makes a duet of
wonder and grief. The light spraying
through the lace of the fern is as delicate
as the fibers of memory forming their web
around the knot in my throat. The breeze
makes the birds move from branch to branch
as this ache makes me look for those I've lost
in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh
of the next stranger. In the very center, under
it all, what we have that no one can take
away and all that we've lost face each other.
It is there that I'm adrift, feeling punctured
by a holiness that exists inside everything.
I am so sad and everything is beautiful.
Mark Nepo
Photo by Phil Botha on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online
Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'.www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
What if we mistake ourselves for the stories we've been told - that life is about our happiness, that we should wrestle control from circumstance, that we're separate from the world around us? A conversation about discovering that we didn't parachute into nature but grew from it, like apple blossoms on a vast tree of generations of living things. We ask: what becomes possible when we allow ourselves to feel the fullness of being human, grief and joy and all the rest, rather than contracting around our preferences? Could recognising ourselves as nature's response, rather than isolated egos demanding certainty, reveal what we're here to do?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Welcome to Turning Towards Life
02:45 Creating Conversations That Matter
04:35 The Irony of Pursuing Happiness
08:21 The Metaphor of Apple Blossoms
13:28 Rethinking Happiness
18:10 The Complexity of Human Experience
22:46 Engaging with Life's Uncertainty
26:32 Responding to Life as Nature
30:29 The Practice of Consciousness
32:31 Closing Reflections
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Here's our source for this week:
Your Life is Not About You
One of the cruelest ironies of Western life is that, today, the key, unquestioned, seemingly self-evident axiom of the Western wellbeing and self-help industry is precisely that our life is about us; that we have to wrestle the reins of our life from mere happenstance and circumstance and determine its course ourselves; that we have to proactively pursue our agenda and project meaning onto it; and - perhaps cruelest of all - that our life is about our being happy. All of this is unnatural and unjustified to the point of being grotesque... Is the life of an apple blossom about the apple blossom? If not, then for precisely the same reason ours cannot be about us. And this is the great discovery of the second half of life: our life isn't, has never been, and can't ever be about us. Why would it? We are part of nature; why would our life be about us and not nature as a whole? … Nature is, of course, impersonal. It's agenda is universal and holistic, not restricted to the petty egoic tastes and preferences of a person. It is naïve to expect a human being to be able to comprehend the … universal agenda, just as it is naïve to expect an apple blossom to comprehend what its role is in the grand scheme of apple trees and life on Earth. We are segments of nature, not mere witnesses; we didn't parachute into nature, but grew out of it. Therefore, we are nature, as expressed in a particular volume of spacetime.
Bernardo Kastrup - The Daimon and the Soul of the West
Photo by Anastasiya Romanova on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online
Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'.www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
We tend to divide our experience into two parts, which we usually name ‘good’ and ‘bad’. And we do so for good reason - to belong in our family systems and communities, to keep a particular image or identity going, because we are afraid of who and what we will be if we let love, or joy, or anger, or longing touch us. But the cost is high - in realness, in our capacity to bringing our gifts to the world, in our fully taking up the possibilities of this one precious life. So how might we welcome and re-include that which has been split off? And how might we do so in a way that is life-giving, mature, and responsive to our cares, concerns and commitments?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Welcoming 2026: A New Beginning
02:45 Exploring the Soul: Care and Reclamation
05:37 The Complexity of Anger: Embracing Our Emotions
08:53 Curiosity and Connection: Tending to Our Souls
11:46 The Journey to Wholeness: Integrating Rejected Parts
14:43 Realness in Relationships: The Value of Authenticity
17:53 The Power of Curiosity: Transforming Reactions into Growth
20:55 Nurturing Wholeness: The Role of Care in Soul Work
23:39 The Gift of Realness: Embracing Our True Selves
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.
Here's our source for this week:
Undividing Ourselves
We all tend to divide experience into two parts, usually the good and the bad. But there may be all kinds of suspicious things going on in this splitting. We may simply have never considered the value in certain things we reject. Or by branding certain experiences as negative, we may be protecting ourselves from some unknown fears. We are all filled with biases and ideas that have snuck into us without our knowing it. Much soul can be lost in such splitting, so that care of the soul can go a long way simply by recovering some of this material that has been cut off.
From ‘Care of the Soul’ by Thomas More
Photo by Mario Gogh on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online
Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'.www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Life presents itself to us in all its strangeness and beauty, but given the kind of beings we humans are, we might find ourselves tuning out or looking away. And that is so easy to do. But what if we started to see life as a question that is being asked of us, a call to pay attention and to receive the world, and to respond in the light of that? What aliveness might come? What possibilities for actually living our lives? And what generosity might we find towards this one life we are given?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction to the Conversation
01:31 Connecting this conversation to Integral Development Coaching
05:32 Exploring Mary Oliver's 'The Swan'
08:07 Awakening to Life's Beauty
12:26 The Interplay of Beauty and Heart
16:28 The Call to Receive Life
22:13 Understanding Affordance in Life
29:50 Shifting Perspectives: What Life Asks of Us
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
The Swan
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air –
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music – like the rain pelting the trees – like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds –
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?
Mary Oliver
Photo by Timothy Abraham on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online
Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'.www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
We carry other people inside us, when we're with them and when we are apart from them. After all, where does my experience of you live, apart from inside me? And your experience of me, apart from inside you? In this conversation we explore what it is to hold others in us in this way, and how our imaginative capacities might allow us to receive the sacredness of others while they are alive alongside us - with all the gifts and compassion that can bring - and when they are no longer alive. A conversation about loving fiercely, receiving one another, and grieving well so that we can live well.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Love Letter from the After Life
My love, I was so wrong. Dying is the opposite of leaving. When I left my body, I did not go away. That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here. I am more here than I ever was before. I am more with you than I ever could have imagined. So close you look past me when wondering where I am. It’s Ok. I know that to be human is to be farsighted. But feel me now, walking the chambers of your heart, pressing my palms to the soft walls of your living. Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive? Ask me the altitude of heaven, and I will answer, “How tall are you?” In my back pocket is a love note with every word you wish you’d said. At night I sit ecstatic at the loom weaving forgiveness into our worldly regrets …
Andrea GibsonDec 21 2023
You can read and hear the full poem at Andrea Gibson’s Websitehttps://substack.com/@andreagibson/p-139965380
Photo by Naoki Suzuki on Unsplash
Photo by Naoki Suzuki on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online
Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'.www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
We’re so good, we humans, at telling stories about ourselves, other people, our lives. Sometimes our stories bring us close in to the ground of what is - they remind us of our humanity, our dignity, our care, our vulnerability, and the brief span of our existence alongside one another on this planet. Other times our stories serve to take us away, to numb us, or make ourselves feel safe - perhaps at the expense of others, or to judge ourselves and others harshly for our shared human complexity and fallibility.
*So what would it be to have practices of speaking, looking, naming, writing that bring us back close to the ground of what is most unarguably true, and then pay attention to the stories we build on top of that so we have a greater chance to spread our wings and be the ones we long to be? Stories that recognise the sacredness of being human? Stories recognise how often we’ll fail, and what we can yet create, and call on us to include both?
We begin this week with a luminous piece by our friend Joy Reichart, whose work you can find at soulwriting.org*
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
What I know to be true
What I know to be true is that I needed to zoom this google doc to 125% to comfortably see the words I’m typing. I need to hold packages and bottles far from my face, under lamps and near windows, to read the instructions. What I know to be true is that I didn’t take a certain way home last night, driving in the dark, because I could not say for sure where exactly to enter the intersection.
What I know to be true is that there is a light gray streak in my hair, and I love it. And that I bought two pairs of reading glasses at the dollar store but never use them—not out of vanity, but simply because it still works to hold the thing under the light, or far away from my face, or to zoom in on the text (if zooming is an option).
What I know to be true is that no matter how enlightened we become we are still in human bodies, and now I get what the Buddhists talk about when they chant, over and over again, that we are going to get sick, and die, and lose everything.
Add to that list mistakes: we are going to make them. Even after learning the lessons. We’re going to, as a dear friend puts it, “step in it,” again and again. We’re going to watch ourselves with disbelief. How on earth did it happen again? Especially given how much I know, given how much it hurts?
Add to that list disharmony, unfinished business. Add to that list hatred and greed and all those very human tendencies that none of us—no matter who we are—are above.
Add to that list fear: the root of everything we don’t like about ourselves, of all that goes wrong.
I am human, I will fear. I may not be consumed by it every day. In fact in most moments I actually may get bigger than it; may attach myself to the love, to the joy, that I know is the actual truth. Still, it will sneak out from behind corners in the evening hours. It will stalk me when I am dehydrated, or overcommitted. It will brush me with its little fingers of worry, pelt me with tiny flashes of terror. It’ll make me want to solve things using my little human mind: the one that thinks it can singlehandedly battle fear, instead of reaching for a truer, realer source.
What I know to be true is that I will not escape any of this. Five decades on this earth in this meat suit, this bone ship, have made that abundantly clear.
What I also know, though, is that there is endless room for my soul to spread out here, and get bigger, and understand more, and giggle when I do the human things, and greet it all with equanimity, and accept the mission I assigned myself in the time before memory, in the time of clear sight, way back before my vision started to blur.
Nov 17, 2025
Written by Joy Reichartwww.soulwriting.org
Photo by Naoki Suzuki on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online
Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'.www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
*Earlier this week we ran a workshop for our Thirdspace coaching graduates on ‘supervision’ - the practice of supporting one another in being of service to others. Our source this week comes from one of the participants in that day, and asks what it is to ‘become a place’… in which we stand stable without dissolving, in which we hold a field of possibility and relationship without being claimed by it, in which we can be both ‘flame’ and ‘vessel’.
We know what good ‘places’ can be in human life. At their best and most resonant they are affordances for us to find our courage, love, presence, realness, generosity. When a place is made with care and attention it can awaken in us awe, wonder, a sense of home, belonging. They can turn us towards one another in genuine reciprocity. And so, we ask in this conversation, what is it to cultivate our capacity to ‘be a place’? And what might that make possible?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how 'inclusivity' starts with us and between us, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
I bring my small universe with me,
the part that simmers,
the part that stews,
the part that grows roots in uncertainty, and still feels everything.
And yet, I remain my own.
Autonomous. Upright. Or lying down
Always a quiet spine of presence
in the storm-light of relation
This is the work:
to stand stable without hardening
to share without dissolving
to hold the field without being claimed by it
to become a place
I remember myself as both flame and vessel.
Ella Dessington
Photo by Robert Lukeman on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online
Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'.www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
We are glad to bring you a repeat of our most popular ever episode "Always Be Vulnerable to All That You Are) from October 2021. We were unexpectedly interrupted for this week's live recording but will be back next week. When we learn to include more and more of ourselves, we also become more able to include more and more of one another. Being able to do this - to welcome that in us that's fearful, ashamed or lonely, as well as what's joyful, grateful and love-filled - is greatly helped by finding the bigger-something that we are... the something of us that's wide and deep, curious and compassionate and which is, essentially, welcome. And that's something we can also help one another with.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how 'inclusivity' starts with us and between us, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
VULNERABLE
Always be vulnerable
To your pain, your fear, your loneliness,
To your pleasure too, and your joy,
To all that travels through you.
Don’t close the doors
To these pilgrims from a far-off land,
But welcome them all ---
One a wild, restless spirit
Secretly longing to be tamed,
Another a lover on a long, sweet night,
Who only wants to melt in your embrace.
For this is how you grow ---
By including everything.
Always, always be vulnerable
To all that you are.
From “Poems of Love and Awakening” by John Welwood
Photo by Erika Fletcher on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online
Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'.www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
*On the astonishing power of metaphors to reframe our sense of who we are, what’s possible, and how we might hear and speak with one another… and on the ocean’s vastness and depth as a invitation for us to contain multitudes, especially when in the midst of our most challenging conversations.
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction and Context Setting
03:05 Exploring the Poem: 'Until I Thought of Myself as the Sea'
05:58 The Ocean Metaphor: Embracing Complexity
09:05 The Power of Metaphor in Self-Understanding
11:47 Widening Perspectives: The Ocean as a Shared Experience
14:52 Navigating Difficult Conversations with Oceanic Awareness
17:50 Truth and Multiplicity: The Ocean of Perspectives
20:59 Systems Thinking: The Ocean of Relationships
24:02 Conclusion and ReflectionHere’s our source for this week:
Until I thought of myself as the sea
I used to separate good days from bad until
I thought of myself as an ocean. I used to
split times I felt strong from when I felt weak
until I imagined myself as the sea. Calm and
rocky, wild and soft, still and powerful and vast
and more than any one thing. In the ocean it's
hard to divorce one mood from another, one wave
from the next. Now, on my worst days, I think
of how good life is too, how I still can greet joy
while swimming through grief. How fragile
strength feels. How I'm not any one thing in any
one moment on any one day. I'm all of it and
all of it is me.
Hannah Rosenberg@hannahrowrites
Photo by Sean Oulashin on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online
Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'.www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
*What if we see ‘the self’ not as something fixed, but as an ongoing act of responsibility and ever-unfinished creation… a way we make ourselves by how we live, the choices we make, and the way of relating to others and the world that we follow?
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction to Turning Towards Life
02:44 Exploring the Source: Be Yourself
04:37 The Creative Act of Being Ourselves
08:09 FindingTribe and Belonging
15:20 The Power of Choice and Response
18:55 Gentleness and Boldness in Self-CreationHere’s our source for this week:
Be Yourself
Really?
Which self?
The self you were when you were two years old, almost out of diapers?
The self you were when you were screaming with the fans at the big game?
The self you were after a long night?
How about this: Become the self you’d be proud to be. Hang out with people and ideas that help you become that self. Act like that self every chance you get.
Seth Godin
from Seth’s Blog
Photo by Nijwam Swargiary on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online
Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'.www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
*How do we discover what brings life and vitality to us? How do we identify and acknowledge the destructive forces within ourselves? Can we approach the complex, ongoing process of discernment with maturity and nuance, avoiding simplistic judgments? And what resources or practices can we trust to guide us through this challenging work?
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction and Context of the Conversation
02:57 Our Source for This Week, by Nick Cave
06:05 The Nature of Evil and Human Complexity
08:41 The Inherent Potential for Goodness in Humanity
12:00 The Cosmic Disposition Towards Goodness
14:47 The Duality of Good and Evil in Human Experience
17:45 The Responsibility of Attending to Sorrow
20:46 The Choice to Cultivate Goodness
24:05 The Power of Intentional Living
26:41 The Complexity of Human Relationships
30:01 The Importance of Slowing Down and Reflecting
33:01 Conclusion and Reflection on the ConversationWoven Into Everything
I am inclined to believe in a form of intelligence within the universe, as I hold that consciousness or ‘intelligence’ exists throughout everything, that it goes all the way down to the fundamental atomic matter of things. This force, woven into everything - both living and non-living - is inherently good. If we choose, we could call this force God. I view this power as a kind of cosmic disposition that grows, understands, and empathises with us - suffers with us, you might say - and that humans are ‘fractal', as Cormac so beautifully puts it, exemplars or metaphors of the melancholic nature of this God-soaked universe.
I believe that evil exists not only within the human heart but also as an external energy separate from us, moving through the world - a nullifying, destructive potency - 'going to and fro in the earth and walking up and down in it’. We can see it, if we choose, all around us. Yet, we can act as the remedy to this existential predicament by directing our efforts towards the world’s flourishing and away from its destruction, in whatever way we can. It is our duty to attend to the sorrow of the universe - the sorrow of God.
Nick Cave
from The Red Hand Files Issue # 342
Photo by NASA on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online
Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'.www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
*We are so excited to bring you this episode, which draws on some brilliant writing by Jonah Platt about why we should work to keep on bringing out what is 'implicit' inside us into the world of relationship - making it 'explicit'. In this conversation we tackle the world head on, from the most intimate relationships to the largest scale challenges facing us societally and politically, and we wonder together about the maturity, generosity and boldness it takes for us humans to keep talking and listening to one another. And we talk together about pragmatism - doing what it takes to improve things, rather than falling into trying to avoid certain feelings, or keeping ourselves in familiar territory, or trying to keep things too safe. It's a bold, warm, playful and important conversation - and we are very glad to share it with you.
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction and Welcome
05:30 The Importance of Making the Implicit Explicit
10:28 Exploring Resistance to Explicit Communication
15:26 The Role of Patience and Slowing Down
20:09 Navigating Complexity in Relationships
25:22 The Pragmatism of Explicit Communication
30:14 The Risk and Creativity of Sharing Implicit ThoughtsMaking the Implicit Explicit
To achieve clearly understood communication in our relationships, personal, professional, casual, romantic, online, every level of life, it is critical that we remind ourselves to make the implicit explicit. That's the idea. Whatever we assume to be obvious, be it our emotional state, the purpose of an event, or the location of a stapler, we must teach ourselves to assume that it actually is not, and therefore must be stated out loud if we are to be understood.
Why is this important to do? Because the literal opposite is true. What is most obvious to us is generally not obvious to other people, and in fact, they are often making a totally different and wrong assumption than the one you also wrongly assume they are making.
Why does this happen? Well, there are several cognitive biases at work here… Primarily, there's what's called the curse of knowledge. Once we know something, it becomes difficult to imagine what it's like not to know it, so we overestimate how obvious our thoughts or intentions or explanations will be to others.
There's the closely related illusion of transparency, where we overestimate how clearly our internal states, our emotions, thoughts, our sense of morality are visible to others. They're not.
And last, naïve realism, where we assume our perceptions of reality of what's obvious about the world are shared by all. These misalignments happen constantly in our interpersonal lives, and they lead to resentment, misunderstanding, conflict, and harm.
I think at times there are also certain common resistances to being explicit. One… is a sense of, "Well, if you really loved me, you would already know this about me," which is an understandable way to feel, but is really… a failure to communicate.
Another may be a sense of self-respect or maybe self-preservation that warps into a kind of peremptory and self-defeating resentment. "Why should I have to make something explicit just to give you an understanding about me you haven't bothered to ask for?" And the answer to that is, if a greater understanding would be a positive outcome, however it's arrived at, why not just take responsibility to ensure it arrives?
There's also, and I think this is the one that has most prevented me from making the implicit explicit as it pertains to my views on certain public issues, is the sense of not wanting to play the game, of not wanting to debase myself in order to pass somebody's morality test. And also the question of, what does this really change? …
And yet… if playing the game and taking the test opens a door to greater understanding, a door through which perhaps more understanding can then travel through that otherwise might have remained closed, that may in fact be change enough to make the enterprise worthwhile…
So if you've got questions for someone in your life, ask them. Expect that they have questions for you too. Preempt them. Make the implicit explicit. Talk to each other. Talk to each other.
Jonah Platt
from ‘Making the Implicit Explicit’
Episode 44 of Jonah’s podcast ‘Being Jewish with Jonah Platt’
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online
Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'.www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
*The central work of our lives over the last 15 years or so has been as practicing integral development coaches, and as teachers of this way of guiding and supporting others. In this conversation we explore what it is to be a ‘coach’ in this way, to use our humanity, intelligence, hearts and life force to grow wings and then to help other people grow wings of their own.
It’s such a rewarding, life-giving endeavour, and it teaches us ever more about being a person and taking care of others. Join us for an exploration of what ‘guiding people up and out’ might be, with inspiration from a lovely and inspiring poem by Ellie Steel.
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction
03:03 Exploring Aliveness: A Central Theme
05:54 Navigating by Aliveness: Insights and Reflections
09:10 The Distinction Between Aliveness and Happiness
11:59 Embracing the Full Spectrum of Human Experience
14:52 Creatures of Creation: Our Relationship with Life
17:55 Intimacy with Existence: The Heart of Aliveness
20:56 The Cost of Control: Reconnecting with Aliveness
27:13 The Dance of Control and Aliveness
30:01 Curiosity as a Pathway to Freedom
33:04 The Nature of Care and Connection*Here’s our source for this week:
Wings
(for Miss)
Under her wings I live and grow and against
and with the feathers soft and
strong that open over
the heads of all who
reach up guiding
up
and
out
until the wings
flutter away and we
who are not in need grow
wings for ourselves and open
them up to those without wings
Ellie Steel
From She Will Soar: Bright, Brave Poems about Freedom by Women
(link on Bookstore)
Photo by Torianna Marasco on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online
Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'.www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslifeKeywords: coaching, wings metaphor, againstness relationship, growth facilitation, multidirectional holding, self-generating capacity, coaching philosophy, lineage importance, power dynamics, tender development, mutual growth, generative listening, creative holding, leaping ahead, integral development, community practice, dignified support, holding system, personal transformation, growth orientation, generosity practice, wingless to wingedPeople:Ellie Steel (poet who wrote "Wings")
Martin Heidegger (philosopher referenced by Lizzie when discussing the concept of "jumping ahead" or "leaping ahead")
Cast of the TV Show 'Shrinking'
*“The concept that sits right at the heart of a sane and meaningful life,” writes Oliver Burkeman “is something like aliveness.” In this conversation we explore what it is to attend to aliveness, how we might come to notice its presence, and consider steps any of us can take to cultivate it. And we talk about how vital this is in an age where we may find ourselves encouraged in many places to become part of an algorithm - to act in life as if we were machines rather than creative beings who are part of a vast and inherently creative universe.
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction
03:03 Exploring Aliveness: A Central Theme
05:54 Navigating by Aliveness: Insights and Reflections
09:10 The Distinction Between Aliveness and Happiness
11:59 Embracing the Full Spectrum of Human Experience
14:52 Creatures of Creation: Our Relationship with Life
17:55 Intimacy with Existence: The Heart of Aliveness
20:56 The Cost of Control: Reconnecting with Aliveness
27:13 The Dance of Control and Aliveness
30:01 Curiosity as a Pathway to Freedom
33:04 The Nature of Care and Connection*Here’s our source for this week:
The Path of Aliveness
The concept that sits right at the heart of a sane and meaningful life, I’m increasingly convinced, is something like aliveness. It goes by other names, too, none of which quite nail it – but it’s the one thing that, so long as you navigate by it, you’ll never go too far wrong. Sometimes it feels like a subtle electrical charge behind what’s happening, or a mildly heightened sense of clarity, or sometimes like nothing I can put into words at all. I freely concede it’s a hopelessly unscientific idea. But I’m pretty sure it’s what Joseph Campbell meant when he said that most of us aren’t really seeking the meaning of life, but rather “an experience of being alive… so that we actually feel the rapture” – although personally I don’t think it’s always rapturous, per se – “of being alive.”In literal terms, of course, “aliveness” can’t be the right word here, because technically everyone’s alive all the time, whereas aliveness comes and goes. Still, I know it when I feel it. And I definitely know it when my misguided efforts to exert too much control over reality cause it to drain away.
And so an excellent question to ask yourself – when you’re facing a tough decision, say, or wondering if you’re on the right track – is: “Does this feel like it’s taking me in the direction of greater aliveness?”Crucially, aliveness isn’t the same as happiness. As the Zen teacher Christian Dillo explains in his engrossing book The Path of Aliveness, you can absolutely feel alive in the midst of intense sadness. Aliveness, he writes, “isn’t about feeling better; it’s about feelingbetter.” When I feel aliveness in my work, it’s not because every task is an unadulterated pleasure; and when I feel it in my close relationships, it’s not because I’ve transcended the capacity to get annoyed by other people – because believe me, I haven’t.
But to whatever extent I do manage what Dillo refers to as fully inhabiting my experience, life is good, in a deep sense, and more vibrant, and I feel more connected to others – and overall, happiness tends to predominate… I think it might be the key to understanding how to think and feel about AI, how to respond to it, how to integrate it into our lives or not – and how to ensure, as technology marches on, that we don’t lose sight of what really matters for a meaningfully productive life.
Most obviously, aliveness is what generally feels absent from the written and visual outputs of ChatGPT and its ilk, even when they’re otherwise of high quality… It makes you wonder if Wendell Berry had it right when he wrote: “It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.”… I think it’s good to stay fully, even slightly foolishly, committed to the idea that humans doing human things, with other humans, is and will remain at the vital heart of human existence. Because otherwise what on earth’s the point?
Oliver Burkeman
The full text of this wonderful post can be found on Oliver’s website ‘The Imperfectionist’, where you can also find out about his books and sign up to his mailing list.
Photo by yunona uritsky on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online
Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'.www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
*We make the world, and unmake that which doesn’t serve, by our everyday actions and inactions, our intentional taking care and our turning away. What does it take to have the courage, humility and compassion to attend as fully as we can to the world, to step towards a world we want to live in?
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*Episode Overview00:00 Welcome to Turning Towards Life
02:49 The Joy of Coaching and Community
07:08 Understanding the Shambhala Warrior
12:17 Interconnectedness and Community Resilience
17:08 Humility in Compassionate Action
23:12 The Complexity of Truth and Instant Gratification
28:46 The Call to Action and HopeHere’s our source for this week:
Joanna Macy: The Shambhala Warrior
Now the time comes when great courage is required of the Shambhala warriors, moral courage and physical courage. That is because they’re going right into the heart of the barbarian’s power to dismantle their power and dismantle their weapons, weapons in every sense of the word. As they make their way into the pits and citadels where the armaments are made, so are they also entering the corridors of power where decisions are made.
Now, heed this. The Shambhala warriors know these weapons can be dismantled. That is because they are manomaya, an old word that means “mind-made.” Made by the human mind, they can be unmade by the human mind. The dangers facing us are not fashioned by some satanic deity or by an evil extraterrestrial force or by some immutable preordained fate. These dangers are created by our relationships, our habits, our choices.
“So now is the time,” said Chogyal Rinpoche, “for the Shambhala warriors to go into training.”
“How do they train?” I asked.
“They train in the use of two implements or tools.”
“What are they?” I asked, and he held up his hands the way the lamas hold the ritual objects, the dorje and bell, in the great monastic dances of his people.
“One,” he said, “is compassion. The other is insight into the radical interdependence of all phenomena. You need both,” he said. “You need compassion because it provides the fuel to move you out where you need to be in order to do what you need to do. It means not being afraid of the suffering of your world. That tool is very hot. By itself it is so hot it can burn you out. So you need the other tool, the insight that reveals the interbeing of all that is. When that dawns in you then you know that this is not a battle between good people and bad people but that the line between good and evil runs through the landscape of every human heart. And you know that we are so interwoven that even our smallest acts have repercussions that ripple through the web of life, beyond our capacity to discern. But that knowing is kind of cool. It can seem at times a bit abstract. That’s why you need the heat of real passion.”
From One Earth Sangha
Photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online
Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'.www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
*It's never too late to look at our lives, to set out on a new path, to begin the difficult and necessary and life-giving work of changing course, of learning how to bring ourselves in a way that deepens our depth, courage, love, kindness, truthfulness and contribution. It's never too late to learn something, to teach something. It's never too late to live - even in the very last moments of our lives. This conversation, marking the 8th anniversary of Turning Towards Life, takes us into an exploration of who we humans can be to one another, especially when we pay attention, when we remember our capacities to make worlds together, and when we commit to listen to one another with kindness, truthfulness, openness and care.
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*Episode Overview00:00 Celebrating Eight Years of Turning Towards Life
05:48 Introducing the Source: Harold Schulweis
11:57 Personal Reflections on Change and Growth
17:47 The Power of Openness and Change
24:08 The Importance of Dialogue and Disagreement
29:52 Creating a World of Connection and KindnessHere’s our source for this week:
It’s never too late
The last word has not been spoken
the last sentence has not been writ
the final verdict is not in.
It's never too late
to change my mind
my direction
to say 'no' to the past
and 'yes' to the future
to offer remorse
to ask and give forgiveness.
It is never too late
to start all over again
to feel again
to love again
to hope again.
It is never too late
to overcome despair
to turn sorrow into resolve
and pain into purpose.
It is never too late to alter my world
not by magic incantations
or manipulations of the cards
or deciphering the stars
but by opening myself
to curative forces buried within
to hidden energies
the powers in my interior self.
In sickness and in dying,
it is never too late.
Living, I teach
Dying, I teach
how to face pain and fear.
Others observe me, children, adults,
students of life and death
learn from my bearing, my posture,
my philosophy.
It is never too late -
Some word of mine,
some touch, some caress may be remembered
some gesture may play a role beyond the last
movement of my head and hand.
Write it on my epitaph
that my loved ones be consoled.
It is never too late.
Harold Shulweis
Photo by Ümit Bulut on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online
Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'. www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching
Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslifePeople Mentioned: Rabbi Harold Shulweis
* David Whyte
* Rainer Maria Rilke
* Norman Fisher
* Mary Oliver
* Maya Stein
* Rosemary Whatola-Trommer
* Hollie Holden
* Naomi Shihab Nye
* Rebecca Solnit
* Leo Tolstoy (author of The Death of Ivan Ilyich*)
Keywords:never late, starting over, forgiveness practice, teaching presence, continuous becoming, habit remaking, interior forces, curative powers, death teaching, final verdict, life ongoingness, changing direction, opening myself, human power, world making, truthful standing, cynicism rejection, spiritual openness, destination pressure, community presence, disagreement kindness, intentional space, learning together, transformative choice, last breath
*A conversation about discovering that the entire world around us—the first star breaking through darkness, rain dancing on rooftops, stooping to pick up an acorn—aren't distractions from life's important questions but invitations further into them. That we are never separate from the world, and that there are many ways in which the world is calling to us even when we feel alone. And that rather than retreating from the world to find the answers to our most urgent questions, perhaps we can soften back into contact with what surrounds us as a way into the answers.
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*Episode Overview00:00 Introduction to Turning Towards Life
02:25 Exploring Ingrid's Poetry
06:30 On Ordinary Moments
10:07 Connection to the World Around Us
14:34 Receiving from the World, Finding We Are Not Alone
19:24 Discovering our Non-SeparatenessHere’s our source for this week:
Questions for Discerning
What is Timeless and True
When mist settles thick on the water
as far as the eye can see,
may you hold yourself in generosity,
and ask what do you endlessly dream?
When the first star breaks its light
through the darkest evening sky,
what is the wish that flutters
in the temple of your heart?
When rain dances with joy
on the roof above your head,
what do you feel most grateful for,
and for what do you give thanks?
When the catbird settles on a branch nearby,
tips his head back and sings,
what sweet urgency pours from your life
into the living, breathing day?
When you stoop to pick up an acorn
that has fallen along your trail,
allow yourself to wonder:
what seeds do you plant and grow?
When the autumn leaf lifts
on a swirling current of wind:
what journey are you missing?
What adventure do you long to begin?
When the present insight slips
into the vast eternal realm,
what do you still remember
in the very bones of your soul?
When the morning sun wakes you
and asks for your finest gift,
what do you pull from your infinity
to give and give, and open to, and give?
Ingrid Goff-Maidoffingridgoffmaidoff.com
Photo by Lucas van Oort on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026
Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslifeKeywords:timeless questions, sweet urgency, temple heart, infinity giving, autumn leaf journey, catbird settling, acorn wondering, star breaking light, rain dancing joy, mist settling thick, bones soul memory, morning sun gift, world offering attention, contact receptivity, contracted separation, life calling back, rose smelling presence, ordinary invitations, belonging planet, softening contact, generous participation, separateness fear, social media hysteria, retreat fantasy, bodily contraction, woods walking
*'For the sake of what am I doing this?' is the question that animates this week's conversation. For the sake of fitting in? Of having feelings that I want to have? For the sake of serving? Of bringing the unique gifts I have to offer? For the sake of doing the big jobs, the ones that make a difference over the long term - such as pursuing love, justice, peace? Rather than pursuing quick wins that shrink our ambitions, might we find courage to take on impossible jobs and measure our lives not by immediate results but by unwavering dedication to the particular gifts that each of us has to bring?
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*Episode Overview00:00 Introduction and Welcome
04:14 Introducing Parker Palmer and this week’s Source
08:52 The Concept of Faithfulness vs. Effectiveness
15:42 The Challenge of Complex Issues in Life
22:33 Finding Fulfillment Beyond Short-Term GoalsHere’s our source for this week:
Faithfulness and Effectiveness
*Take on big jobs worth doing, jobs like the spread of love, peace, and justice. That means refusing to be seduced by our cultural obsession with being effective as measured by short-term results. …
Our heroes take on impossible jobs and stay with them for the long haul because they live by a standard that supersedes effectiveness. The name of that standard is "faithfulness" - faithfulness to your gifts, to the needs of the world, and to offering
your gifs to whatever needs are within your reach.
The tighter we cling to the norm of effectiveness, the smaller the tasks we'll take on, because they are the only ones that get short-term results. Public education is a tragic example. We no longer care about educating children - a big job that's never done. We care only about getting kids to pass tests with measurable results, whether or not those tests measure what matters. In the process, we're crushing the spirits of a lot of good teachers and vulnerable kids: there are millions of kids in this country who long to be treasured, not measured.
Care about being effective, of course. But care even more about being faithful, as countless teachers do - faithful to your calling and to the true needs of those entrusted to your care. You won't get the big jobs done in your lifetime. But if, at the end of the road, you can say, "I was faithful", you can check out with a sense of satisfaction.
Parker Palmer,
from "On the Brink of Everything", p47-48*
Photo by Alexey Demidov on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026
Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslifeKeywords:faithfulness practice, effectiveness obsession, long-term commitment, cultural critique, big jobs worth doing, short-term results, treasured not measured, educational reform, calling dedication, gift recognition, world needs, satisfaction fulfillment, loyalty examination, complex missions, unfinished work, life dedication, cultural metanarratives, social exclusion fear, heart questioning, purpose alignment, decision making clarity, service orientation, love peace justice, parenting faithfulness, recognition limitations, life filling, tribe dedication, spiritual satisfaction, deeper commitment, relationship building, podcast longevity
*We are far from powerless… though we often we imagine we are. And neither are we able to control how life goes… though we often long to be able to. Our making ourselves too small or too big rarely serves life. So what would it be to find a way to be in a responsive partnership with life itself - acting into life and then opening ourselves to life’s response, bringing the qualities we have to offer as humans and letting ourselves be changed by what comes?
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*Episode Overview00:00 Welcome and Introduction to Turning Towards Life
02:50 The Emergence of a Collective Self
06:07 Exploring Uncertainty and Aliveness
09:05 Navigating the Unknown: Embracing Change
11:50 The Dance of Certainty and Uncertainty
15:07 Partnership with Life: Making Our Moves
17:50 The Nature of Human Qualities in Crisis
20:57 Reflective Practice and Self-Discovery
24:00 Being Human in Uncertainty
26:49 Closing Reflections and GratitudeHere’s our source for this week:
We look with uncertainty
We look with uncertainty
beyond the old choices for
clear-cut answers
to a softer, more permeable aliveness
which is every moment
at the brink of death;
for something new is being born in us
if we but let it.
We stand at a new doorway,
awaiting that which comes…
daring to be human creatures,
vulnerable to the beauty of existence.
Learning to love.
Anne Hillman
Photo by Karissa Mason on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2026
Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslifeKeywords:uncertainty acceptance, essential qualities, human aliveness, partnership with life, permeable existence, doorway metaphor, vulnerable beauty, reflective practice, present moment awareness, control letting go, death brink living, softness cultivation, new birth allowing, offering making, response receiving, qualities emerging, steadfastness courage, generous heart, human goodness, unpredictability embracing, participation dance, life partnership, essential self, turning towards life, relationship reflection
*A conversation about imagination as essential aliveness—and how treating life as purely literal diminishes our humanity. A great human power lies in choosing which story we live from, recognising that even dead ends become part of a larger narrative of redemption. What would change if we approached each day wondering along which secret aqueduct new life might be flowing toward us?
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*Episode Overview00:00 Embracing Life's Multitudes
02:56 Gathering in Community
05:50 Machado’s Poem Last Night as I Was Sleeping
08:58 Imagining New Possibilities
11:59 Turning Towards Joy and Failure
14:53 The Imaginative Act of Being Human
17:47 Finding Connection in Shared Experiences
20:50 The Invitation to Storytelling
23:45 Practicing Presence and OpennessHere’s our source for this week:
Last night, as I was sleeping
*Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt -- marvellous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?
Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt -- marvellous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.
Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt -- marvellous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.
Last night, as I slept,
I dreamt -- marvellous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.*
Antonio Machado
English version by Robert Bly
Original Language Spanish
Photo by Vivek Doshi on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2025
Turning Towards Life Live Season 1, from 10 September 2025
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons from September. It's going to be in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslifeKeywords:marvellous error, secret aqueduct, golden bees, sweet honey, old failures, imaginative capacity, turning towards life, heart opening, sacred aliveness, storytelling power, redemption possibility, fiery warmth, divine presence, new life water, creative interpretation, dream consciousness, life-giving conversation, spiritual recognition, meaning making, transformation language, wonder invitation, possibility thinking, cynicism rejection, literal thinking, narrative choice
People Mentioned:Antonio Machado (Spanish poet, author of the poem)
Robert Bly (translator of the poem)
Roger Housden (author of "Ten Poems to Change Your Life")
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer (podcast host of "Emerging Form")
Christie Aschwanden (podcast host of "Emerging Form")
Emerging Form Episode 146, Maria Kelson on Switching Genres https://emergingform.substack.com/p/episode-146-maria-kelson-on-switching
*We spend so much energy trying to think our way to insight, yet a fuller understanding of our lives often arrives from somewhere beyond the usual way we know ourselves. When our hands are busy with ordinary tasks something vast can sometimes settle into awareness. What happens when we discover that our bodies know a kinship with the earth our minds may have forgotten? Could belonging be less about finding our place and more about recognising we never left it?
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction to Turning Towards Life
03:03 Exploring the Source: Of Gravity and Light
05:43 The Significance of Menial Tasks
08:47 The Relationship Between Thinking and Receiving
11:45 Belonging and Recognition
14:43 Connection and Community
17:44 The Mystery of Existence and Our Place in It
20:59 The Importance of Acknowledging Our Already Existing Ways of Belonging
23:43 Creating a Sense of Belonging in the World
26:55 Conclusion and InvitationsHere’s our source for this week:
Of Gravity and Light
What we need most, we learn from the menial tasks:
the novice raking sand in Buddhist texts,
or sweeping leaves, his hands chilled to the bone,
while understanding hovers out of reach;
the changeling in a folk tale, chopping logs,
poised at the dizzy edge of transformation;
and everything they do is gravity:
swaying above the darkness of the well
to haul the bucket in; guiding the broom;
finding the body’s kinship with the earth
beneath their feet, the lattice of a world
where nothing turns or stands outside the whole;
and when the insight comes, they carry on
with what’s at hand: the gravel path; the fire;
knowing the soul is no more difficult
than water, or the fig tree by the well
that stood for decades, barren and inert,
till every branch was answered in the stars.
John Burnside
Photo by Merri J on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2025
Turning Towards Life Live Season 1, from 10 September 2025
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons from September. It's going to be in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslifeKeywordsmenial tasks, ordinary moments, body kinship, earth connection, belonging fully, inner mystery, thinking patterns, gravity metaphor, physical presence, everyday insights, transformation edge, soul simplicity, cultural belonging, human mystery, inclusion practice, overthinking habits, fearful analysis, mindful walking, dish washing, leaf sweeping, grounded presence, mysterious depths, embodied wisdom, life belonging, earthly home
People MentionedJohn Burnside - The poet whose work "Of Gravity and Light" is discussed throughout the episode
*What if we recognised that every single thing we do - and everything we avoid doing - is quietly shaping us into the kind of person we're becoming? A conversation about discovering that we're already practising something all the time, whether we realise it or not, and that our choices about where to place our attention might be more consequential than we imagine. What would it mean to get good at the things that truly matter to us, or to surprise and widen ourselves by practicing new things that are outside of our familiar, comfortable range?
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*Episode Overview 00:00 Welcome and Introduction to Turning Towards Life
02:21 The Importance of Time and Choices
05:37 Practicing What Matters: Insights from Chloe Caldwell
10:08 The Impact of Our Practices on Our Lives
15:07 Awareness of Time and Intentions
19:09 The Role of Social Media in Shaping Us
24:28 Exploring New Practices and Joyful Experimentation
32:32 The Value of External Perspectives on Our Practices
38:01 Conclusion and Reflection on Our PracticesHere’s our source for this week:
You Get Good at What You Do
My dad passed away last December, and he was in the top three closest people to me over my life. He used to have a phrase he used with his guitar students: “You get good at what you do. If you practice guitar, you get really good at guitar. If you don’t practice, you get really good at not practicing.”
I love this phrase because you can apply it to every single thing in life, in ways both literal and abstract. If you write, you get good at writing If you look at Instagram, you get good at looking at Instagram. If you walk, you get good at walking. If you swim, you get good at swimming. If you write, you get good at writing. If you don’t write, you get really good at not writing. If you look at Instagram, you get REALLY good at looking at Instagram.
I think my dad’s lesson seeped into my brain from hearing him say it so much. It wasn’t advice as much as a notion. Now I pass it along to my students and think about it once a day. It seems simple and like something we all know, logically, but the way it is phrased really drives it home.
When he died, one of his guitar students wrote, “Rob was good at love and music. It’s what he did.”
Chloé Caldwell via Cheryl Strayed’s Substack
Photo by Majkl Velner on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2025
Turning Towards Life Live Season 1, from 10 September 2025
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons from September. It's going to be in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.
You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslifeKeywordspractising consciousness, attention choices, time dedication, intentional living, habit formation, social media impact, parenting practices, body movement, dance therapy, five rhythms, creative experimentation, relationship awareness, coaching practice, value alignment, present moment, death awareness, guitar teaching, love practice, Instagram scrolling, screen time, movement practice, flexible being, meeting world, self observation, community feedback, practice visibility, tender awareness, blind spots, coaching skills, professional development, turning towards life
People MentionedCheryl Strayed
Chloé Caldwell
The Rock (Dwayne Johnson)
*How do we attend to the something in each of us that longs to break free through the cracks of our self-image? A conversation about discovering that sacred uniqueness within ourselves and others in the everyday mundane acts of living, loving, working and being genuinely present with one another.
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction to Turning Towards Life
02:50 The Singing Bird: A Poetic Exploration
06:03 Longing and Creativity: Uncovering the Singing Bird
08:57 The Unique Expression of Each Of Us
12:00 Navigating Self-Criticism and Inquiry
14:50 Vulnerability and Authenticity in Relationships
18:07 Embracing the Messiness of Life
21:08 The Complexity of Human Experience
23:56 The Interconnectedness of Our Stories
26:50 The Importance of Community and Conversation
30:02 Conclusion and Looking Ahead
Here’s our source for this week:
The Singing Bird
The singing bird
I have a hundred ways
Of keeping the singing bird
Pushed down,
Hidden,
Anaesthetised,
Comfort-numb,
Silenced.
But I have learned
How easily she
Can break free
And Sing Anyway.
She sneaks out
Through the cracks
That get made
By laughter
And poetry
And art
And honesty
And dancing
And sunshine.
I wonder if you know
The ways you keep the singing bird
Quiet?
And if you know how to forget yourself
So that she can sneak out
And remind you of the song
You’ve always wanted to sing.
Hollie Holden
Photo by Lukáš Kadava on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2025
Turning Towards Life Live Season 1, from 17 September 2025
Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons from September. It's going to be in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. You can find out more and join us here.
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslifeKeywordssinging bird, creative expression, authentic presence, vulnerability sharing, sacred uniqueness, forget yourself, honest presence, creative practice, inner critic, right sizing, vast universe, cultural expectations, sacred something, judgement softening, unfolding process, kerfuffle acceptance, contactful being, depth confidence, whoness discovery, messy glory, genuine presence, practical spirituality, learning process, turning towards life, creative longing, existential wondering
People MentionedHollie Holden (author of this week's source)
*We mistake ourselves for the stories we've been told and the ones we keep telling. But what if those stories are too small to contain who we really are? A conversation about discovering that the more we open our hearts to the world, the less we actually know about anything—and how this not knowing might be exactly where freedom lives. What happens when we stop trying to figure everything out and instead give ourselves fully to the mystery of being human?
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction and Context Setting
06:26 Exploring Rilke's 'Widening Circles'
12:16 The Journey of Discovery
18:53 Embracing Uncertainty and Complexity
24:10 Faithfulness in the Face of Not Knowing
30:30 Invitation to Community and Practice
Here’s our source for this week:
Widening Circles
I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.
I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?
Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Joanna Macy
Photo by Alan Mersom on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2025
Turning Towards Life Live Season 1, from September 2025
We also have the launch of our Turning Towards Life live programme which is going to run in six month seasons from September. It's going to be in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. You can register your interest for Season 1 of Turning Towards Life Live here.
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslifeKeywordswidening circles, spiritual unknowing, faithful presence, identity stories, cultural certainty, mysterious reality, spiritual practice, contemplative conversation, human complexity, sacred listening, deepening awareness, creative response, genuine unknowing, expanding compassion, spiritual freedom, mystical faithfulness, embodied wisdom, relational depth, authentic encounter, philosophical openness, contemplative dialogue, life-giving practice, spiritual attention, transformative conversation, primordial mystery
People MentionedRainer Maria Rilke (poet who wrote "Widening Circles")
Joanna Macy (translator of the Rilke poem)
Maya Angelou (poet, mentioned from previous week's episode - "Phenomenal Women")
Richard Rorty (philosopher, pragmatism)
James Hollis (Jungian writer)
*What happens when we choose to actively shape our own identity rather than only accept the stories handed down to us? How might we practice distinguishing between what belongs to us and what we've been told we should be? What becomes possible when we see ourselves as authors of our own ways of being in life?
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction to the Conversation
03:18 Reading Maya Angelou's 'Phenomenal Woman'
08:01 Exploring Identity
11:07 The Invitation of Authenticity
16:03 Rejecting the Algorithm: Embracing Authorship
21:16 The Inquiry into Who We Might Be
26:25 Finding Belonging in Authenticity
30:01 The Call to Pay Attention to Life
Here’s our source for this week:
Phenomenal Woman
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms,
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them,
They say they still can’t see.
I say,
It’s in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed.
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing,
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It’s in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need for my care.
’Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
Maya Angelou
Photo by Chris on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2025
Turning Towards Life Live Season 1, from September 2025
We also have the launch of our Turning Towards Life live programme which is going to run in six month seasons from September. It's going to be in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. You can register your interest for Season 1 of Turning Towards Life Live here.
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslifeKeywordsphenomenal woman, inner mystery, self-making beings, authentic choices, conditioned narratives, cultural expectations, embodied identity, ancestral patterns, algorithmic conformity, gender stereotypes, truthful living, belonging to life, mysterious aliveness, elder wisdom, fierce invitation, active authorship, realness inquiry, powerful presence, liberation permission, identity deviation, life-giving stories, genuine aliveness, source of power, community belonging, truthful emergence
*We are much more powerful than we often imagine, and in surprising ways. For most of us, our power is not in being remembered long beyond our lifetimes, or in being able to change the world that is far from us. It is rather in that we are each made by one another, and we make one another, by how we live, what we say, how we listen, and how we act.
When we start to see that we are literally making a world for others to live in right here and now, in our every way of conducting ourselves it can open great possibilities both for gratitude and wonder, and great responsibilities for us as parents, friends, colleagues and neighbours in our everyday lives.
In this conversation we remember Joanna Macy, whose writing we have featured a number of times, who died on July 19. And we talk together about what it is to be ‘good soil’ for one another, so that we get to make a world together that we want to live in.This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction and Context Setting
02:59 Nature as a Narrative for Human Life
05:59 Reflections on Mortality and Legacy
08:50 The Interconnectedness of Human Experience
11:54 Being Soil for One Another
14:49 Relationships and Community
18:07 Parenting and World Making
21:06 Cultural Narratives that Limit and Bring to Life
23:49 Conclusion
Here’s our source for this week:
In Honor of Joanna Macy, 1929-2025
I write while staying in one of the great forests of British Columbia, a forest in which the inextricability of life from death is gorgeously evident… Magnificent fallen trees turn back into soil as younger trees reach downward to twine around their ancestors' trunks and upward toward the sky. The roots growing around and gripping these decaying logs look like veins and tentacles and fingers clutching and reaching toward an anchor in the soil. Some of the mature cedars and conifers stand on mounds that must be fully decayed trees or rather once were trees and are further along in the process of becoming soil. Often a great tree that's fallen over still has at its base a tall shield that is its roots still clinging to rounded stones and soil, and from this the trunk stretches across the earth. These trees from which trees grow are known as nurse logs…
When I was younger, I was taught what an artist or writer was supposed to aspire to was immortality, the kind that Dante and Li Po and Shakespeare have, so that in centuries to come memory of your name and attention to your creations continue. Later in life, I realized that there was an entirely different thing to aspire to, an entirely different kind of creative success: to be so much part of your own time, of the present that is making the future, that rather than remaining what people think about, you become in some way how people think, how they value, what they prioritize. You stop being what's in front of their eyes and become part of what is behind their eyes, how they see the world, how they live, act, what they aspire to, what they hold close, what they resist.
You become a nurse log on which new life can grow as you compost into the soil we call culture. And maybe this is the mindset of moist places, of an ecology of vivid decay and regeneration rather than of the arid places, where death dessicates and the mummies, skeletons, ruins, Dead Sea Scrolls, last for centuries or millennia.
Rebecca Solnit, writing in memory of Joanna Macy 1929-2025From ‘Meditations in an Emergency’, Rebecca’s ongoing public writing for these times
Photo by Tomas Martinez on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2025
Turning Towards Life Live Season 1, from September 2025
We also have the launch of our Turning Towards Life live programme which is going to run in six month seasons from September. It's going to be in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. You can register your interest for Season 1 of Turning Towards Life Live here.
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslifeKeywords
nurse logs, creative success, soil culture, interpenetrating lives, mortality meaning, forest metaphor, humility humus, world making, parenting soil, cultural foundation, death regeneration, collective memory, individual legacy, spiritual ecology, creative immortality, ancestral roots, living decay, fertile ground, cultural inheritance, generational impact, everyday power, relationship making, invisible influence, natural cycles, human connection
*We are patterned beings, and the patterns we live get started very early in our lives. They bring both blessings and blind-spots. One of the great opportunities of a well-lived life is to come to see the patterns, inquire into them, and find ways to open more spaciousness in us than the patterns have allowed so far.
This is what we might call ‘growth’ or ‘development’. In this conversation we talk about what it takes to do this, and about the Enneagram, a wise, kind and deep body of language and invitation that we have both found incredibly helpful in walking this path.
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction to Turning Towards Life
02:50 The Enneagram: A Personal Journey
08:55 Understanding the Enneagram
11:51 Blind Spots and Self-Awareness
17:41 Patterns and Growth
26:04 Gifts Beneath the Surface
34:50 Conclusion and Recommendations
Here’s our source for this week:
The Enneagram Guide to Waking Up
At one level the personality types are based on a very simple thing - where we focus our attention as we move through the world. But what we see also defines what we don’t see - as well as the fact we don’t see it. These are our blindspots. When we remain unaware of these key aspects of our experience, we stay blind to the impact they have on how we think, feel and act. And this explains why we can be said to be ‘asleep’ - going through life like zombies.
To wake up from this state, we must confront the ego - as well as the Shadow cast by the ego. We need to become aware of the automatic habits that structure our defensive egoist persona, as well as all that remains unconscious in us connected to our ego’s need to protect itself. This self-protective persona keeps us focused on its needs and prevents us from feeling pain - or joy - condemning us to a kind of waking sleep in which we don’t know who we are and what’s possible for us.
We suppress these shadow elements because they create pain or challenge our self image. By making these elements more conscious, however, we become more self aware and whole. Without facing them, we can never know ourselves as we actually are. When we don’t see and own the unconscious tendencies connected to the personality, we stay focused on (and limited by) we are held hostage to who we think we are or who we fear we are or who we would like to be. When we move beyond the ego and actively engage in the process of growth that the enneagram maps out for us, we begin to awaken to our full potential.
Beatrice Chestnut and Uraneo PaesFrom ‘The Enneagram Guide to Waking Up’, Simon and Schuster, 2021
Photo by Tomas Martinez on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2025
Turning Towards Life Live Season 1, from September 2025
We also have the launch of our Turning Towards Life live programme which is going to run in six month seasons from September. It's going to be in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. You can register your interest for Season 1 of Turning Towards Life Live here.
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Keywords
blind spots, defensive patterns, shadow work, personality types, protective mechanisms, essential goodness, waking up, automatic habits, self-protective persona, unconscious tendencies, growth journey, authentic connection, gift liberation, inner world mapping, community learning, pattern recognition, ego confrontation, sacred qualities, birthright gifts, castle metaphor, boarded rooms, turning towards life, sincerity practice, integrity development, anger recognition, happiness demand, frightening presence, Soho realisation, protective strategies, truthfulness emergence, inclusion practice
People mentionedBeatrice Chestnut (co-author of "The Enneagram Guide to Waking Up")
Uranio Paés (co-author of "The Enneagram Guide to Waking Up")
What happens when we allow ourselves to truly feel the reality that we will grow old, become ill, and die? How might we practice treating our deepest fears not as enemies but as intimate companions? The recognition that these experiences unite us with every other human being who has ever lived offers a pathway from aloneness into a more genuine and heartfelt connection with others. And when we stop running from what we cannot escape, we might get in contact with a very strong feeling of the realness and aliveness of being alive.
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction, Welcome, and Turning Towards Life Live
04:55 The Importance of Finding One's Voice
08:17 Engaging with Deep Questions
10:51 Confronting Fear and Acceptance
19:00 Self-Remembrance and Aliveness
25:08 The Shared Human Experience
35:07 Conclusion and Invitation to Community
Here’s our source for this week:
Facing Fear
I am of the nature to grow old. I cannot escape growing old. I am of the nature to have ill health. I cannot escape having ill health. I am of the nature to die. I cannot escape death. All that is dear to me, and everyone I love, are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them…
Looking deeply at each remembrance and breathing in and out with our awareness of each one, we engage our fear in an empowered way…
Most of us don’t want to acknowledge it, so we live more or less in denial. Yet down deep in the recesses of our minds, we know it’s true. When we suppress our fearful thoughts, they continue to fester there in the dark. We are driven to consume in an attempt to forget and keep those thoughts from surfacing in our conscious mind. Running away from our fear ultimately makes us suffer and makes others suffer, and our fear only grows stronger…
Invite your fear into consciousness, and smile through it; every time you smile through your fear, it will lose some of its strength. If you try to run away from your pain, there is no way out...
We must invite these things up into our mind consciousness every day and tell them, “My dear, I’m not afraid of you. I’m not afraid of my fear. It is my nature to grow old; I cannot escape old age.” When fear manifests, we want to have the seed of mindfulness also manifest to embrace it. So we have two energies present—the first is the energy of fear, and the second is the energy of mindfulness. The fear receives a bath of mindfulness and becomes a little bit weaker before it drops back down to the depths of our consciousness in the form of a seed.
Thich Nhat Hanh, from ‘Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the Storm’
Photo by razi pouri on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2025
Turning Towards Life Live Season 1, from September 2025
We also have the launch of our Turning Towards Life live programme which is going to run in six month seasons from September. It's going to be in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. You can register your interest for Season 1 of Turning Towards Life Live here.
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslifeKeywords:growing old acceptance, death awareness, mindfulness practice, fear embracing, mortality contemplation, Buddhist remembrances, Thich Nhat Hanh wisdom, existential tenderness, human vulnerability, self-remembrance, control illusion, avoidance strategies, everyday mindfulness, shared humanity, ordinary sacredness, life force recognition, conscious ageing, intimate fears, tender ordinariness, universal mortality, presence practice, busyness distraction, consumption patterns, denial mechanisms, awakening practice
People Mentioned:Thich Nhat Hanh - Vietnamese Buddhist teacher and author of "On Fear," whose text on the five remembrances forms the central source material
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel - Referenced for his teaching about being alive as a blessing
Joanna Macy - Mentioned as author of a previous source discussed in an earlier episode
Our immediate emotions about an event or happening usually sit on top of deeper currents of meaning, story, longing and commitments that may at first be obscured from view. If we want to become ever more active and intentional participants in our lives and relationships, there's much to be said then for first coming to know the emotion and then beginning to notice the commitments which lie underneath. This way we give ourselves an opportunity to cultivate something over time - a purposeful way of knowing ourselves and using that knowledge for the very practical purpose of being the person we each want to be. How might we begin to approach this inquiry and the new kinds of action that come from it?
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction to Turning Towards Life
02:51 Exploring Emotions vs. Feelings
05:58 The Complexity of Human Experience
08:50 The Role of Reflection in Understanding
11:56 Parenting and Emotional Awareness
15:08 The Importance of Feeling in Relationships
18:02 Navigating Emotions and Feelings
20:45 The Journey of Self-Discovery
24:04 Honoring Influential Voices
30:05 Conclusion and Reflections
Here’s our source for this week:
The Feeling Beneath the Feeling
"What was my feeling in that situation — not my emotions, my feeling? My emotions may support my feeling, but emotions are affective responses determined by complexes, momentary reactions to an immediate situation. Feeling, on the other hand, evaluates what something is worth to me." Marion Woodman
Photo by Ismael Paramo on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2025
Turning Towards Life Live Season 1, from September 2025
We also have the launch of our Turning Towards Life live programme which is going to run in six month seasons from September. It's going to be in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. You can register your interest for Season 1 of Turning Towards Life Live here.
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Keywords
feeling versus emotion, emotional complexity, beneath the beneath, reflective living, what matters deeply, belonging longing, momentary reactions, personal complexes, evaluating worth, emotional flooding, parenting emotions, feeling towards, working with feelings, emotional skillfulness, writing practice, conversation practice, underneath layers, fear and anger, grief processing, lifelong inquiry, emotional courage, welcoming feelings, feeling fully, emotional determination, reactive responses, deep currents
Can we practice a fierce, truthful loving form of gratitude for life itself that calls us until our care for the world in practical, tangible ways? How is this different from shallow or 'pop-culture' versions of gratitude that might have us tune out from our pain and the difficulties around us? How might the deepest kind of gratitude connect us to the source from which all life comes, and the incredible unlikeliness of our being here, and so fuel our own aliveness? And how might attending to small things - the computer screen in front of us, a cup of tea, the cat - be a pathway in?
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction to Turning Towards Life Live
03:05 Exploring Gratitude as a Mood
05:44 The Depth of Gratitude and Taking Action
09:04 The Interconnectedness of Life and Gratitude
12:00 The Power of Small Things in Building Gratitude
14:44 The Role of Community in Changing Things
18:00 Gratitude Beyond Circumstances
20:55 The Miracle of Existence
23:58 Finding Wholeness in Small Moments
26:48 Conclusion and Reflection
Here’s our source for this week:
On Gratitude Just to live is holy
To be is a blessing-- Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
We have received an inestimable gift. To be alive in this beautiful, self-organising universe - to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it - is a wonder beyond words.
Gratitude quiets the frantic mind and brings us back to source. It reconnects us with basic goodness and our personal power. It helps us to be more fully present to our world. That grounded present provides the psychic space for acknowledging the pain we carry for our world...
We begin to know the immensity of our heart-mind, and how it helps us move beyond fear... The truth of our inter-existence, made real to us by our pain for the world, helps us see with new eyes. It brings fresh understandings of who we are and how we are related to each other and the universe. We begin to comprehend our own power to change and heal. We strengthen by growing living connections with past and future generations, and our brother and sister species.
Then, ever again, we go forth into the action that calls us... Even when we don’t succeed in a given venture, we can be grateful for the chance we took and the lessons we learned. And the spiral begins again.
Joanna Macy, from ‘World as Lover, World As Self’
Photo by Balazs Busznyak on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2025
Turning Towards Life Live Season 1, from September 2025
We also have the launch of our Turning Towards Life live programme which is going to run in six month seasons from September. It's going to be in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. You can register your interest for Season 1 of Turning Towards Life Live here.
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
This week we explore the tension between bringing our wholeness to the world and the social pressure to maintain polished appearances. How might we practise opening our hearts to the whole of ourselves—including the uncomfortable, needy, and difficult parts?
Moving from performing acceptability to becoming spaces where others can feel genuinely welcomed means cultivating the capacity to ask "what else is here?" with genuine curiosity. And this becomes the foundation for encountering our own and others' grief, rage, and vulnerability without turning away. It’s our sense that this is an ethical imperative—the gift we offer those who come after us and those we meet along the way.
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction and Context of the Conversation
01:56 The Power of Authenticity in Relationships
07:04 Exploring the Poem: 'What If I Told You'
08:52 Embracing Messiness as Generosity
12:56 The Importance of Self-Reflection
20:42 Navigating Relationships with Authenticity
28:55 The Ethical Imperative of Being Real
31:48 Conclusion and Future Directions
Here’s our source for this week:
What if I told you
What if I told you
That showing up
In this messy world
Just as you are
Is the ultimate act of love.
That befriending your doubts,
Opening your heart to
The whole of you,
Is the greatest act of generosity.
That loving yourself
In the places that are the hardest to love
Is the most profound gift
You can give
To those who come after you,
To those who meet you,
To those who rest in your eyes for a moment,
As you move through the world
As an invitation
And a welcome for
Everyone's messy beauty.
What if I told you,
We need you
Just
As
You
Are.
Hollie Holden
Photo by Talia Cohen on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2025
Turning Towards Life Live Season 1, from September 2025
We also have the launch of our Turning Towards Life live programme which is going to run in six month seasons from September. It's going to be in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. You can register your interest for Season 1 of Turning Towards Life Live here.
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
When we’re caught up with our harsh inner voices we can easily smother out a kind of solid, deep wisdom and aliveness that we could be bringing to our lives and our relationships. It’s this depth in us from which can come the kind of responsiveness and resourcedness which is called for in the complexity of our human living and relating.
In a wider culture which rarely values such depth, what is it to learn to drop down beneath our shallow, reactiveness to the life which pulses beneath in all of us, and respond from there?
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Celebrating Community and Connection
04:40 Exploring Eugene Gendlin's Insights
09:37 The Inner Dialogue: Harshness vs. Compassion
15:10 Understanding the Inner Self and Relationships
21:58 Strength in Vulnerability and Connection
30:25 The Invitation to Depth and Wholeness
Here’s our source for this week:
Fresh Answers from the Inside
If you are like almost everybody else, you undoubtedly know a good deal about what is wrong in your life.
You may often lecture yourself, perhaps basing your lectures on sound inferences and assumptions…
Or, at other times, you skip the sophisticated lecture and insult yourself roundly and simply instead. A kick is what you think you need…
Not only do these lectures and self-castigations feel unpleasant, but they produce no useful change. You become something like two people, one in prison and the other outside. The outside person lectures or insults the one inside, cruelly listing all the alleged (but usually unproven) faults of character that have supposedly led to the prisoner's sorry plight. None of this helps the prisoner escape. When the lecture is over, the inner person is, as always, stuck…
Instead of talking at yourself from the outside in, you [could] listen to what comes from you, inside. You ask in a quiet, friendly, and sympathetic way, "What's wrong?" You may never before have been quite this friendly to yourself. Most people treat themselves very badly, much worse than they would ever think of treating another human being. Most people deal with their inside feeling person as a sadistic prison guard would.
Now, having asked your body this question-"What's really wrong?" —you deliberately refrain from answering it. When you ask another person a question, you don't go right on and answer the question yourself. Treat your own inside feeling person at least as well as you would someone else. Your inside feeling person, too, can answer, and doesn't need you to do all the answering. Try to pass up all the glib, familiar answers that come very fast. They are the same old answers you've heard in thousands of self-lectures down through the years.
Firmly reject them. Wait quietly for fresh answers to come from the inside, from the bodily felt sense of whatever situation is troubling you.
From ‘Focusing’ by Eugene Gendlin
Photo by Dominic Kurniawan Suryaputra on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2025
Turning Towards Life Live Season 1, from September 2025
We also have the launch of our Turning Towards Life live programme which is going to run in six month seasons from September. It's going to be in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. You can register your interest for Season 1 of Turning Towards Life Live here.
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
*It's our 400th episode, and in a special celebration for which we were joined by a live audience of listeners to Turning Towards Life, we return to the theme of episode 1, revisiting a source about living as fully as we can in the light of a life that is limited in time, and in which everything ends. Can we find a way not to turn away from the truth of this and, indeed, to use its truth as a path into living our lives contactfully, attentively and with joy, care, delight, sorrow, grief and truthfulness?
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
Here’s our source for this week:
Numbered
Sometimes I remember that my days are numbered.
My days for working are numbered.
My days for seeing a cloudless sky are numbered.
My days are numbered for sitting beneath tall trees.
And my days are numbered for learning.
My days for holding the ones I love are numbered,
As are my days of kisses.
My days of anguish, fear, and longing – they too are numbered.
And my days of walking the crests of high hills.
My days of deep conversation with friends and colleagues are numbered
And the days on which I can make a dent on the world.
My days for inventing, creating, demolishing, undoing, subverting, contributing.
My days for mending and tearing apart.
My days of confusion.
My days of spreadsheets, keyboards, pens, paperclips.
My days for travelling by train, bus, boat, plane.
My days for reading, music, turning my face towards the stars, and washing the dishes.
My days of getting to know myself.
My days for understanding what life is.
My days for loving.
My days for knowing.
All of these, too.
I don’t think I can remember this all the time.
I am too forgetful for that.
Too easily absorbed in the work of the day.
But when I do remember, life shines with new depth and wonder.
And I find it much more straightforward
To do what I am here to do.
Justin Wise
From Justin’s blog ‘On Living and Working’
Photo by Maksym Kaharlytskyi on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2025
Turning Towards Life Live Season 1, from September 2025
We also have the launch of our Turning Towards Life live programme which is going to run in six month seasons from September. It's going to be in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. You can register your interest for Season 1 of Turning Towards Life Live here.
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
*We’re all practicing already, whether we know it or not, in the daily routines by which we live our days. And so we can ask ourselves whether the practices we’re in the middle of now have us be in life in the way we wish for or value, or whether it’s time to find a way to practice something new. A conversation about the gifts, challenges and possibilities of a life of intentional practice.
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*You can join our Episode 400 Live, 8 June 2025, here
Here’s our source for this week:
On Practice
All the world’s great religious traditions know the value of practices, the daily acts of repetition and dedication that can so profoundly shape who we become. In our day to day lives we’ve mostly forgotten this – leaning towards tools or goals instead. Both have value, but without practice we miss something very important.
The idea of practice is, at its heart, very simple. They’re rehearsals of a quality or way of being in the world that we wish to cultivate. Done regularly and with purposeful intent, they gradually shape and reshape our relationship to ourselves and to the world.
In this way practices are so very different to techniques or tools – which are intended to bring about some immediate shift or change in the world. And they’re different again to goals – ways in which we’ve got committed to bringing about a particular state of affairs that we wish for.
The wonderful possibility in good practices is that we take them up primarily for their own sake, not to change things in a hurry, nor to compare ourselves with standards we might never reach. We taken them up because doing them has its own intrinsic value, and because we flower and flourish in unexpected ways by being people who are practicing.
And the other wonderful possibility in practice is that we can take it day at a time. Practice now, today. Be scrupulously kind to ourselves when we miss it or forget tomorrow. And begin, again, the next day.
We’re all practicing already, whether we know it or not, in the daily routines by which we live our days. And so we can all ask ourselves whether the practices we’re in the middle of now have us be in life in the way we wish for or value, or whether it’s time, at last, to find a way to practice something new.
Justin Wise
From Justin’s blog ‘On Living and Working’
Photo by Clark Young on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2025Episode 400 Live, June 8 2025On Sunday 8th June 2025 it will be our 400th episode and we are planning a Turning Towards Life live gathering on Zoom. You're all very welcome to join. It will be a wonderful opportunity to meet us and to meet others. You can book a place for Episode 400 Live on June 8 here.
Turning Towards Life Live Season 1, from September 2025
We also have the launch of our Turning Towards Life live programme which is going to run in six month seasons from September. It's going to be in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. You can register your interest for Season 1 of Turning Towards Life Live here.
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife Join Turning Towards Life Live: www.turningtowards.life/ttl-live-interest
*What happens when we honour both our deep gratitude for what is and our fierce yearning for what might be? How might we distinguish between the wanting that tries to fill an inner emptiness and the discontent that fuels a more life-giving opening to our lives... neither bypassing the tenderness of unfulfilled desires nor abandoning the creative energy they contain? What if our yearning, like trees reaching skyward, represents not something missing but something essential about what it means to be fully alive and engaged with the world?
A conversation about the tension between receiving life fully as it presents itself and allowing ourselves to reach toward something that is still calling us.
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.You can join our Episode 400 Live, 8 June 2025, hereEpisode Overview 00:00 Introduction and Upcoming Events
02:12 Exploring Yearning and Gratitude
06:50 The Nature of Longing
10:09 The Balance of Gratitude and Yearning
15:16 Cradling Vulnerability in Longing
20:20 The Distinction Between Wanting and Yearning
25:24 Yearning as a Call to Participation
29:54 Conclusion and Invitation to Join*
Here’s our source for this week:
Always yearn
Yearning is divine discontent that fuels us to keep expanding. To yearn is to live. Our desire is what gets us up in the morning, ignites our curiosity, gives our lives resonance. Do not be disconsolate when you feel a strong sense of yearning. It is an invitation that says: there is more, there is more, there is more. The Universe is constantly expanding. Why shouldn’t you?
Yearning is not a problem to be solved. It is an energy to be explored.
Three useful questions to start your own conversation about yearning and desire
What do you want?
More, what do you long for?
Most of all, when I do not have what I long for, how can I cradle myself through that rough edge?
Tina Sederholmwww.tinasederholm.com
Photo by Duncan McNab on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2025Episode 400 Live, June 8 2025On Sunday 8th June 2025 it will be our 400th episode and we are planning a Turning Towards Life live gathering on Zoom. You're all very welcome to join. It will be a wonderful opportunity to meet us and to meet others. You can book a place for Episode 400 Live on June 8 here.
Turning Towards Life Live Season 1, from September 2025
We also have the launch of our Turning Towards Life live programme which is going to run in six month seasons from September. It's going to be in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. You can register your interest for Season 1 of Turning Towards Life Live here.
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife Join Turning Towards Life Live: www.turningtowards.life/ttl-live-interestKeywords: divine discontent, yearning practice, gratitude practice, creative relationship, vulnerability cradle, expansion energy, spiritual yearning, inner emptiness, receiving life, contribution mindset, bounty sharing, rough edge, fullness orientation, divine longing, creative field, human bounty, life engagement, tender vulnerability, authentic wanting, relationship creativity, spiritual expansion, longing distinction, gratitude receiving, yearning exploration, creative partnership
Turning Towards Life, our weekly podcast hosted by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise, reaches its 400th episode on Sunday June 8.
You can book to join us at turningtowards.life/400
Lizzie and Justin will host our 400th conversation live on Zoom, you’ll have the opportunity to meet us and other people from around the world who follow the podcast, and we’ll host an opportunity for you to take a Turning Towards Life ‘source’ and learn from it and with it in conversation with others who join. We expect it to be a rich, joyful two hours with depth and the opportunity to be and feel part of the growing community of people from around the world who are connected with Turning Towards Life.
This will be a two-hour live event on Zoom, from 2pm-4pm UK (BST), which is 3pm-5pm CEST, 9pm-11pm Singapore, 9am-11am EDT, 6am-8am PDT.
All the details are at turningtowards.life/400
Also coming soon, Turning Towards Life Live Season 1, starting September 2025. Find out more at www.turningtowardslife/live
*What happens when we widen our perspective to view our individual lives as part of an endless flow of generations? How do we honour both the weight of our immediate concerns and the liberation that comes from seeing them as moments in an infinite tapestry? How might we practice radical amazement at the extraordinary nature of existence itself? What if our most profound joy emerges not from escaping life's difficulties but from embracing them while remembering the timeless quality beneath our temporal experience—that mysterious essence which precedes our birth and continues beyond our death? Perhaps our original light-heartedness—that which we carried as children—offers a way forward, now transformed by time and sorrow into something deeper.
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.You can join our Episode 400 Live, 8 June 2025, hereEpisode Overview 00:00 Introduction and Announcing Episode 400 Live on June 8
05:13 Exploring the Poem: 'Two Set Out on Their Journey'
09:56 Finding Out We Are Not Alone
14:58 Navigating Grief and Impermanence
20:03 Radical Amazement and Bigger Horizons of Time
25:11 The Journey of Life and the Light Heart
30:04 Conclusion and Reflection*
Two Set Out On Their Journey
We sit side by side,
brother and sister, and read
the book of what will be, while a breeze
blows the pages over—
desolate odd, cheerful even,
and otherwise. When we come
to our own story, the happy beginning,
the ending we don’t know yet,
the ten thousand acts
encumbering the days between,
we will read every page of it.
If an ancestor has pressed
a love-flower for us, it will lie hidden
between pages of the slow going,
where only those who adore the story
ever read. When the time comes
to shut the book and set out,
we will take childhood’s laughter
as far as we can into the days to come,
until another laughter sounds back
from the place where our next bodies
will have risen and will be telling
tales of what seemed deadly serious once,
offering to us oldening wayfarers
the light heart, now made of time
and sorrow, that we started with.
Galway Kinnell
Photo by Hoi An Photographer on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2025Episode 400 Live, June 8 2025On Sunday 8th June 2025 it will be our 400th episode and we are planning a Turning Towards Life live gathering on Zoom. You're all very welcome to join. It will be a wonderful opportunity to meet us and to meet others. You can book a place for Episode 400 Live on June 8 here.
Turning Towards Life Live Season 1, from September 2025
We also have the launch of our Turning Towards Life live programme which is going to run in six month seasons from September. It's going to be in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. You can register your interest for Season 1 of Turning Towards Life Live here.
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife Join Turning Towards Life Live: www.turningtowards.life/ttl-live-interest
What remains when someone we love is no longer physically with us? A conversation exploring the tension between doubt and the feeling that something continues beyond what we can see or touch. How we might speak to those who are gone, even when their ears and hearts seem to no longer exist, by voicing our love and sorrow—whether heard or not—a way in which we change both the world and our wounded hearts. And honouring the mysterious space where truth and our departed loved ones might still exist. Turning away from these deeper dimensions might be why we feel so disconnected, while embracing them offers a way to move through life with an open heart, receiving what remains precious beyond time and distance.You can find out more about the Thirdspace Professional Coaching Course 2025-26 on the Thirdspace website wearethirdspace.org This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction
03:18 This Week's Source by Nick Cave
09:04 Love, Death, and Paying Attention
16:54 Allowing Ourselves to be Uncertain
22:01 Gratitude and Reflection on the ConversationHere's our source for this week:
Red Hand Files #323, May 2025
My dad died suddenly and unexpectedly. We moved and only saw him for two weeks of what turned out to be his last year on earth. Now I feel like I have failed him so terribly. How do you apologize to someone who is gone? How do you say I love you and I’m so sorry when their ears and their heart don’t exist anymore?
AMY, LOS ANGELES, USA
You can find the rest of the source on Nick Cave's Red Hand Files website here
https://www.theredhandfiles.com/sudden-death-apologise-spiritual-intuition/
by Nick Cave
Photo by Road Ahead on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2025On Sunday 8th June 2025 it will be our 400th episode and we are planning a Turning Towards Life live gathering on Zoom. You're all very welcome to join. It will be a wonderful opportunity to meet us and to meet others. If you are at all interested and you would like to join us, please keep watching out and listening out on the podcast or you could head over towards our website turningtowards.life and sign up for our weekly emails there and you will get all of the information directly into your inbox.
We also have the launch of our Turning Towards Life live programme which is going to run in six month seasons. It's going to be in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. If you go to turningtowards.life there is a button you can press to register your interest in this.
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife Join Turning Towards Life Live: www.turningtowards.life/ttl-live-interestPodcast Keywords:
spiritual intuition, grief processing, subtle presence, communion practice, emotional reconciliation, love declaration, sacred mystery, physical absence, soul calling, emergent belief, universal declaration, ordinary world, mysterious presence, heartfelt practice, spiritual recognition, cynicism rejection, living relationship, parent-child connection, grief healing, unsettled mystery, love endurance, existential comfort, reconciliation practice, softened receptivity
A rich conversation about the necessity, joys and inevitable difficulties of loving - of loving one another, of loving all we can about this one precious life. About how easy it is to turn away, to distract ourselves, to check out of all that loving takes - as if that would save us from what Lizzie calls ‘the rattling sorrow’ of loss. And about the responsibilities and ‘moral labour’ that’s called for for us to stay engaged, to keep returning, even though we have such breakable hearts, for the benefit of all those around us, including of course our selves.You can find out more about the Thirdspace Professional Coaching Course 2025-26 on the Thirdspace website wearethirdspace.org This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction and Celebration of Milestones
02:11 Exploring the Source: Wise Animals by Tom Chatfield
07:25 The Moral Labour of Living
15:24 Navigating Grief and Vulnerability
21:42 The Complexity of Love and Loss
27:19 Tussling with Different Points of View
31:32 Spiritual Perspectives on Living
35:02 Turning Towards Life Live - An Invitation to Engage and Learn TogetherHere's our source for this week:
The Moral Labour of Living
To be human is to be born into utter helplessness, in circumstances beyond our choosing. It is to grow and change, constrained by these circumstances and biological inheritance. It is to achieve some measure of independence, for a time, in the context of our planet’s and our societies’ vast networks of exchange and competition. And it is to seek not only survival but also – so long as the body’s basic needs are met – some form of flourishing or contentment. There is no final victory, no guarantee of success, and no infallible guidance. There is only the contingent business of trying, together, to live and to know ourselves a little better.
All of the above entails … moral labour whose difficulty and significance are inextricably linked. As the parent of two young children, one of the hardest lessons I have struggled to master – like most parents – is the fact that my children’s desires are an imperfect guide to their wellbeing. Making their lives easier is not always the best way to prepare them for life. [It’s] more important for me gradually to help them develop a measure of self-control, fairness and ambition – and to show them how trust can be earned – than it is for me constantly to monitor and intervene in everything they do. Also like many parents, a second lesson I’m still trying to learn is that the person who all too often needs to improve their self-control is me.
To love and to nurture other human beings brings pain as well as joy; frustration and exhaustion as well as delight; the prospect of devastating loss alongside the gains of consuming love. And these satisfactions and sacrifices can’t tidily be separated. To withdraw your care from any relationship is to make yourself less vulnerable, for a price: it’s to diminish what you risk and give, but also what you can receive and gain.
from Wise Animals: How Technology Has Made Us What We Are
by Tom Chatfield
Photo by Mario Purisic on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2025On Sunday 8th June 2025 it will be our 400th episode and we are planning a Turning Towards Life live gathering on Zoom. You're all very welcome to join. It will be a wonderful opportunity to meet us and to meet others. If you are at all interested and you would like to join us, please keep watching out and listening out on the podcast or you could head over towards our website turningtowards.life and sign up for our weekly emails there and you will get all of the information directly into your inbox.
We also have the launch of our Turning Towards Life live programme which is going to run in six month seasons. It's going to be in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. If you go to turningtowards.life there is a button you can press to register your interest in this.
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife Join Turning Towards Life Live: www.turningtowards.life/ttl-live-interestKeywords:moral labour, vulnerability, human helplessness, self-regulation, emotional capacity, parenting wisdom, grief alongside joy, spiritual questions, letting go, loving attachment, life boundaries, personal mastery, technology escape, relationship vulnerability, human connection, personal growth, accepting mortality, biological inheritance, human dependency, embracing uncertainty, contingent living, self-control development, nurturing relationships, emotional complexity, devastating loss, consuming love, risk and reward, withdrawal consequences, heart expansion, denial mechanisms, holding contradictions, thoughtful disagreement, dialogue practice, human finitude, sacred impermanence, interdependence, tender-heartedness, parental challenges, intergenerational wisdom, therapeutic conversation, existential questions, philosophical exploration, emotional literacy, personal development, turning towards, personal responsibility, life meaning, conscious living, Third Space, turningtowards.life
In this conversation, we explore a poem by Wendell Berry which calls us to wake up from the numbing effects of conventional life and practice living with true aliveness. We begin by reflecting on how Berry's invitation to "do something that won't compute" challenges us to question the systems and habits that keep us trapped in unconscious patterns - the quick profit, the ready-made, the fear of death - and instead to embrace practices that cultivate genuine freedom and connection with life.
We delve into the tension between the familiar and the unfamiliar, discussing how our natural tendency to create predictable cycles can both build stable communities and wall us off from deeper truths. Through Berry's provocative lines, we consider how systems try to predict and control us, and how deliberately cultivating 'eccentricity' - living at least partially outside the dominant cultural expectations - can be a path to a kind of aliveness and responsibility for life. We examine how laughter, loving what seems undeserving, and asking questions without answers can shake us from our sleepiness, while also acknowledging that not all disruptions are equally valuable - suggesting that we measure new possibilities against what would satisfy someone bringing life into the world. Ultimately, we see Berry's manifesto as an invitation to practice deliberateness through conscious engagement with life's full complexity rather than waiting for life to wake us through crisis.
You can find out more about the Thirdspace Professional Coaching Course 2025-26 on the Thirdspace website wearethirdspace.org This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction to Turning Towards Life
02:52 Exploring Wendell Berry's Manifesto
05:54 Eccentric Perspectives
09:52 Nature and Connection in Wendell Berry's Work
14:54 The Invitation to Question and Reflect
19:49 The Familiar vs. The Unfamiliar
24:38 Finding Sources of Truthfulness in Life
29:35 Conclusion and Reflection on the ConversationHere's our source for this week:
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
Wendell Berry
Photo by Nina Luong on Unsplash
Join Us Live in 2025On Sunday 8th June 2025 it will be our 400th episode and we are planning a Turning Towards Life live gathering on Zoom. You're all very welcome to join. It will be a wonderful opportunity to meet us and to meet others. If you are at all interested and you would like to join us, please keep watching out and listening out on the podcast or you could head over towards our website turningtowards.life and sign up for our weekly emails there and you will get all of the information directly into your inbox.
We also have the launch of our Turning Towards Life live programme which is going to run in six month seasons. It's going to be in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. If you go to turningtowards.life there is a button you can press to register your interest in this.
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife Join Turning Towards Life Live: www.turningtowards.life/ttl-live-interestKeywords:Wendell Berry, Mad Farmer, Liberation Manifesto, Cultural Eccentricity, Personal Freedom, Questioning Systems, Breaking Patterns, Conscious Living, Familiar Patterns, Unfamiliar Paths, Habitual Thinking, Inner Liberation, Waking Up, Mindful Resistance, Practice Resurrection, Nature Connection, Deep Thinking, Cultural Criticism, Consumer Culture, Human Connection, Authentic Living, Life Cycles, Pattern Disruption, Personal Growth, Comfort Challenges, Life Transformation, Living Philosophy, Environmental Awareness, Mindfulness Practices, Critical Thinking, Spiritual Growth, Social Systems, Alternative Lifestyles, Life Purpose, Contemplative Practice, Authentic Relationships, Ecological Awareness, Meaning Making, Challenging Conventions, Life Transitions, Wisdom Traditions, Self Reflection, Countercultural Ideas, Modern Alienation, Life Balance, Ethical Living, Social Change, Human Potential
What would it be to learn to help other people turn deeply towards their own lives? We’ve been asking this question in many ways over the past more than seven years, and this week we turn towards a great love of ours, the Thirdspace Professional Coaching Course, which is designed around this very question.
This year’s course begins in June and applications are coming in. In this rich conversation we talk together about what it is to be an attentive, compassionate and wise support for the development of others, and what it might be like to learn with us over the course of a year.You can find out more about the programme on the Thirdspace website wearethirdspace.org This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview00:00 Introduction to the Thirdspace Professional Coaching Course
03:03 The Heart of Integral Development Coaching
05:59 Navigating Life's Interruptions with Creativity and Compassion
08:47 The Role of Community in Learning to Coach
12:03 Coaching is Learning to Turn Towards Life
14:58 The Importance of Belonging and Contribution
17:51 Embracing Creativity and Courage in Difficult Times
21:06 The Journey of Self-Discovery
23:55 Practical Skills for Life and Coaching
27:00 Conclusion and Invitation to Join
30:38 Taking Up Our "Right Size" in the World
Here's our source for this week:
Coaching and Learning to Coach
Every so often in life we pause and make note of the person we have become and the one we are becoming. Sometimes this reflection is prompted by professional circumstances, like a promotion, performance review, job change, or firing. Just as often it emerges from the “rest of life” – as through an illness, death, or the beginning or ending of a relationship. Whatever the origin, these experiences can feel like an opportunity or a burden, a chance to develop or a painful lesson…and often both. How we make sense of these experiences often determines what actions we take, and this, of course, influences our competence and fulfilment in life. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, in these moments, to have someone by our side to ask skilful questions, listen deeply, be fully present with who we are and what we say, point out our blind spots, and custom-design practices to help us move forward? And wouldn’t it be marvellous, too, to be this person for others?
The Professional Coaching Course (PCC) exists in large part due to the primacy of these questions for ourselves and the people we serve.
Integral Development Coaching is what happens when two people develop a professional relationship that is grounded in mutual trust and respect, directed toward a set of clear outcomes, guided by presence, and informed by broad models about what it means to be a human being. It is a methodology. It is an integration project. It is a moment when you feel deeply connected to yourself and others, with a deep acceptance of everything, and you take practical steps to move forward in life. It is both simpler and more complex than it sounds.
James Flaherty and Amiel HandelsmannFrom ‘Integrating Rigour, Compassion, and Creative Design - an Introduction to Integral Development Coaching and the PCC’
Join Us Live in 2025On Sunday 8th June 2025 it will be our 400th episode and we are planning a Turning Towards Life live gathering on Zoom. You're all very welcome to join. It will be a wonderful opportunity to meet us and to meet others. If you are at all interested and you would like to join us, please keep watching out and listening out on the podcast or you could head over towards our website turningtowards.life and sign up for our weekly emails there and you will get all of the information directly into your inbox.
We also have the launch of our Turning Towards Life live programme which is going to run in six month seasons. It's going to be in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. If you go to turningtowards.life there is a button you can press to register your interest in this.
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife Join Turning Towards Life Live: www.turningtowards.life/ttl-live-interest
*If 'power' is the extent to which we each are able to bring about our intentions in the world, then our power matters. But there are many different ways to exercise power - as a parent, colleague, friend - in any role where our actions influence others.
What does it take to recognise how we're exercising the power we have? Are we acting from our fearful parts or from that which is solid, genuine and faithful to life? Perhaps the deeper invitation is to centre our power around love itself - whether fierce or gentle - rather than around our attempts to dominate and control.
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*Join Us Live in 2025On Sunday 8th June 2025 it will be our 400th episode and we are planning a Turning Towards Life live gathering on Zoom. You're all very welcome to join. It will be a wonderful opportunity to meet us and to meet others. If you are at all interested and you would like to join us, please keep watching out and listening out on the podcast or you could head over towards our website turningtowards.life and sign up for our weekly emails there and you will get all of the information directly into your inbox.
We also have the launch of our Turning Towards Life live programme which is going to run in six month seasons. It's going to be in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. If you go to turningtowards.life there is a button you can press to register your interest in this.
About Turning Towards Life
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife Join Turning Towards Life Live: www.turningtowards.life/ttl-live-interest
Episode Overview00:00 Introduction and Upcoming Events
02:19 Marion Woodman’s Source
05:07 Personal Authenticity
08:31 Distinctions in Love and Power
12:05 The Nature of Power and Love
16:38 Truth, Power, and Realness
20:08 The Necessity of Power Dynamics
24:45 Faith and Possibility
Here's our source for this week:
The Real Power
To me, real power is about presence. It’s the energy of knowing that you are who you are, and therefore speaking and acting from your authentic self. It doesn’t matter what your work is—if you’re a teacher or a nurse or whatever; it is your presence that’s the power. It’s not power over anybody else. It’s just the expression of who you are.
*Power in the sense of controlling somebody else is different from personal presence.
Love is the real power. It’s the energy that cherishes. The more you work with that energy, the more you will see how people respond naturally to it, and the more you’ll want to use it. It brings out your creativity, and helps everyone around you flower. Your children, the people you work with - everyone blooms.*
Marion Woodman
Photo by Jessica Alves on Unsplash
The narratives about time and growing older that our culture hands us often fail to name and invite the kind of luminous gathering of life that we can become with age. What if we found a way to fully grieve the losses of aging, rather than fight against them, and in doing so we deepen into a kind of translucent generosity of heart and spirit in which we allow ourselves to give ourselves away to those around us and to life itself? And what if we could do that together, rather than alone?
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife Join Turning Towards Life Live: www.turningtowards.life/ttl-live-interest
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Episode Overview
00:00 Introduction and Gratitude
03:11 Exploring Wendell Berry's Work
06:00 The Nature of Time and Aging
12:01 Grief and Acceptance
18:12 Generosity in the Face of Loss
23:57 Community and Intergenerational Wisdom
Here's our source for this week:
Sabbaths 1993 I
No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility you were.
More and more you have become
those lives and deaths
that have belonged to you.
You have become a sort of grave
containing much that was
and is no more in time, beloved
then, now, and always.
And so you have become a sort of tree
standing over a grave.
Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.by Wendell Berry
Photo by Maria Krasnova on Unsplash
Chasing after what we want so badly - from our friends and other relationships - can make it infuriatingly difficult to have and be what we most need. Can we find a way to move towards our longings also find out that although there is much that we might legimately want and long for, the act of receiving and giving right here, in the midst of where we already are, can so often bring us much that we really need. In the process of cultivating a steady reciprocity of receiving and giving we can become a person who meets the truer needs of those around us. The metaphor of the water wheel, in its steady turn of giving and receiving, has much to stir our imagination in this regard, as Rumi teaches us in this week's luminous source.
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife Join Turning Towards Life Live: www.turningtowards.life/ttl-live-interest
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Episode Overview
00:00 Introduction and Welcoming the Audience
02:53 Exploring Rumi's 'The Water Wheel'
05:55 Curiosity and Aliveness in Relationships
08:55 The Nature of Friendship and Reciprocity
11:53 Receiving and Giving in Life
15:10 The Balance of Stillness and Movement
17:53 Desires and the Journey of Staying Present
21:08 The Invitation to Stay Together
24:00 Conclusion and Reflection on the Conversation
Here's our source for this week:
The Waterwheel
Stay together, friends.
Don’t scatter and sleep.
Our friendship is made
of being awake.
The waterwheel accepts water
and turns and gives it away,
weeping.
That way it stays in the garden,
whereas another roundness rolls
through a dry riverbed looking
for what it thinks it wants.
Stay here, quivering with each moment
like a drop of mercury.
RumiPhoto by Jonathan Wheeler on Unsplash
We long to be present in our lives, and we run from it too. In a culture which emphasises the running - into distraction and avoidance - how might we turn towards the intimacy of presence with our own lives and what we care about the most? Why does this even matter (and it does!)? And how do we do that without dishonouring those parts of us that want to protect us from the inevitable tragedies and losses that come along with beauty and sacredness?
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife Join Turning Towards Life Live: www.turningtowards.life/ttl-live-interest
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Episode Overview
00:00 Introduction to Turning Towards Life Live
03:01 The Importance of Community and Connection
06:01 Exploring the Poem 'Prayer' by Marie Howe
08:53 The Struggle Between Presence and Distraction
11:44 The Human Condition: Longing and Running
14:58 Finding Humor in Our Inner Conflicts
17:51 The Sacredness of Everyday Life
21:05 Navigating the Complexity of Life
24:04 The Balance of Beauty and Tragedy in Existence
27:13 The Role of Presence in Our Lives
30:08 Conclusion and Reflections on the ConversationHere's our source for this week:
Prayer
Every day I want to speak with you. And every day something more important
calls for my attention – the drugstore, the beauty products, the luggage
I need to buy for the trip.
Even now I can hardly sit here
among the falling piles of paper and clothing, the garbage trucks outside
already screeching and banging.
The mystics say you are as close as my own breath.
Why do I flee from you?
My days and nights pour through me like complaints
and become a story I forgot to tell.
Help me. Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.
Marie Howe
from The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (Norton, 2008)
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
We look out at the world and see horizons everywhere, lines on the ‘edge of the world’ that we know are markers of the beyond. When we move and shift our position, what is beyond the horizon reveals itself in new ways.
And we are like this too - what is within us and what is between us is marked by horizons that are not fixed lines but invitations for movement and discovery. What would become possible if we committed ourselves to standing in new places inside ourselves, and taking one another by the hand to meet on new horizons between us than the habitual, familiar ones we have grown used to?
This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Episode Overview
00:00 Introduction to Turning Towards Life
02:02 Exploring the Concept of Horizons
10:15 The Nature of Limitations and Possibilities
16:35 Shared Horizons in Relationships
22:01 Imagination and New Horizons
28:38 The Power of Connection and Support
Here's our source for this week:
HORIZONS
are everywhere: both inside and outside of what only feels like our sense of self. The edge between what I think is me and what I think is you is as much a horizon as any line of mountains or that far dark line on the distant ocean. Horizon is the line between what we think we know and what we do not know, between what we think we see and do not see: horizons mark the threshold between the world that I inhabit and the one that seems to wait for me, between a world I can almost understand and what lies beyond the imagination of my present life. Horizons are creative, disturbing, invitational edges just by the fact that they exist.
David Whytefrom ‘Consolations II: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words’Photo by Sam Williams on Unsplash
*There is action to be taken in the world, for sure. Urgent action to take care of our lives, our communities, and the wider world in which we all live. But there is a also a deep well of presence, patience, intimacy, and connection right in the centre of each of us. When our action is fearful, rushed and out of touch with this still centre, it easily spills over into polarisation, panic and disconnection. And when the source of our action is this centre, the essential aliveness and goodness that we all are at the heart of things, much more that is sustaining and care-filled becomes possible. What is it to find our way back to the vastness that is our origins, and to let our lives and relationships be infused by that at each moment, especially now?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Episode Overview 00:00 Welcome and Introduction to Silence
04:03 The Importance of Silence in Our Lives
08:00 Silence as a Political Act
12:04 Finding Our Center in Silence
15:58 The Role of Silence in Action
20:08 Cultivating Silence for Deeper Connection
23:46 Reflection and Observation in Leadership
28:10 Gratitude for Silence and Connection
31:51 Conclusion and Invitation to Return
Here's our source for this week:
Within Each of Us There is a Silence
Within each of us there is a silence
—a silence as vast as a universe.
We are afraid of it…and we long for it.
When we experience that silence, we remember
who we are: creatures of the stars, created
from the cooling of this planet, created
from dust and gas, created
from the elements, created
from time and space…created
from silence.
In our present culture,
silence is something like an endangered species…
an endangered fundamental.
The experience of silence is now so rare
that we must cultivate it and treasure it.
This is especially true for shared silence.
Sharing silence is, in fact, a political act.
When we can stand aside from the usual and
perceive the fundamental, change begins to happen.
Our lives align with deeper values
and the lives of others are touched and influenced.
Silence brings us back to basics, to our senses,
to our selves. It locates us. Without that return
we can go so far away from our true natures
that we end up, quite literally, beside ourselves.
We live blindly and act thoughtlessly.
We endanger the delicate balance which sustains
our lives, our communities, and our planet.
Each of us can make a difference.
Politicians and visionaries will not return us
to the sacredness of life.
That will be done by ordinary men and women
who together or alone can say,
"Remember to breathe, remember to feel,
remember to care,
let us do this for our children and ourselves
and our children's children. Let us practice for life's sake."
by Gunilla NorrisPhoto by Janke Laskowski on Unsplash
*How can we start to become more aware of the ways we conduct ourselves in our lives, especially the way we conduct ourselves towards others? At a time when we are being encouraged to cheapen our relationships with one another, or to wield power over one another, can we catch on more sensitively to the ways we carry our shame, our wish to dominate, our fear, and how the protective parts of us respond to that in the way we bring ourselves to others? Can we nurture in us that which brings our fullest qualities forward, and which evokes them in others? And how do we attend to the patterns over time in us that we're expressing - patterns which may have been born in our own childhood or in the generations before us - and intervene thoughtfully and with integrity so we can more and more be the ones we are here to be?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Episode Overview
00:00 Introduction to Turning Towards Life
03:00 Exploring the Source: Children Learn What They Live
05:46 The Impact of Parenting on Self-Perception
09:10 Understanding Inner Patterns and Their Origins
11:54 The Role of Consciousness and Observation
14:58 Navigating Power Dynamics in Relationships
18:11 The Journey of Self-Discovery and Healing
21:03 Compassion and Understanding
24:12 The Importance of Reflection and Choice
26:48 Closing Thoughts and Future Conversations
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Children Learn What They Live*
If a child lives with criticism, he learns to condemn.
If a child lives with hostility, he learns to fight.
If a child lives with ridicule, he learns to be shy.
If a child lives with shame, he learns to feel guilty.
If a child lives with tolerance, he learns to be patient.
If a child lives with encouragement, he learns confidence.
If a child lives with praise, he learns to appreciate.
If a child lives with security, he learns to have faith.
If a child lives with approval, he learns to like himself.
If a child lives with acceptance and friendship, he learns to find love in the world.
Dorothy Law Nolte, 1954Family Column for the Torrance Herald newspaper
Photo by Piron Guillaume on Unsplash
*Underneath the necessary surface of our life - all the ways we accommodate, fit in, bend ourselves to take care of one another - there is another deeper current. Sometimes we might go years without attending to this flow, maybe encountering it again only right at the end of our lives. We keep on finding through our conversations and our work how much it matters in a life to attend to the flow, to discover what it is saying, to find out the unique kind of truth that we can make with our own lives, and to bring it to the surface so it can flow into the world and be of benefit. How might we do this? What does it take to do this? That's the topic of David Whyte's stirring poem that forms the source for this week, and the conversation which follows.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Episode Overview
00:00 Introduction and Context
03:10 Exploring David Whyte's Poem
06:25 Personal Reflections on Truth
10:41 The Importance of Realness
15:16 Discernment in Relationships
20:38 The Journey of Self-Discovery
25:13 Creating Spaces for Truth
27:57 Conclusion and Invitation
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
All the True Vows*
All the true vows
are secret vows
the ones we speak out loud
are the ones we break.
There is only one life
you can call your own
and a thousand others
you can call by any name you want.
Hold to the truth you make
every day with your own body,
don’t turn your face away.
Hold to your own truth
at the center of the image
you were born with.
Those who do not understand
their destiny will never understand
the friends they have made
nor the work they have chosen
nor the one life that waits
beyond all the others.
By the lake in the wood
in the shadows
you can
whisper that truth
to the quiet reflection
you see in the water.
Whatever you hear from
the water, remember,
it wants you to carry
the sound of its truth on your lips.
Remember,
in this place
no one can hear you
and out of the silence
you can make a promise
it will kill you to break,
that way you’ll find
what is real and what is not.
I know what I am saying.
Time almost forsook me
and I looked again.
Seeing my reflection
I broke a promise
and spoke
for the first time
after all these years
in my own voice,
before it was too late
to turn my face again.
David Whyte, from The House of Belonging
Photo by Justin Wise
*When we see our lives only as a linear path from here to there, A to B, we put ourselves at the risk of endless comparison between 'where I am' and 'what might have been'. It's a comparison that does not often support us well, and it fuels an orientation that values youth ('I still have time to get to where I'm supposed to be') over age ('time is running out'). There is another way to look - to see that in many ways, alongside our achievements and disappointments, life is a circling. We move in a circular way, carrying, as Nick Cave writes, "all our needs and yearnings and hurts along with us, and all the people who have poured themselves into us and made us what we are". It is in It is "this circular reciprocal motion that grows more essential and affirming and necessary with each turn".
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Episode Overview
00:00 Introduction to Turning Towards Life
02:00 Exploring Nick Cave's Insights
06:01 The Circular Nature of Life
12:05 Rethinking Time and Progress
17:52 The Impact of Human Constructs
23:52 Embracing the Journey of LifeHere's our source for this week:
Circling Around
S: So essentially what you’re doing as an artist is constantly stumbling forward.
N: Stumbling forward is a beautiful way of putting it Seán, but I wonder if the notion of forwardness is correct. Perhaps what I mean to say is that although we feel we are moving in a forward direction, in my estimation we are forever moving in a circular way, with all the things we love and remember in tow, and carrying all our needs and yearnings and hurts along with us, and all the people who have poured themselves into us and made us what we are, and all the ghosts who travel with us. It’s like we are running towards God, but that God’s love is also the wind that it pushing us on, as both the impetus and the destination, and it resides in both the living and the dead. Around and around we go, encountering the same things, again and again, but within this movement things happen that change us, annihilate us, shift our relationship to the world. It is this circular reciprocal motion that grows more essential and affirming and necessary with each turn.
From Faith, Hope and Carnage - by Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan
Photo by Erlend Ekseth on Unsplash
*We have choices to make in how we relate to one another. We can relate from something real in us, and choose to treat the others we are with as real. Or we can retreat into a 'hall of mirrors' when we relate to one another from the more protective patterns in us. Much becomes possible when we find a way to be real, to 'wake to each other' as we're invited to do by M C Richards in this week's source. A conversation about generosity, curiosity, courage and contactfulness - all qualities of great value in the world right now.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Episode Overview
00:00 Welcome and Introduction to the Conversation
02:29 Exploring the Source: MC Richards' 'Centering'
06:21 The Challenge of Realness
11:06 Initiative and Newness
16:05 The Importance of Realness in Relationships
22:22 Curiosity vs. Fear in Human Connection
27:24 The Ripple Effect of Genuine ConnectionHere's our source for this week:
My Face is Real. Yours is.
“An act of the self, that’s what one must make. An act of the self, from me to you. From center to center. We must mean what we say, from our innermost heart to the outermost galaxy. Otherwise we are lost and dizzy in a maze of reflections. We carry light within us - there is no need merely to reflect. Others carry light within them. These lights must wake to each other. My face is real. Yours is. Let us find our way to our initiative.”
M C Richards, from ‘Centering’
Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash
*Is our primary task in our lives to pursue meaning? Or is it first to learn how to be in ever more contact with our lives - to actually experience what happens inside us and outside us and bring the two into relationship with one another? It might well be the case that until we’re doing that, it’s very hard for us to be sensitive enough to our lives to even know if meaning is coming our way.
A conversation about meaning, purpose, and the experience of life, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Episode Overview
00:00 Introduction to Turning Towards Life
02:59 Exploring Joseph Campbell's Perspective on Life
10:08 The Experience of Being Alive
17:48 Intimacy Between Inner and Outer Worlds
27:59 Conclusion and Reflection on AlivenessHere's our source for this week:
“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”
Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
Photo by NEOM on Unsplash
What happens when we recognise something original in ourselves and each other that exists prior to our individual stories and fears? When we see past the nest of our anxieties to what Mark Nepo calls 'the clear bird' - our essential nature that connects us to the very beginning of things - we might discover a profound basis for meeting life's complexities with wisdom and courage.
When someone sees us fully enough to see beneath our fears to this essential nature, we wonder why we ever held our secrets so tightly. Witnessing the light in one another invites us to remember that we're not separate from each other or the world, but rather expressions of the same something bursting itself forward into the world, offering a path toward genuine connection and meaning, and also what we might need to call upon to respond courageously and lovingly to the complexities and difficult challenges of the world.
*This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Episode Overview
00:00 Introduction and Gratitude for Mark Nepo
02:33 Exploring the Source: The Book of Awakening
07:05 The Connection Between Self-Love and the World
10:13 Understanding Originalness and Connection
15:01 The Power of Seeing Each Other's Originalness
18:46 Practicing Mutual Recognition and Light
22:51 The Importance of Seeing Beyond Stories
27:05 The Role of Conversation in Understanding
32:38 Closing Thoughts
I begin to realize that in inquiring about my own origin and goal, I am inquiring about something other than myself…. In this very realization I begin to recognize the origin and goal of the world.
Martin Buber
*In loving ourselves, we love the world. For just as fire, rock, and water are all made up of molecules, everything, including you and me, is connected by a small piece of the beginning. Yet, how do we love ourselves? It is as difficult at times as seeing the back of your head ... like feeding a clear bird that no one else can see. You must be still and offer your palmful of secrets like delicate seed. As she eats your secrets, no longer secret, she glows and you lighten, and her voice, which only you can hear, is your voice bereft of plans. And the light through her body will bathe you till you wonder why the gems in your palm were ever fisted...
Once in a great while, if someone loves you enough, they might see her rise from the nest beneath your fear. In this way, I’ve learned that loving yourself requires a courage unlike any other. It requires us to believe in and stay loyal to something no one else can see that keeps us in the world—our own self-worth. All the great moments of conception—the birth of mountains, of trees, of fish, of prophets, and the truth of relationships that last—all begin where no one can see, and it is our job not to extinguish what is so beautifully begun. For once full of light, everything is safely on its way—not pain-free, but unencumbered—and the air beneath your wings is the same air that trills in my throat, and the empty benches in snow are as much a part of us as the empty figures who slouch on them in spring.
When we believe in what no one else can see, we find we are each other. And all moments of living, no matter how difficult, come back into some central point where self and world are one, where light pours in and out at once.*
Mark Nepo, from ‘The Book of Awakening’
Photo by Mitya Ivanov on Unsplash
To live in the unresolved questions, tensions and contradictions of life is to be alive. To try to turn away from them, as if our lives could be question and confusion free is simply to drive the tensions inside us - to divide ourselves internally and to divide ourselves from life. We could see, as Lizzie says in this conversation, that "the tensions are life itself". So what does it take to live in the midst of life's complexity rather than turn away - to live life rather than pretend to live? That's the question we take up in this episode.
*This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
“Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves….Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” Rainer Maria Rilke
Parker Palmer writes in reflection:
But my deeper hope comes with Rilke’s words “and the point is to live everything.” Of course that is the point! If I do not fully live the tensions that come my way, those tensions do not disappear: they go underground and multiply. I may not know how to solve them, but by wrapping my life around them and trying to live out their resolution, I open myself to new possibilities and keep the tensions from tearing me apart.
There is only one alternative: an unlived life, a life lived in denial of the tensions that life brings. Here I play a masked role, pretending outwardly that I have no tensions at all while inwardly all those tensions I pretend not to have are ripping the fabric of my life.
Pretending is another name for dividedness, a state that keeps us from cultivating the capacity for connectedness on which teaching depends. When we pretend we fall out of community with the common centre that is both the root and the fruit of teaching at its best. But when we understand that ‘the point is to live everything’ we will recover all that is lost.
From the Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer
Photo by Jacky Nelson on Unsplash
*We often hold onto positions, opinions and beliefs as a way of shoring ourselves up against the uncertainty of the world. And while our positions may have much integrity to them, it's most often the case that they're not the whole story, especially when faced with the complexity of the world, as well as the complexity of ourselves and other people.
Holding on to a position too tightly can easily lead us into difficult places, but it can also be difficult to soften a position and even more difficult to let it go when it is called for. We can so easily feel shame or embarrassment, strong inner criticism, or we can face the criticism of others. In this conversation we venture together into exploring what it might take for each of us to cultivate our own inner flexibility so we can meet the unfolding world with the responsiveness and wisdom that it calls for. And what it might take for us to be a welcome to that change in ourselves and to change in others.*
*This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
No Position is Correct for Long
Every human position has a problem with it. Believed in too much, it slides into error. It's not that no position is correct; it's that no position is correct for long. We're perpetually slipping out of absolute virtue and failing to notice, blinded by our desire to settle in—to finally stop fretting about things and relax forever and just be correct; to find an agenda and stick with it…
It's hard to be alive. The anxiety of living makes us want to judge, be sure, have a stance, definitively decide. Having a fixed, rigid system of belief can be a great relief.
Wouldn't it be nice to just decide to live as an anti-happiness zealot? … Completely consistent, you'll never need to be confused again. You can just stalk around, having sold your bathing suit, looking down your nose at everything.
For that matter, wouldn't it be nice to just throw down on the side of being happy? To decide to live life as an ardent pro-happiness advocate, always striving to celebrate, dance, have fun, maximize your joy? But then, before you know it, you're [obnoxious] on Instagram, standing in a waterfall with a garland of flowers, thanking God for blessing you with this wonderful life you must have somehow earned via your immaculate mindfulness.
As long as we don't decide, we allow further information to keep coming in… It reminds us that any question in the form "Is X right or wrong?" could benefit from another round of clarifying questions.
Question: "Is X good or bad?"
Story: "For whom? On what day, under what conditions? Might there be some unintended consequences associated with X? Some good hidden in the bad that is X? Some bad hidden in the good that is X? Tell me more."
George Saunders
from ‘A Swim in the Pond in the Rain’
Photo by Cici GUAN on Unsplash
*Giving can, for many of us, be a fraught experience. Maybe we give to one another in the expectation of a particular kind of response or validation, and then maybe we get it… or not. Or we might hold back from giving as a way to keep ourselves safe from being exposed and getting things wrong.
How we give to one another and how our giving brings life to both giver and receiver are our topic for this conversation. Is there a way we might find to enter into a more mutual, life-giving, trusting reciprocity around our giving and loving one another, and the world?*
*This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Highlights of our conversation:
00.00 Introduction and Welcome
04.35 Exploring the source, Once Loved
13.20 Polarities of Giving and Receiving
16.33 Cultivating Faith in Life’s Benevolence
19.26 Shifting Narratives
22.28 Generosity, Nurture, Care
25.19 Care vs Use
28.27 Closing Reflections
Here’s our source for this week:
Once Loved
World
Once loved
Will always yield
Its rewards to the
Giver
Meadow
Once grazed
Will never mind
Ceding grass to the
Grazer
Man
Once loved
Will never lose
Hope while holding the
Lover
Tree
Once hugged
Will never live
Life without loving the
Hugger
Stefan Atkinson
Photo by Peter Herrmann on Unsplash
*“Worry is really misplaced imagination”, someone told us recently. In this conversation, we consider what it is to bring our rich capacities for imagination, reflection and attention to the living of our lives, rather than as a way to escape life. What becomes possible when we commit to being changed by our experiences, in much the same way that light illuminates and changes a room, rather than ‘going to sleep in the middle of the show’? And how much it matters that we engage fully in the work of reflective conversation, making sense of and metabolising our experiences so we can learn from them. Living this way isn’t ‘navel gazing’ but a way of turning our experiences into learning rather than rigidity, and supporting us in bringing ourselves more fully into life.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Highlights of our conversation:
00.00 Introduction and Welcome
04.08 Exploring the source, MC Richards’ ‘Centering’
08.07 Learning and Consciousness
11.59 Awakening to Life: The Challenge of Engagement
15.59 Processing and Metabolising Life
20.01 Imagination and Reflection: Staying Awake
23.52 The Value of Reflective Conversations
Here’s our source for this week:
Learning to be Alive
You don’t need to tell me what education is. Everybody really knows that education goes on all the time everywhere all through our lives, and that it is the process of waking up to life… It takes a heap of resolve to keep from going to sleep in the middle of the show. It’s not that we want to sleep our lives away. It’s that it takes certain kinds of energy, certain capacities for taking the world into our consciousness, certain real powers of body and soul to be a match for reality.
That’s why knowledge and consciousness are two quite different things. Knowledge is like a product we consume and store. All we need [for that] are good closets. By consciousness I mean a state of being ‘awake’ to the world throughout our organism. This kind of consciousness requires not closets but an organism attuned to the finest perceptions and responses. It allows experience to breathe through it as light enters and changes a room.
That which we consume, with a certain passivity, accepting it for the most part from our teachers, who in turn have accepted it from theirs, is like the food we eat. And food, in order to become energy, or will, [must be] transformed entirely by the processes of metabolism.
We do not become the food we eat. Rather the food turns into us. Similarly with knowledge, at best, we do not turn into encyclopedias or propaganda machines or electric brains. Our knowledge, if we allow it to be transformed within us, turns into a capacity for life-serving human deeds. If knowledge does not turn into life [it] poisons just as food would if it stayed in the stomach and was never digested, and the waste products never thrown off.
M C Richards, from ‘Centering’
Photo by Peter Herrmann on Unsplash
*The delicate balance between taking life seriously and maintaining a sense of playfulness. How earnest conviction and dedication help us take care of what matters - our responsibilities and the people who depend on us. And the life-giving and vital counterweight of lightheartedness: how a looser grip on life can free us to imagine, deepen our contact with others, and create new possibilities.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Highlights of our conversation:
00.00 Introduction and Welcome
01.53 Play, by Vince Gowmon
05.49 The Role of Seriousness and Playfulness
11.46 The Transformative Power of Laughter
18.24 Play as a Bridge Between Seriousness and Lightness
25.33 Conscious Engagement with Play
Here’s our source for this week:
Play
Play isn’t something separate from the daily grind of life. It is not something to finally get to when work ends. Rather, play, like music, is a force that we feel in our bones and that whispers in our heart. As kids demonstrate, play is not over there, but forever here and now.
Vince Gowmon
Photo by Rene Bernal on Unsplash
*“People can be wonderful”, is where we begin this week’s conversation. How do we bring that forward, in the midst of all that can be so difficult, so that we can step-by-step make a world in which we meet one another with conversation, compassion, kindness, and welcome? And where do we need to start inside ourselves and with the ones closest to us in order to first glimpse and then act on this possibility?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Highlights of our conversation:
00:00 Introduction and Reflections
03:13 The Power of Words and the Always Already Present Possibility of Human Goodness
06:08 Orienting to Ourselves and Others with Kindness
08:00 Maya Stein’s Poem, ‘Believe’
12:01 The Struggle with Self-Judgement
14:52 Our Messiness and Incompleteness
18:05 Creating Safety Together
20:56 Realness
24:11 The Gifts and Curses of our Standards and Expectations
27:04 The Path of Repair and Connection
30:13 Practicing Kindness and Engaging With One Another
32:54 Effecting Repair
Here’s our source for this week:
Believe
Maybe the camera crew is at someone else’s house,
a spotlight haloing over another’s fleshy story.
Maybe the mailman is delivering the good news
to your neighbor, or a different city entirely,
and you come home to a rash of catalogues,
the second notice for a doctor’s bill, a plea
from the do-gooders for whatever you can spare.
Maybe you haven’t cleaned your kitchen floor in weeks,
forgotten to nourish the front garden, spilled too much
coffee in your car, weaving through traffic.
Maybe you are 10 pounds heavier than last year.
Maybe your skin is betraying your age.
Maybe winter is ravaging your heart.
Maybe you are afraid, or lonely, or furious, or wanting out
of every commitment you entered with such vigor and trust.
Maybe you’ve bitten your nails down to the quick,
chosen your meals badly, ignored the advice of those
who know you best. Maybe you are stubborn as a toddler.
Maybe you are clumsy or foolish or hasty or reckless.
Maybe you haven’t read all the books you’re supposed to.
Maybe your handwriting is still illegible after all these years.
Maybe you spent too much on a pair of shoes you didn’t need.
Maybe you left the window open and the rain ruined the cake.
Maybe you’ve destroyed everything you’ve ever wanted to save.
Still.
If anything, believe in your own strange loveliness.
How your body, even as it stumbles, angles for light.
The way you hold a dandelion with such yearning and tenderness,
the whole world stops spinning.
Maya Steinmayastein.com
Photo by Anton Darius on Unsplash
We can make our lives very small by turning away from what we don't understand or what frightens us. And if we feel very separate from life, like somehow we are visitors from a far-off planet with no belonging to this planet, we can easily feel as if we have nothing to stand on as we face what is most difficult about life. In this week's conversation we begin with a source from Rainer Maria Rilke which invites us to know ourselves as not at all different from the life we are already in the middle of, and then invites us to see that what is most difficult or frightening to us is an opportunity to draw upon the inherent capacity we humans have to meet life. It's a stirring, inspiring and very kind invitation to us to meet a world that really could do with our bringing ourselves as whole-heartedly as we can.
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Fear of the Inexplicable
But fear of the inexplicable has not alone impoverished the existence of the individual; the relationship between one human being and another has also been cramped by it, as though it had been lifted out of the riverbed of endless possibilities and set down in a fallow spot on the bank, to which nothing happens. For it is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new, unforeseeable experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope.
But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation to another as something alive and will himself draw exhaustively from his own existence. For if we think of this existence of the individual as a larger or smaller room, it appears evident that most people learn to know only a corner of their room, a place by the window, a strip of floor on which they walk up and down. Thus they have a certain security. And yet that dangerous insecurity is so much more human which drives the prisoners in Poe's stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their abode.
We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us.We are set down in life as in the element to which we best correspond, and over and above this we have through thousands of years of accommodation become so like this life, that when we hold still we are, through a happy mimicry, scarcely to be distinguished from all that surrounds us. We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abuses, those abuses belong to us; when there are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful.
How should we be able to forget those ancient myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash
Sometimes, changing our patterns can seem like the most enormous task. But maybe if we learn to gently take ourselves by the hand, instead of using force, we can find a gentler way into new stories and new ways of living in them. And maybe it's exactly this gentleness, this sense of possibility and hope in our essential goodness and capacity, that is most called for right now.
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
THE ART OF FUGUE
VI
Once again, the moment of impossible
transition, the bow, its silent voice
above the string. Let us say
the story goes like this. Let us say
you could start anywhere.
Let us say you took your splintered being
by the hand, and led it
to the centre of a room: starlight
through the floorboards of the soul.
The patterns of your life
repeat themselves until you listen.
Forgive this. Say now
what you have to say.
by Jan ZwickyPhoto by Xingchen Yan on Unsplash
We hit our first technical interruption in over seven years this week, when an operating-system update froze Lizzie's computer. We'll be back on track next week, but in the meantime here's a repeat of our most popular episode from back in 2021, which draws on the work of our cherished friend Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.
We're conditioned to think of ourselves and other people as in need of fixing, and it makes it so difficult for us to open to one another's beauty and mystery. So what if we could cultivate eyes and hearts of wonder at the luminescent half-moon of one another's presence, and receive one another as rivers do as they give their power and beauty to one another?
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Love
Though I am undeniably broken,
I come to you with no need to be fixed.
I come to you the way one river
Meets another river - not joining
Out of thirst, but because
there is so much power
And beauty in giving oneself
To another, in moving
Through the world together.
I come to you the way the half moon
Comes into the yard - I could be more
Whole, but in the meantime,
I will bring you everything
I have.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
ahundredfallingveils.comPhoto by nousnou iwasaki on Unsplash
*How might we relate to the standards that our culture hands us around parenting, partnering, working, and being a person? On the one hand, they can be of immense value. They can give us a way to orient to what might be important and worth paying attention to. But on the other hand they can be stultifying, the source of endless comparison and self-criticism, and an impossible goal of perfection. And they can leave us feeling very alone as we look around us and imagine that other people’s lives are not as messy, confusing, and unpredictable as ours are.
So can we might find a more life-giving way to relate to the standards and ideals we choose to live by? What might happen if instead of turning to social media and our own fantasies about other people, we turned simultaneously towards our own way of knowing and to the wisdom of others around us as we each take our next steps in the roles in life we’re pursuing?*
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week, from a message between Molly, a mum, and her birth doula Natalie.
Not Trying to Be Perfect
Hello Natalie… I cannot tell you how much more content I am now that I have ditched social media and trying to be perfect. I have a wonderful set of mum friends and we can go to each others’ houses even when it’s so untidy it looks like we’ve been burgled, join in with whatever that night’s plans for tea are and let our kids play or fall asleep on the sofa while we hang out. It’s great.
The Shirley Hughes book is so lovely. Nobody in her illustrations has an immaculate house or sensory play bins. Her children accompany mums and dads on errands and cooking and gardening and the school run. That’s enough. I’ve gone back to a corporate job and really, in what industry would you ask one person to work day and night shifts as CEO, CFO, COO, CTO, personal assistant, drive, head of logistics, head of learning and development, washerwoman, cleaner and cook all in one. It’s ridiculous. No wonder so many parents are miserable. They feel like a failure because we set impossible expections.
Which leads me back to the only tick list one should have at the end of day… ‘all fed, none dead, mostly in bed’. My new standard is… everyone warm and dry, clean bum, have we been outside, full tummies, making sure we eat some vegetables, not too much telly, focusing on kindness to each other. I find it so much easier to REALLY feel my red lines/bondaries this way. It works for us.
Lots of love
Molly
Photo by Luis Tosta on Unsplash
Perhaps instead of trying to control our experience, to somehow ‘lift ourselves out of our lives’, we might find a way to be ever more contactful with life itself. Like a mother with her babies. Or like a fish with the stream. Or like the roots of the tree with the earth that gives it life. Might we find, in that softening and slowing, a way to inhabit our lives more fully and take care more skilfully of that which we care most about?
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
Intimacy with Life
In Zen, the word for intimacy is a synonym for awakening or enlightenment. And for me, intimacy is a much better word than these other words.
Enlightenment, realisation, or awakening seem to imply some special state of mind or spirit, some kind of transformative, mystical knowledge or experience that somehow will bring us beyond life's day to day problems to a more spiritual plane.
The word intimacy is better. It sounds like we are getting closer, deeper, more loving with our experience rather than somehow beyond it. Intimacy better expresses what 'enlightenment' really feels like, I think.
Zoketsu Norman Fischer
Photo by NEOM on Unsplash
What if life isn't calling us to reach for something outside ourselves, but instead to uncover and nurture the intelligence that's already within us? We examine how genuine maturity means moving beyond our childhood instincts of self-protection, discussing what it means to be truly "grown up" – a state where we can feel at home in our world regardless of circumstances. This isn't about shielding ourselves from life's challenges, but about allowing our inner wisdom to emerge and flourish so we can face them with less of a sense of ‘safety vs harm’ and more of a sense of our own capacity to be full participants in whatever life brings our way.
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
Uncovering the Wisdom Within Us
There’s a life affirming teaching in Buddhism, which is that Buddha, which means ‘awake’, is not someone you worship, Buddha is not someone you aspire to; Buddha is not somebody that was born more than two thousand years ago and was smarter than you’ll ever be.
Buddha is our inherent nature - our buddha nature - and what that means is that if you’re going to grow up fully, the way that it happens is that you begin to connect with the intelligence that you already have.
It’s not like some intelligence that’s going to be transplanted into you. If you’re going to be fully mature, you will no longer be imprisoned in the childhood feeling that you always need protect yourself or shield yourself because things are too harsh.
If you’re going to be a grown up - which I would define as being completely at home in your world no matter how difficult the situation - it’s because you will allow something that’s already in you to be nurtured. You allow it to grow, you all it to come out, instead of all the time shielding it and protecting it and keeping it buried.
From ‘Start Where You Are’by Pema Chodron
Photo by Chris Ensey on Unsplash
We might see ourselves, as Ursula Le Guin writes, as ‘one syllable of a word spoken slowly by the stars’. In this episode we wonder together what is made possible when we reclaim and retell sacred narratives about being human, as an alternative to the mechanistic views of existence which tells us life is meaning-free and humans are accidents in a cold unfeeling universe. How might these more life-giving narratives help us open to what is around us, and the life-giving qualities in the world and in one another?
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
One Word Spoken Slowly by the Stars
“Aye,” Ged answered. “Light is a power. A great power, by which we exist, but which exists beyond our needs, in itself. Sunlight and starlight are time, and time is light. In the sunlight, in the days and years, life is. In a dark place life may call upon the light, naming it.” …
There was a little pause; and Yarrow asked, “Tell me just this, if it is not a secret: what other great powers are there besides the light?”
“It is no secret. All power is one in source and end, I think. Years and distances, stars and candles, water and wind and wizardry, the craft in a man’s hand and the wisdom in a tree’s root: they all arise together. My name, and yours, and the true name of the sun, or a spring of water, or an unborn child, all are syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars. There is no other power. No other name.”
Staying his knife on the carved wood, Murre asked, “What of death?” [Yarrow] listened, her shining black head bent down.
“For a word to be spoken,” Ged answered slowly, “there must be silence. Before, and after.”
Ursula K Le Guin, The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition (p. 157). Orion
Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash
Our attention is one of the most valuable gifts we can give to another. As radically social beings, we feel strongly when attention is genuinely brought our way with sufficient care and genuineness, and we long for it. And in the same way we are dignified and deepened when we bring our sincere attention to the world around us, to our experience, and to others. And so if attention is such a valuable gift and contribution to each of us, how is it that it can be so hard to bring it genuinely to those around us - those we love, those we respect, those we want to get to know, those we interact with in the midst of our day to day lives? And what might be do to cultivate the kind of mutually dignifying attention that will benefit everyone?
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
The Gift of Our Attention
There is one thing, I believe, that all of us want, no matter how old we are, no matter whatever differences are between us; the one thing we cherish from another human being is attention. Love…is not certain. Some people will love us, and some people will not. But the one thing that anyone can give to any other person is simple attention. It is not as involved as in love. This attention may last 20 minutes or many hours. If you live with somebody it is repeated. "You are worthy of my attention." That, I think, is the greatest gift we can give each other.
Magda Gerber
Photo by Vincent van Zalinge on Unsplash
*Some words about grief, and about grief's intelligence, and what it might be here to teach us both when it arrives in full force and when we 'catch a glimpse of it' in the moments with those we most cherish and love.
How might grief - and its inevitability - open us to receive the life we are in the midst of right now, and how might it move us to take care of what and who we care about the most?*
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
What Grief Wants
I only want one thing.
I want you to pay attention.
I want you to look in her eyes, now,
While there is time, while there is
Still breath, while the magnolias unfold
Into flower, quietly, in the garden.
I want you to feel, all the way through,
What it is like as she looks back at you,
While she still can, while you are here to
Receive, to be seen.
I will be ready to hold you, flood you,
Carry you, when all the gazing is done.
I want you to receive your life,
While there is life to receive.
We will wail together about its loss
In good time.
But now is not the time for that.
It is not the time for turning away,
For trying to avoid anything,
For trying not to feel.
There will be a time when you have
No choice but to be turned away.
But that time is not now.
I want you to feel what it is like to
Release your desperate grasp around
What you could never hold onto anyway.
To delight in the living flow with its
Everyday beginning and its always endings.
I want you to feel the shining aliveness of
Everything you will lose
While it is still here.
Justin Wisejustinwise.co.uk
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
*Today we mark the completion of seven years of Turning Towards Life with a conversation about how we might find a way to participate in our lives, whatever life brings us. In many ways, this has been the recurring theme of our last seven years - how to be active participants in a life which will always be a mystery and in which so much is beyond our control.
We talk about the gifts of being active observers of our lives, which takes a concerted kind of practice and attention, and what it is to respond actively and intentionally to what we observe. And how that can give us opportunities both to respond to life as it is to learn and deepen as we go.
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
What the Journey is For
What if the descent,
Over and over again,
Into the dark
And back out into the light
Is the forging of us rather than
The breaking of us?
What if there’s nothing wrong with us in the deepest sense of that truth?
What if we are not broken
Even when we find ourselves
Back in the same territory,
Back in painful patterns,
Back in the underworld again?
What if we are simply meant to give ourselves over to a process
That isn’t meaningless at all
But a bright, spiralling, gravitational pull
Ever-deeper towards
Our own
Sheer
Gorgeous
Becoming?
Hollie Holdenwww.facebook.com/hollieholdenlove
Photo by Iswanto Arif on Unsplash
*As we unfold into life one of the risks is that we become more rigid rather than more fluid, more automatic rather than taking up our freedom. And one place we might look for, and work with, our rigidity and freedom is in seeing the judgments and assumptions we make about other people.
When other people become fixed, predictable or boring to us, it may be that we are not looking with the requisite depth; or that we have rigidified our understanding of them rather than regarding them as the great and unfathomable mysteries that they are.
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
Learning to See What We See But Do Not Know That We See
Our awareness of ourselves and our environment is woefully deficient. In particular there is a tendency to see what things have in common rather than what makes them unique, the source of a dispiriting sense of sameness …
Our categorising tendency likes to put people in pigeon holes then notices only the behaviour that fits in with our simplistic classification and finishes by dismissing people as superficial, limited, predictable and boring. The equivalent in relationships is to see only the irritating aspects of the partner and then to turn this into a final, dismissive definition. It is common even to want others to behave badly in predictable ways in order to confirm our own good judgment and enjoy superiority and righteousness.
A crucial function of the arts is to prevent, or break down, dismissive labelling and reveal the singular instead of the similar, the peculiar instead of the familiar, and the inscrutable instead of the understood. I have often been guilty of impatient dismissiveness but recently, under the influences of literature, process thinking, and the gentle remonstrations of my wife, I have come to find even people I have known for a lifetime increasingly strange. And, strangely enough, the fact that they elude me has brought them closer; my inability to understand them makes them more understandable.
Michael Foley, from ‘Life Lessons From Bergson’
Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash
On the profound, life-saving and deeply dignifying possibilities that come from sharing our personal stories and experiences. The cultural narratives that often discourage openness, contrasted with the healing power of vulnerability and the importance of creating welcome for one another to speak and be listened to.
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
Some People Will AskExcerpt from You Could Make This Place Beautiful
“Why are you telling these stories? Why air your dirty laundry?”
Someone will ask this, or if they don’t ask, they’ll think it. Maybe you’re thinking it now. How do I answer?
I could say what happened to me is mine. I could say that suffering equals pain plus resistance, and I’m no longer resisting, no longer hold it in, letting it fester. And why would you expect me, or anyone, to grit my teeth and quietly carry my story? I could say there is a cost to carrying your truth but not telling it. I could say women have been doing this for decades and look where it’s landed us. I could say I’ve gone and lost my narrative, and lost not only my understanding of the future but also my understanding of the past, and this is how I’m trying to find it – Who’s calling this laundry dirty, anyway? It’s just lived-in.
Maggie Smith
Photo by Elizabeth Gottwald on Unsplash
*On the tensions between our inner worlds and the external identities we often adopt to fit in. How societal expectations and personal fears can lead us to suppress what’s most true about us, and the importance of reconnecting with the "wild energies" within our souls.
This week we explore how creative practices, changes in routine, and mindful engagement with everyday tasks can help us wake up to our innate aliveness. We reflect on the balance between necessary social conventions and the gifts of discovering our own unique expression, and propose that we each find a way to honour "wonder of their own presence" and bring our unique life force into service to the world around us.
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
The Wildness In Our Hearts
Every human person is inevitably involved with two worlds: the world they carry within them and the world that is out there. All thinking, all writing, all action, all creation and all destruction is about that bridge between the two worlds...
Each one of us is the custodian of an inner world that we carry around with us. Now, other people can glimpse it from [its outer expressions]. But no one but you knows what your inner world is actually like, and no one can force you to reveal it until you actually tell them about it. That’s the whole mystery of writing and language and expression — that when you do say it, what others hear and what you intend and know are often totally different kinds of things.
One of the sad things today is that so many people are frightened by the wonder of their own presence. They are dying to tie themselves into a system, a role, or to an image, or to a predetermined identity that other people have actually settled on for them. This identity may be totally at variance with the wild energies that are rising inside in their souls. Many of us get very afraid and we eventually compromise. We settle for something that is safe, rather than engaging the danger and the wildness that is in our own hearts.
from an interview with John O'Donohue
Photo by Linda Xu on Unsplash
*We ‘privatise’ so much about our lives that is actually shared, as if we were separate entities - like objects that bump into one another only occasionally. But it’s an impoverished story that robs us of so much contact, depth and support.
It might be much more accurate to say that instead of being like objects we are more like whirlpools in a river - constantly evolving processes that shape one another. If we saw ourselves and our relationships that way, perhaps we’d begin to wonder afresh about the power of cultural norms that encourage separateness, and the potential benefits of more open and contactful conversation about ourselves and our relationships with those around us.
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
This Relationship is Ours
One of the principles of the Dagara concept of a relationship is that it’s not private. When we talk about “our relationship” in the village, the word our is not limited to two. And this is why we find it pretty hard to live in a relationship in a modern culture that is lacking true community. In the absence of community, two people are forced to say, “This relationship is ours,” when in fact, a community should be claiming ownership.
Subonfu Somé
from ‘The Spirit of Intimacy’
Photo by YUXUAN WANG on Unsplash
*Sometimes, instead of trying to make life's challenges easier, it's more beneficial to fully acknowledge the weight of our burdens until we're compelled to put them down. How we often carry impossibly heavy expectations, work ethics, or people-pleasing behaviours, thinking these will lead to success or belonging, when instead they multiply our difficulties.
The importance of compassionately recognising both the good intentions behind these burdens and the suffering they cause, and the role of coaches and loved ones in helping people see alternative ways of living that honour their true selves without abandoning themselves. And the transformative power of imagining and articulating different "styles" of engaging with life's challenges, whether in parenting, work, or relationships. Who can we be, we wonder, when we learn to envision and offer new possibilities and narratives for relating to life that honour other people’s aliveness and wholeness?
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
Don't Lighten the Burden
The British-born Zen master Houn Jiyu-Kennett [...] said of her teaching style that her goal wasn’t to lighten the burden of the student, but to make it so heavy that he or she would put it down. I had a full-body reaction the first time I encountered that, in the basement shelves of Watkins, the ‘esoteric’ London bookstore. Tears pricked behind my eyes. The relief! To me, the phrase meant this: you can slog through life (and I had been slogging through life) trying to ‘get on top of things’, trying to reach the point at which you feel like you know what you’re doing, trying to fix your flaws, or make yourself emotionally invulnerable… All of that is an attempt to ‘lighten the burden’, and there are a thousand self-help gurus on standby, promising to aid you in the effort. But making the burden heavier? That means seeing that as a finite human you’ll never get on top of everything, never fully understand what makes others tick, never immunize yourself from distress. The burden of reaching that goal is an impossibly heavy one. And so you put it down. You let your shoulders drop and your muscles unclench. And then – crucially – you’re free to actually be here, actually do stuff, actually show up. You get to climb life’s mountains without lugging a huge rucksack full of steel ingots on your back the whole way, which is both easier and much more fun.
Oliver Burkeman
Read the full piece, “Turning Words”, by Oliver Burkeman here
Sign up here to Oliver’s newsletter
Photo by Marcus Zymmer on Unsplash
*How might we engage with our inner world and find meaning in our experiences? In this episode we explore how we might embrace even the difficult parts of life as potential sources of wisdom and growth. And how this perspective can transform our relationship with challenging emotions and experiences, inviting us all to approach life's complexities with curiosity and openness.
The conversation weaves through topics such as the stories we tell ourselves about our experiences, the wisdom inherent in our inner responses to life events, and the possibility of finding value in even the most unwelcome feelings, making space for confusion, wonder, and the potential for transformation in our everyday lives.
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
Coming Home to Myself
The Self
pushes the neglected forward
for recognition.
Do not disregard it.
It holds energy
of highest value.
It is the gold in the dung.
Do not disregard the dung.Marion Woodman
Photo by Vivek Doshi on Unsplash
Exploring three common protective myths people use to cope with life's uncertainties. How these myths, while intended to provide comfort, often amplify the very isolation and fear we want to avoid, and rarely help us as much as we think they will. How we might come to examine our own protective stories, opening the possibility of softening them so we can remember our inherent qualities, such as creativity and courage, especially in challenging moments, engage more authentically with life and cultivate deeper connections with others.
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
Myths That Keep Us From Our Lives
At the times when the world has shrunk to its smallest horizons, when I have felt most despairing, desperate, or alone, or when I have found myself working and pushing much too hard, it usually turns out that I have been living in thrall to one or more protective myths about life that rarely help as much as I imagine.
Myth 1 – I’m not like other people
I’m not really a person, but other people are. Others’ lives are complete in ways that mine is not. Other people know where they’re going, while I am lost. Other people made the right choices, while I stumbled. Other people aren’t as confused as I am. Other people don’t suffer as I do.
Underpinning this myth is a great deal of negative self-judgement, which fuels a sense of deflation, self-diminishment or self-pity. But it can equally be worn as a mask of grandiosity, in which I puff myself up with certainty and arrogance. Sometimes I bounce between the two poles, from deflation to grandiosity and back again.
This is the myth of specialness. It boosts our self esteem by giving us a reason for all the difficulty we’re experiencing. And protects us from feeling the suffering of others by keeping us at a distance from everyone and everything.
Myth 2 – Death has nothing to do with me
Somehow I’m separate enough from the real world that death is not an issue for me in the way it is for others. It’s frightening but far-off, a rumour, something that happens to other people. Consequently, I need pay it little real attention. I can ignore what my body tells me, and what my heart tells me. I’m protected from seeing that my time is finite and that I have to decide in which relationship to life I wish to stand.
This is the myth of no consequence. It saves us from the burden of having to choose, or face the uncertainty of our choices in a world in which choices matter because our time is limited.
Myth 3 – A saviour is coming
If I’m good enough, popular enough, loved enough, successful enough, recognised enough, powerful enough, rich enough, famous enough, caring enough… then I’ll be saved. Someone – one of the grown-ups in the world – will see me and, recognising my goodness, rescue me from my troubles
And then I won’t have to face them any more.
This keeps me working really hard. Sometimes it has me try to save others in the very same way that I am desperate to be saved.
This is the myth of dependency. By rendering us helpless it keeps us from taking on the full responsibility (and possibility) of our own adulthood.
—
I know these are not myths I carry alone.
We cling onto these myths because, as well keeping us at a seemingly safe distance from our lives, we’re afraid that if we face the true situation of our lives then our troubles will be magnified. But, as with any turning away from the truth, they come at an enormous cost. In particular they keep both our dependency and our hopelessness going.
When we can learn to see them and begin through them, we give ourselves the opportunity for a much more direct, unmediated contact with our lives and with others. We might begin to discover deep sources of hope, courage and compassion which which we had been out of touch. And as we allow ourselves to step out of hiding and into relationship, we might discover that our capacity to help others – and to be helped by them in return – is greater than we could have imagined.
Photo by Justin Wise
On rediscovering and recovering our own and other people’s qualities and possibilities in the midst of everything that happens. How what we think we've lost in life may actually be ever-present, just waiting to be rediscovered, often brought to us by the presence of others. And the possibility that every encounter with another person, even difficult ones, can remind us of qualities within ourselves we may have forgotten if we can maintain a sense of wonder and openness to the mysterious nature of things.
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
What You Thought You Lost
What you thought you lost along the way
hangs in the air like a prayer
May you find your way home
may the doors swing open wide
from the out and the in
side
under a wide open sky
May you lose
may you find,
may you know
in the core
of your weathered soul your old
and your new sign
May every stranger on the path
become the one who
stopped
to hang something you thought
you lost in the air
by a thread like an ancient
pagan prayer
like some kind of
elder
warm-eyed
guardian was standing there.
Wendy Videlockwww.wendyvidelock.com
Photo by Jehyun Sung on Unsplash
*How do we become fully ourselves, as adults, in contact with our essential depth and capacity and without being so much in the grip of the defensive patterns of personality we developed as children?
Being an adult who is in touch with their essence. Being an adult who can play. Being an adult who can be joyful. Being an adult who can find freedom in themselves. Being an adult who can not shut everything down just to make everything okay the whole time. Being an adult who can be open to people's views. Being an adult who can be accepting of difference. Being an adult who isn't trying to corral everybody into one way of doing things the whole time. Being an adult who doesn't blame everything on everyone else for whatever they're going through.*
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
Holding Personality Lightly
Early in life we all experience emotional states we cannot tolerate - being left alone, interaction with an anxious or depressed parent etc - and in response we begin to build shields of protective armour around our essence. These defence structures constitute our personality. Doing their job well, they continue to guard our vulnerability, but they also prevent the intimate contact we long for.
What we routinely identify as our selves is actually this personality… a construct, an idea or self-image that hides the part of us that is vulnerable and capable of unmediated connection. This mask plays a crucial role in our lives. It is likely that we could not have survived without it. But we are so much more than this learned self-concept. Knowing ourselves solely as our personality limits us severely.
When we delve into the truth of our personality, we begin to see how our daily struggles in relationship result from our inclination to defend this assumed identity. Before we can have direct, unmediated contact with ourselves or with a significant other, we must take the necessary step of unmasking our personality. In this process, we do not give up the personality entirely, but rather learn to wear it more lightly.
Jett Psaris and Marlena Lyonsfrom ‘Undefended Love’
Photo by Caleb George on Unsplash
We can brace ourselves against our lives, and we can try to control the many situations in our lives that really can't be controlled. We mean by this everything from parenting, to relationships, to our living and dying. Sometimes, our bracing and our rigidity works right against the forces and movements of life that are bigger than us, and out of our reach, and then we end up crashing into situations. So what would it take for us to recognise when we are falling and learning to be soft, like a cat, rather than landing as a bag of bones?
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
Be Like a Cat
*When a cat falls out of a tree, it lets go of itself. The cat becomes completely relaxed, and lands lightly on the ground. But if a cat were about to fall out of a tree and suddenly made up its mind that it didn’t want to fall, it would become tense and rigid, and would be just a bag of broken bones upon landing.
In the same way, it is the philosophy of the Tao that we are all falling off a tree, at every moment of our lives. As a matter of fact, the moment we were born, we were kicked off a precipice, and we are falling, and there is nothing that can stop it.
So instead of living in a state of chronic tension, and clinging to all sorts of things that are actually falling with us because the whole world is impermanent, be like a cat.*
Alan Watts
Photo by Wren Meinberg on Unsplash
When the differences between us come into play - in a relationship, in a community, at work, in a friendship - it can seem tempting to search for some kind of false harmony, or to try to either ‘win over’ others or ‘lie down’ in the face of their will and wishes. But what if we started to see our differences, and our conflicts, as exactly the place where our freedom and our unique shape gets born? What if we could differ ‘for the sake of our becoming just who we need to be’?
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
Here’s our source for this week:
The Life in Our Resistances
I have come to feel that we live in a universe of spirit, which materialises and de-materialises grandly; all things seem to me to live, and all acts to contain meaning deeper than matter-of-fact; and the things we do with deepest love and interest compel us by the spiritual forces which dwell in them. This seems to me to be a dialogue of the visible and the invisible to which our ears are attuned.
There is, first of all, something in the nature of the clay itself. You can do very many things with it, push it this and and pull that, squeeze and roll and attach and pinch and hollow and pile. But you can't do everything with it. You can go only so far, and then the clay resists.
We know ourselves by our resistances [...] You can do very many things with us: push us together and pull us apart and squeeze us and roll us flat, empty us out and fill us up. You can surround us with influences, but there comes a point when you can do no more. The person resists, in one way or another (if it is only by collapsing, like the clay). Their own will becomes active.
This is a wonderful moment, when one feels one's will become active, come as a force into the total assemblage and dynamic intercourse and interpenetration of will impulses. When one stands like a natural substance, plastic but with one's own character written into the formula, ah, then one feels oneself part of the world, taking one's shape with its help - but a shape only one's own freedom can create.
from Centering, by the potter and writer MC Richards
Photo by Grant Durr on Unsplash
*It seems like it should be so simple - giving to one another, receiving from one another, loving one another, opening ourselves to the love of others. But it’s so often hard, and so often we make ourselves unavailable to what we most need and long for, and hold back from what we are most able to give (or give it, but without taking into account the impact of our way of giving).
What can we do to understand the relational dynamics that shape our giving and receiving and our holding back our contribution from one another? And what kind of conversation and skilfulness can help us find our way through the maze of expectations, stories, culture, conditioning and habit so we can find one another in a more straightforward way?*
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
The Gift of Loving
Give the gift of loving you to others. Ask for their help.
We seem to have learned that helping involves sacrifice.
So we think that by asking for help, we’re asking people to make a sacrifice.
So we don’t ask. We try and do it all alone. And we forget that people can just say no. So it’s OK to simply ask.
Maybe life is about the giving and receiving of gifts…..
It’s a true joy when someone feels loved and we have something to do with it.
So what are we doing removing opportunities for people to love us, taking this away from them, this joy of loving us ?
If we all knew what it meant to truly say no, and what a true yes means, what kind of love filled, supported world might we find ?
Lizzie Winn
Photo by Brad Switzer on Unsplash
What if what is most called for in order to live our lives is remembering the mystery that we each are... the essential depth that we are, which is often buried beneath layers of habit, personality patterns, the strength of our feelings, our busy-ness, our worry? But we forget, and we take ourselves to be something much smaller than we are. One way that we might begin to remember is to pay attention to that moment between sleeping and waking, before we 'put ourselves back together' and become our familiar habitual selves, when we can catch a glimpse of our essentialness... a path to recover our depth and the depth of others.
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
What to Remember When Waking
In that first
hardly noticed
moment
in which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret,
moveable
and frighteningly
honest
world
where everything
began,
there is a small
opening
into the new day
that closes
the moment
you begin your plans.
What you can plan
is too small
for you to live.
What you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.
To become human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.
To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.
You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.
Now, looking through
the slanting light
of the morning
window toward
the mountain
presence
of everything
that can be,
what urgency
calls you to your
one love?
What shape waits
in the seed of you
to grow and spread
its branches
against a future sky?
Is it waiting
in the fertile sea?
In the trees
beyond the house?
In the life
you can imagine
for yourself?
In the open
and lovely
white page
on the waiting desk?
by David Whyte
Photo by Jack B on Unsplash
When we listen with total presence, the person speaking to us often communicates differently, hearing themselves more deeply. We ‘hear ourselves into being’ more fully by listening this way too. Most people aren’t used to being heard in this way, and most of us aren’t used to listening with this much attention. But the act of deep attentive listening can change us profoundly, and change the relationships between us in life giving ways. So how might we step in to this urgent task?
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Listening is suspending disbelief
Communication moves in two directions, even when one person speaks and another listens silently.
When the listener is totally present, the speaker often communicates differently. Most people aren’t used to being fully heard, and it can be jarring for them.
Sometimes we block the flow of information being offered and compromise true listening. Our critical mind may kick in, taking note of what we agree with and what we don’t, or what we like and dislike. We may look for reasons to distrust the speaker or make them wrong.
Formulating an opinion is not listening. Neither is preparing a response, or defending our position or attacking another’s. To listen impatiently is to hear nothing at all.
Listening is suspending disbelief.
We are openly receiving. Paying attention with no preconceived ideas. The only goal is to fully and clearly understand what is being transmitted, remaining totally present with what’s being expressed – and allowing it to be what it is.
Rick Rubin, from The Creative Act: A Way of Being
Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash
What if we were able to really deeply honour and welcome our incompleteness and imperfection, and honour our own and one another's unique ways of being in the world? Maybe then - if we gave up our harsh self-criticism and our demands for perfection - we'd ever more be able to be 'home' for one another, and participate generously, lovingly and compassionately in the reshaping of ourselves that life is always asking of us.
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Symmathesy (the poem)
Each one of us is a crooked tree,
Reaching for water and light,
Bending ourselves around obstacles,
Scary thoughts, hurtful moments,
darkness & thirst,
Finding a way to breathe in the sun and hold the soil,
Our branches are kinked and twisted,
Because that is what it took to be here,
The ways of learning to be in our worlds,
Have shaped responses,
Our many experiences are speaking through every gesture.
Our loves, and broken paths, a tenderness, a criticism,
Learning always,
Yearning always,
In crooked beauty...
To be a home for those who may find comfort
In the asymmetry of our belonging,
A nest cradling new life,
Tucked into an old log teeming with creatures,
learning to be in each other's reshaping.
Nora Bateson
Photo by Brandon Green on Unsplash
We're born as wide-open hearts, but very quickly discover that the world around us is not ready or able to welcome us in our fulness. So early on we learn strategies to put large parts of ourselves away - to belong by unbelonging many aspects of ourselves. It's necessary, unavoidable even, but comes at a huge cost. So can we learn as we traverse our years of adulthood to bring ourselves out into the open where it is, in the end, possible to be most fully loved? And can we be the ones who love our friends, partners, children and colleagues 'out into the open' by being an affordance for those around us to bring themselves forward ever more fully?
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
In The Open
No matter the strength of shyness
No matter how tempting it is to keep myself a secret
Oh how comfort’s infestation spreads
While it urges me to do nothing
There is no room to hide
In a world I am made for
Out in the open
There is no room to hide
I am supposed to be loved
Out in the open
Morgan Lahm
Photo by bady abbas on Unsplash
Because we are imaginative beings, we can imagine and call into being all kinds of better possibilities for ourselves and those around us. At the same time, our imaginations can have us pretend to ourselves about the reality of our lives and experience. It’s completely understandable that we do this - distracting ourselves with what Rainer Maria Rilke calls ‘empty freedoms’ is surely one way to try to avoid experiences and feelings we don’t want to have.
But those distractions, those ‘empty freedoms’ do little to help us plant deep roots, or to learn how to fly when called for. So how might we turn with courage and whole hearts towards the reality of what is, as a way of opening ourselves to the possibility of acting to bring about a better future?
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
How Surely Gravity's Law
How surely gravity’s law
Strong as an ocean current,
Takes hold of even the strongest thing
And pulls it toward the heart of the world.
Each thing – each stone, blossom, child – is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
Push out beyond what we belong to
For some empty freedom.
If we surrendered to Earth’s intelligence
We could rise up, rooted, like trees …
This is what the things can teach us: to fall,
Patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
Before he can fly.
Rainer Maria RilkeTranslated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy
Photo by Cindy Tang on Unsplash
How do we make the safety in ourselves that makes it possible for others to feel safe with us? How do we make it safe for others so they can feel safe in themselves? How do we make it safe for us to disagree with one another as well as agree, to be uncomfortable together as well as comfortable, to hold together unity and difference? And how might committing to this make it more possible for us humans to live together in families, organisations, and the societies of which we are a part?
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Safe Space
When there is nowhere else you feel safe,
and you think that goodness has gone extinct;
when the world seems cold as a snowed-in car
that won’t start anymore — step inside this poem.
Find solace in the spaces between each line,
breathe peace in the pause between words.
Let no one every say you don’t belong here —
you were born, you’re alive, you exist: take this
as proof that you too are loved. Say this to yourself
until it is true: May I be safe, may all beings
on this planet be safe. And feel how a small fire
kindles in your chest, spreading to the bundle
of tinder that is your heart, still humming
its tireless, ancient hymn: I am, I am, I am.
Photo by Robert Lukeman on Unsplash
We make all kinds of separations inside ourselves and between ourselves and one another. “I’m like this, but not like that” we tell ourselves. But that division leaves us bereft of all kinds of possibility and freedom. Perhaps right when we’re feeling most serious, it’s time to reach for that in us which is playful and bring it right alongside. Or when we meet someone very different to us, it’s time to discover their many virtues and see what it is like to bring those virtues inside us, alongside the virtues we already claim as our own.
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
The Opposites and the Center
As our personal universes expand, if we keep drawing ourselves into center again and again, everything seems to enhance everything else. It becomes unnecessary to choose which person to be as we open and close the same ball of clay. We will make pots for our English classes. Read poems to our pottery classes. Write on the clay, print from the clay. The activity seems to spring out of the same source: poem or pot, loaf of bread, letter to a friend, a morning's meditation, a walk in the woods, turning the compost pile, knitting a pair of shoes, weeping with pain, fainting with discouragement, burning with shame, trembling with indecision: what's the difference? ...
What I mean here [is that] it seems to me that one must be able to picture before oneself the opposite of what one has just declared, in order to keep alive the possibility of freedom, of mobility, of growth. As soon as we find ourselves spellbound by order and our ability to control our medium and our tools, to do exactly what we want, we must do the opposite as well. As soon as [we find ourselves working] with danger, and disrespect for the canons of taste, do the opposite. ...
Most of the separations we make need to be looked at very carefully: weakness and strength, sickness and health, not-knowing and knowing, play and seriousness... For example, we tend to think that strength is all-important, and yet we have a very shallow notion of what strength consists of. For unless our weaknesses play into our strengths we are not as supple as we should be... The natural rhythms of life seem to go by polarities which swing around this unmoving centre: the very rhythms of our breathing are the dialogue of inner and outer.
by the potter and writer M.C.Richards, from her book 'Centering'
Photo by Earl Wilcox on Unsplash
*We bring ourselves into life in a dance we learned right from our earliest days… in which we’re often carefully managing what we can show to one another of ourselves. And others learn to dance with us in this way too, finding out from being around us what is ok to talk about, and what to avoid. Pretty soon we’re all dancing around that which, if we pay attention, was in plain view all along.
Oftentimes the dance feels necessary. Sometimes it is necessary. But keeping on the surface of things is hardly a way towards the intimacy, connection, contact and realness we long for. So who could we be for ourselves and for one another, so that we can bring ourselves - and all our rich complexity - into the light for the benefit of everyone around us?
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
What if we could just tell each other?
Parts of us lie in quiet, sly shadows.
Publicly undiscernible, or so we believe.
The truth is they are experienced by others,
Despite our internal dance to conceal them.
When we commit to something,
And our actions “say” otherwise,
They betray the façade we
Made to manage others’ views of us.
If we knew, and accepted that we were visible,
We’d know there would be no point in trying to hide.
How people feel around us reveals so much of us.
What if we could just tell each other?
Instead of hiding in plain sight,
we’d be open to anything anyone brought our way.
Here I am,
ready and willing to learn.
By Lizzie Winn
Photo by Alexis Brown on Unsplash
*Change is everywhere. Within us. Around us. And, sometimes, in our longing for some stability, some centre of ‘no change’ in the tumult of our lives, we’ll close ourselves off from the truth of things, numbing ourselves, distracting ourselves, and pretending it isn’t happening.
But the truth is that everything changes. And although we might try to fight it, we human beings long for what is true, what is real, and for intimacy with the world. So can we instead ‘make an altar to change’, and turn towards its ever-presence as a way of deepening our engagement with life, and with one another?
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Become The Wind
What if we built an altar to change?
Dedicated ourselves to the idea,
bowed down to that which
is not steadfast.
Perhaps there would be an empty bowl
in the middle that might break
at any moment.
Perhaps in the center there is only a shard
that we must learn to worship.
We don’t come to this altar begging,
we come to be reminded
there is nothing to beg for.
We are happy. We are devastated.
We are whole. We are broken.
It rains. It clears.
All at the same time.
Or maybe in the center there is a mirror
Which reflects only what is,
not necessarily what is wanted.
An altar where we come to meet truth,
to bow down to it.
To open the window of the heart
and accept that there is no choice
but to be changed.
Penny Hackett-Evans
Photo by Colin Watts on Unsplash
*We often go searching out in the world, far and wide, for qualities that already live in ourselves.
And, fuelled by the story of our wider culture that our longings are best met always by ‘more’ and always ‘away from ourselves’, we can forget the treasures that live right here within us, in this living, beating, life-filled heart and body that we are never separate from.
So how can we open ourselves to meeting the deeper something that we long for, that we already are? And how can we help one another home?
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
I was passionate,
filled with longing,
I searched
far and wide.
But the day
that the Truthful One
found me,
I was at home.
Lal Ded (Kashmir, 14th century)
[translated by Jane Hirshfield]
Photo by Valentina Locatelli on Unsplash
*How can we come to know the vast stores of goodness, care and benevolence that are in each of us simply by being human? What makes it possible for us to bring this goodness to bear on the many difficulties and realities that face every single human life?
How can we do this without minimising or explaining away the dark sides of human life, and the genuine pain and confusion we can experience at what happens to us? And how do we at the same time cultivate a deep faithfulness our individual and collective capacity to respond in ways that care ever more deeply about the world?
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
That I Would Be Good
That I would be good even if I did nothing
That I would be good even if I got the thumbs down
That I would be good if I got and stayed sick
That I would be good even if I gained ten pounds
That I would be fine even if I went bankrupt
That I would be good if I lost my hair and my youth
That I would be great if I was no longer queen
That I would be grand if I was not all knowing
That I would be loved even when I numb myself
That I would be good even when I am overwhelmed
That I would be loved even when I was fuming
That I would be good even if I was clingy
That I would be good even if I lost sanity
That I would be good whether with or without you
Alanis Morisette
Photo by Arthur Poulin on Unsplash
*Right when we’re in the mess and complexity of things - for example when raising children, or being in a partnership, or working alongside others - we can learn so much about what it is to be human. And it’s where we also learn the most about our own power to make a world that is better for others to live in, or worse.
In this week’s conversation we explore how we might turn everyday complexity into a deeper care for the world and the use of whatever power we each have for the benefit of those around us.
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Bless This Dirty Sponge
My spiritual path is not marked out by rose petals, but dirty sponges, baby wipes, frozen peas and car keys.
Washing up is my daily Zen practice.
Leaving parties early to get everyone home to bed is how I learn self-discipline.
My meditation happens while I run the bath. And sometimes at 4am while I try to get back to sleep after waking to help someone use the potty.
My masters are unusually direct and demanding. They teach me how to live without apology and how to be right where I am. Because they know there is nowhere else.
And at the end if the day, I give myself a cup of Hail Mary tea as I forgive myself for all of the ways I felt I fell short. Again.
And I kiss my gurus on their tiny, wise heads and prepare myself to start all over again.
Hollie Holden
Photo by Imani on Unsplash
*In a time of global distress, we’re often faced with news of dire situations far from us that we can do little to affect directly. But we can learn to respond to the world that is more immediately around us with the kind of patience, wisdom, care and love that makes a genuine, tangible, and life-giving difference.
In this week’s conversation we explore how we can observe and undo the barriers inside us to being this way. And how we enroll others in helping us to do that.
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Your Task
Your task is not to seek for love
but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself
that you have built against it.Helen Schucman, from A Course in Miracles
Photo by Paul Mocan on Unsplash
How can we be the ones who create safety for other people to bring their troubles, longings, hopes, pain and fear our way? And how can stay long enough, and not turn away? And how do we then accompany one another as we address what we find - with love, truthfulness, patience and exquisite care?
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Like the Trees
You have been waiting for the body to say,
This is not an emergency, you are safe.
And when it finally does, in a whisper
you almost don’t believe, you can breathe
a full breath again, and then another,
at last trusting the open arms of trees,
even their menacing shadows at midnight.
Now you know everything that grows must
also feel pain, must fear and doubt until they
sense this same quickening, like sap rising
up in the trunk and spreading through
each limb. You have lived as if underground,
but now you are breaking open, breaking
free, becoming so vast and green, you make
a shady place for others to rest in.
James Crews
Photo by Jan Huber on Unsplash
On the ways comparison can steal the actual living of life from us, and on finding ways to appreciate and live in the midst of the ordinary everydayness of things.
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
What the Living Do
Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up
waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through
the open living-room windows because the heat’s on too high in here and I can’t turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,
I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,
I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.
What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss—we want more and more and then more of it.
But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep
for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless:
I am living. I remember you.
Marie Howe
Photo by Marcus Ganahl on Unsplash
On acknowledging experiences rather than moving away from them or interrupting them. How we might experience our feelings without ‘acting them out’ when they’re intense or overwhelming. And the gifts and blessings of being gentle with ourselves and one another.
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
This Small Space
I’ve curled in.
Observing the paned frame of freckled rain,
Trickling down the window.
Steam falls from my clay cup.
Hugged in cast shadows and held in fresh sheets I try to find home within myself.
Complex cluttered colours shine on difficult days,
one part still waits for a calling.
She is soft, broken, real and trying,
A frame for the rain to run,
A window for truth to-shine.
Cracks of comfort come with falling,
folding into the wisdom calling.
Roberta Morrow
Photo: Unsplash | Madi Doell
*How do we take up our right size in the world? Not in some fixed, rigid way but as a responsive way of engaging with what is called for in each situation and context?
When we see that in some way ‘too big’ and ‘too small’ are both ways we try to control situations, maybe we can open to the emergence of something more fluid, more adaptive, and more sensitive in us. Something that asks of us to be of service to life, and responds accordingly.
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Right-Sized
A response to Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s Big
What if this the year to learn to be right-sized?
I learned on the playground to
Flinch from arrogance.
‘Please – don’t leave me.
I promise not to get Too Big.’
But the cost, I’ve learned, is dear.
Trading potential for false modesty,
Dampening power with every apology,
Neglecting my impeccable edges
With every hedge.
But then I remember
What the rabbis knew.
They stretched wide a red silk thread.
At one end: Arrogance.
At the other: Not humility – but
Playing Too Small.
They knew playing small was just arrogance by a different name.
Placing comfort above contribution.
Our gifts withdrawn from the world,
For the price of fitting in.
‘What if holding back is stealing?’
So in the middle, they placed a pair of right-sized shoes.
Yours.
Mine.
The right-sizing that awaits us all.
What, I wonder, will it take for you to grow into your right size
The one that seems Impossibly large, and
Obnoxiously loud?
Clownish as these shoes seem now, prone to stumbling,
At first you’ll feel the fool.
Some People will have Things To Say.
Some may even walk away.
(In this modesty-mad world, they’re yet to clock
that claiming your shoes
does nothing to keep them from theirs.)
But every now and then you wake up to the truth.
That it's the world that's wrong - not you.
These too-small shoes will no longer do.
So take your credit where it’s due.
And when no-one offers it – give yourself a spoon daily.
Take your space
Trading in the apologies for gratitude.
Minimise your emotions no more –
They too deserve to expand to the full.
Fill your circle with champions
And learn to see yourself with the wonder of their eyes.
And when you hit your stride, and weather whatever,
Give up the surprise.
When those shoes once vast grow snug,
Be sure to celebrate well.
Acknowledge yourself, and your people, and the view.
Until another pair of shoes calls to you
Between arrogance and avoidance
On that red silk string…
You Are Needed.
And this is no time, no world,
For stealing.
Debbie Danon, Jan 2023www.debbiedanon.com
Photo by Michael Wright on Unsplash
*So much changes in the course of a day, a year, a life. We can be mysteries to ourselves and to others - confounding, confusing - as we turn this way and that, trying to find our way together through this changeable complex world. It’s very easy to feel lost and confused.
But even in the midst of all of this, is there something we can learn to trust… a thread we can reach for that runs through it all?
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
The Way It Is
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
William Stafford
Photo by Stephane Gagnon on Unsplash
How can we learn to love questions themselves as much as the answers we seek? And can we learn to be the ones who sincerely welcome the questions of others, so that they have room to breathe and grow? Because it may well be that often, in the midst of the complexity of life, it’s the very bringing of our sincere questions to one another in which the seeds of the responses we need can begin to grow.
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
A Gift
by Denise Levertov
Just when you seem to yourself
nothing but a flimsy web
of questions, you are given
the questions of others to hold
in the emptiness of your hands,
songbird eggs that can still hatch
if you keep them warm,
butterflies opening and closing themselves
in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure
their scintillant fur, their dust.
You are given the questions of others
as if they were answers
to all you ask. Yes, perhaps
this gift is your answer.
Photo by Rae Galatas on Unsplash
As we encounter life we encounter all manner of different parts within us - and among them we often find parts of us which seem determined to thwart us and hold us back. How might we relate to the critical parts, the over-protective parts, the obstructive parts, and the parts of us that are simply terrified? And instead of being dominated by them, or trying to dominate them, how might we parent them well so they can grow in wisdom and maturity and bring us, and the people around them, their gifts? The poet Rainer Maria Rilke has some wonderful advice on this, from his book 'Letters to a Young Poet', and it's this that is the starting point for a very rich conversation.
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
And your doubt may become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become critical. Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why something is ugly, demand proofs from it, test it and you will find it perplexed and embarrassed perhaps, or perhaps rebellious. But don’t give in, insist on arguments and act this way: watchful and consistent, every single time, and the day will arrive when from a destroyer it will become one of your best workers - perhaps the cleverest of all that are building at your life.
Letters to a Young Poet - Rainer Maria Rilke letter to Mr Kappus, Nov,4 1904
Photo by Rae Galatas on Unsplash
In which we talk about integral development coaching, a way to work in profound and compassionate support of people at they engage with their lives. It's this work that we're deeply dedicated to at Thirdspace, but which we haven't spoken much about directly in the more than six years of Turning Towards Life. Along the way we talk about what it is to meet someone with deep welcome, to be attentive to the way someone is relating to their life, and to find compassionate and truthful ways to speak about that what we say can be of use to another. And we talk about living in stories - the stories that constrain us, the stories that release us, and the good intention that so often lies behind even those stories that get us into the deepest difficulty.
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
What Story Do You Live In?
To live in the world as a human being is always to live in the middle of a story of one kind or another. We all live in a world of interpretation - the particular way we each make sense of the world.
The interpretations we live in profoundly shape the experience we have of life, and the possibilities that open and close for each of us. So shifting our interpretations into ever more life-giving forms might be one of the most important ways we can play a part in our lives. In other words, examining and changing the stories we’re living can be a way to bring about new kinds of personal and collective freedom: the freedom of thought, feeling and action we need in order to respond fully to our lives.
One of the intriguing aspects of the interpretations we live in is that they’re often invisible to us. We may have come by them deliberately and then forgotten them in the midst of the habit and repetition of day to day life. Or we may have entered into them ‘unconsciously’, taking them up in response to the surrounding culture or the family systems we grew up in when we were small. When they’re ‘in the background’ in this way, it can be hard to see how much they shape us. There’s a sense in which it’s easy for us to ‘belong to’ an interpretation rather than having our interpretations consciously and purposefully ‘belong to us’.
This is where integral development coaching can be helpful. Because a skilled coach can be of support in helping us first see and then shift the stories in which we can live, often in liberating and life-giving ways.
It can be wonderful to have someone who will help us observe what we have not yet observed about the stories we live in - someone who will partner with us as we enter into new ways of making sense of our lives that we may never have considered before, and help us find and practice new ways to live them. In this way we can come, over time, first to 'have our stories' rather than being 'had by them', and then to make new ones that can serve our lives more fully. It’s a very creative, joyful and compassionate role to play in support of another person.
Photo by Nong on Unsplash
What might come if we could, as Julia Fehrenbacher writes, make a home inside ourselves, a shelter of kindness that grows all the truest things? It seems to us that doing exactly that is of great support to our courage, our blossoming, our bringing ourselves to the world with both strength and gentleness, and with the truthfulness our relationships deserve.
So much of the time our inner harshness - when we have not learned how to grow a kind, welcoming place inside us - gets projected out into the world, and onto others. And often we try to seek reassurance and kindness from others, when it would be much more life-giving to first grow it in ourselves.
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
The Most Important Thing
I am making a home inside myself. A shelter
of kindness where everything
is forgiven, everything allowed—a quiet patch
of sunlight to stretch out without hurry,
where all that has been banished
and buried is welcomed, spoken, listened to—released.
A fiercely friendly place I can claim as my very own.
I am throwing arms open
to the whole of myself—especially the fearful,
fault-finding, falling apart, unfinished parts, knowing
every seed and weed, every drop
of rain, has made the soil richer.
I will light a candle, pour a hot cup of tea, gather
around the warmth of my own blazing fire. I will howl
if I want to, knowing this flame can burn through
any perceived problem, any prescribed perfectionism,
any lying limitation, every heavy thing.
I am making a home inside myself
where grace blooms in grand and glorious
abundance, a shelter of kindness that grows
all the truest things.
I whisper hallelujah to the friendly
sky. Watch now as I burst into blossom.
Julia Fehrenbacherwww.juliafehrenbacher.com
Photo by Arno Smit on Unsplash
When we’re children we often know intuitively something that as adults we forget - that there are many different parts of each of us inside, and that sometimes we really need to give space to the part of us that will be kind, and nurturing, and gentle.
As adults it is possible for us to relearn this, and we can practice relating to the whole of our inner world with an attentiveness and spaciousness that’s resourcing to us. This in turn frees us up to bring our personal complexity to meet the complexity of the world. ‘Where to begin’ is the starting point for this week’s conversation.
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Looking After Our Selves
It’s well observed that between the ages of around one and twelve, many children manifest a deep attachment to a stuffed soft object, normally shaped into a bear, a rabbit or – less often – a penguin. The depth of the relationship can be extraordinary… What’s truly remarkable is that the animal looks after its owner, addressing him in a tone of unusual maturity and kindness. It might, in a crisis, urge the child not to worry and to look forward to better times in the future. But naturally, the animal’s character is entirely made up. The animal is simply something invented, or brought to life by one part of the child, in order to look after the other… Though it sounds a little odd, speaking to ourselves is common practice throughout our lives. Often, when we do so, the tone is harsh and punitive. But… mental well-being depends on having to hand a repertoire of more gentle, forgiving and hopeful inner voices… Being properly mature demands a gracious accommodation with what can seem childlike, embarrassing or humiliatingly vulnerable. We should honour stuffed animals for what they really are: tools to help us on our first steps in the vital business of knowing how to look after ourselves.
From The School Of Life
www.theschooloflife.com/article/stuffed-animals
Photo by Richard Stovall on Unsplash
*In our work as coaches, teachers, leaders and community makers, we have been finding anew over the last few years just how important ‘deliberateness’ is in making relationships that can hold and spaces in which there is genuine welcome.
It might be easy to ignore the deliberate practices needed to make relationships in this way, or to treat them as optional. But, as the poet Seamus Heaney tells us in this week’s source, it’s the careful making of such deliberate ‘scaffolding’ for our relationships that gives them a chance to endure the very real challenges, difficulties and surprises of our personal and organisational lives.
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
Scaffolding
Masons, when they start upon a building,
Are careful to test out the scaffolding;
Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points,
Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.
And yet all this comes down when the job’s done
Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.
So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be
Old bridges breaking between you and me
Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall
Confident that we have built our wall.
Seamus Heaney
Photo by Mathieu Perrier on Unsplash
*“I am a person who needs you to listen, simply listen, hear me say 'this is hard for me', not offer an answer or solution,” writes Lana Hechtman Ayers. And we are in agreement that there is a move, an opening, a 'coming alongside' one another that is the first move to make when someone brings us their difficulty, or pain. For many of us, this is not at all easy to do.
Later, perhaps, when a request is made, it could well be time for us to bring a response. But first, before that, how do we quiet ourselves enough, and make enough welcome inside of us, that we can be the ones who meet others with sufficient dignity and welcome to be with them right where they are? And how do we set aside our own need to be right, be complete, and know what to do, so that we can be that for them?
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
This Is Hard for Me
for Lizzie Winn & Justin Wise
I am not the broken mug in the sink,
handle snapped off,
fixable with a few dabs
of quick glue.
Nor am I the unmoored board
sticking up on the walkway
that a couple of steel nails
and even-handed whacks
with a hammer
will resolve.
I am not even the small pearl
button popped off the white
cotton shirt
that simple needle and thread
will neatly address.
I am a person who needs
you to listen, simply listen,
hear me say This is hard for me,
not offer an answer
or solution,
just caress my hand softly
as a fine rain,
a time for you
to be silent
and hold my struggle
as you would a precious newborn
already asleep in your arms.
Lana Hechtman Ayers
Photo credit / Arturo Rey on Unsplash
*“What is it like, such intensity of pain?” writes Rainer Maria Rilke. While we might ask one another in our more difficult moments “How are you?” or perhaps “How are you doing?”, we less often ask Rilke’s deeper question, a question that helps us and one another make contact with the aliveness and mystery of our being human.
And so in this week’s conversation we explore together what it is to treat our own experience of ‘the happenings of life’ with reverence and respect, and start to see how this reverence and respect can help us inhabit the coming and going of all kinds of experience as a vibrant and necessary kind of gift for ourselves and for those around us.
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
LET THIS DARKNESS BE A BELL TOWER
*Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing
makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.
Rainer Maria Rilke*
Photo credit / Arturo Rey on Unsplash
"Remember when you saw the stars of childhood, when you knelt alone and thought that they were there for you, lamps that something held to prove your beauty?" writes Joseph Fasano. Can we use these words as a gateway to finding a sense of belonging in the world, rather than being separate from it? And as we find our way to our own belonging - our receiving of life - what does it take for us to be ones around whom others get to belong? All of these seem like urgent questions to us in a world in which it is so easy for us to feel incomplete, desperate even, and in which it's possible and necessary for us to support one another in finding our place again.
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
Urgent Message to a Friend in Pain
I have to tell you
a little thing about living
(I know, I know, but hear me),
a little thing I've carried
in the dark:
Remember when you saw the stars of childhood,
when you knelt alone and thought
that they were there for you,
lamps that something held
to prove your beauty?
They are they are they are they
are they are. Joseph Fasano
Photo by Vincent Chin on Unsplash
“When you love someone, you do not love them in exactly the same way all the time. It is an impossibility - a lie to even pretend to.” So how might we live gracefully in our relationships with their inevitable ebb and flow and, instead of demanding they stay constant, learn to trust the very natural movement in them as we would learn to trust the tides? And what might we need to discover about ourselves in order to make this possible?
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
The Ebb and Flow of Relationship
When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.
The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits - islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Photo by Jonatan Pie on Unsplash
When we freeze in public - giving a speech, or making a presentation - it's valuable to consider the possibility that all the unwelcome attention that seems to be coming our way might actually be our own attention, projected out onto others. In other words, feeling everyone's intense interest in us might show us something about how interested we are. The same goes for the feeling of pressure to do things - which might be a projected-out version of our own wish to contribute. Seeing this way starts to give us some routes to notice how we're participating in life, and to receive our own lives rather than push them away. And when we can see the ways in which 'what is happening' is at least in part 'what I am doing', we have the opportunity to turn our many gifts in productive directions that free us rather than constrain us.
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
Taking Back Our Projections
Perhaps nothing is more painful than the feeling of acute self-consciousness, the feeling that everybody is staring at us. Maybe we have to give a speech, or act in a play, or receive an award, and we freeze because we feel that everybody is looking at us. But many people don't freeze in public. So the problem must lie not in the situation itself but in something we are doing in the situation.
And what we are doing [is] projecting our own interest in people, so that everybody seems interested in us. Instead of actively looking, we feel looked at. We give our eyes to the audience, so that their natural interest in us seems blown out of proportion into a massive amount of interest zeroed-in on us personally, watching every move, every detail, every action. And so naturally we freeze. And we will stay frozen until we dare to take back the projection – to look, instead of feeling looked at, to give attention instead of being clobbered by it.
Ken Wilber, from 'No Boundary'
Photo by Rainier Ridao on Unsplash
We can easily live as if we're 'skating over the surface of life'. Sometimes that's an intelligent strategy for protecting ourselves from the intensity and difficulty that life can bring us. But our wider culture rarely helps us remember the depths of our lives - the depths that remind us of our mutual goodness, our pain, the ways we heal, the brevity of it all. And if we're skating the surface more than is necessary, we're barely being ourselves. What would it be to live with openness to the depths? And to bring ourselves to that task with gentleness and kindness?
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
Let the Leaf Fall
When this living breaks your heart, steals
your plans, when you miss the holy of here,
thinking thinking thinking something brighter
is over there, when there is no denying
how precious, how precarious
this aliveness is, let
yourself break again
and again, let
the cool, almost-autumn breeze
blow all the way in. Let
the fading light,
the falling leaf,
show you how short
it is, this life. How feather-fine
the line.
And then blow infinite kisses of kindness
to every dying-living thing, yourself
included. Always yourself included.
Whoever you think you are
does not even
come close.
You are big enough to hold every
break, every ache, every dark cloud,
every twinkling star too.
Let the leaf fall.
watch now—
watch how life
catches you.
Julia Fehrenbacherjuliafehrenbacher.com
Photo credit: Matt | Unsplash
*It’s not surprising, when we’re in difficulty or overstretched, to find ourselves tuning out of the world, distancing ourselves from what and who is around us. The stories we’re handed by our culture - that life is essentially meaningless - don’t help.
Who do we become if this is what we do? How might we, instead, learn to love again when we’re ‘running out of things to love’? And how might we - as the poet Maya Stein invites us - ‘narrow the distance’ between ourselves and the world, ourselves and one another, so we can let life flood in once again?
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
what to love when you’re running out of things to love
Pick any landscape—a kitchen counter, a waiting room, that part of your body you shield from photographs—and narrow the distance between you. At first, the stains will monopolize your eye. Each blight and crack and overgrowth, a seismic disruption. If you can bear the stillness of not looking away, if you step even closer, the contours will begin to lose their meaning. The noise of an old story will fade. New shapes will emerge, like petals after a hard rain. I’m not saying you will desire, suddenly, the pits and pores of the world, or that your hands passing over every rough surface will feel fresh tenderness. But you’ll notice your breathing has softened, your heart a door you can open past the jambs. How there’s room for what you see, and everything you can’t.
Maya Steinmayastein.com
Photo by After Exposure Studio on Unsplash
*When any of us - or all of us - face a tectonic shift in our lives, through a birth or a death, a change in circumstances, or a calamity in the world, it can be hard to know how to respond. We easily overcomplicate, or turn away because we don’t know what to do.
But what if the most necessary response in difficult times - and the one that cultivates the best in us - was the simplest… taking care of one another through the simple, practical, almost-invisible small things?
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
The small things that carry love
When I gave birth for the first time,
My daughter washing up on the shores of my world
With such newness and raw need
And so many questions swimming in her eyes,
I remember not knowing which way was up. Or who I was or what anything was.
I felt like I needed something huge,
Some great pair of hands to scoop me up and help me find a way to be in this new world I had been ushered into so slowly and suddenly. I needed a plan for my whole life. How to keep her safe, how to live, how to be this new version of myself that didn’t fit yet.
And here’s what I remember.
I remember my mum changing the bin for me and folding a pile of laundry.
I remember my husband bringing me dark chocolate and a cup of tea and letting me sleep for half an hour.
I remember these small things because these are the things that mattered most while the tectonic plates shifted inside me.
Small, practical, kind things that don’t require any words or thinking or explaining or responding to.
The small things that whisper ‘you’re okay, the world is still slow and gentle and made of daily tasks; it will wait for you.’
And so now, when I find myself on the other end of
another’s great crossing of some invisible line - the
death of someone or the birth, or any slow, sudden
change that can come in any number of ways,
I have learned to trust that the love I feel and the
goodness I want to express
will best flow towards this one I love
Through the simple, practical, almost-invisible
small
things.
Hollie Holden
Photo by rajat sarki on Unsplash
*"The first step", writes Paul Weinfield, is not reaching for a solution to our difficulties but "the willingness to admit 'this is hard for me'". It's this move that gives us the opportunity to let go of the habitual ways we have of 'holding up the heavens'. And when we do this, we have the chance to enter into a series of discoveries about the force and patterns of our own personality and assumptions - and maybe even to find out what of the scaffolding that we use to hold everything up is ready to fall so that something else can grow.
In this conversation Lizzie and Justin consider how it is that we come to know when it's time to solve, and when it's time to open to what's new, and how we might each help one another do that.
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
The Willingness to Admit 'This Is Hard for Me'
The first step is not a solution, but the willingness to admit, “This is hard for me.” For as long as we deny that our lives can be difficult, we will always act from our conditioning and take the same ineffectual actions. But if we can sit with compassion for ourselves, our innate wisdom can show us how to truly be there for ourselves, and, eventually, how to let go.
Compassion feels a bit like rain at the end of a hot summer day. There’s a sense of relief in letting it all come down. Yes, you have to let go of some control. You have to let go of trying to hold up the heavens with your solutions, strategies, and stories of right and wrong. But maybe all that scaffolding needs to fall. Maybe none of it kept you safe in the first place. Maybe, all the while, there’s been a child tugging at your sleeve, saying, “Can we go now? I don’t want to fight any more. Just stay with me. All I want is for you to stay with me.”
Paul Weinfield
www.paulweinfieldcoaching.com/about
*Difficult times in the world can easily drive us towards the worst of ourselves. When we become rigid, or narrow in our thinking, or too certain about the rightness of our position… or when we forget how to acknowledge the pain of the other.
But difficult times can also be when we choose to bring forward the best of ourselves, to live in our communities and our homes in the way, as Howard Zinn says, ‘that human beings should live’ when we are in contact with the compassion, courage and kindness that is our true nature. How might we begin to walk that path when it calls to us?
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
To Be Hopeful in Bad Times To be hopeful in bad times is based on the fact that human history is not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. If we only see the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act.
And if we do act, in however, small way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presence, and to live now, as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself, a marvellous victory.
Howard Zinn
Photo by Kristel Hayes on Unsplash
The healing we need - the healing the world needs - can't happen without us. When we separate ourselves from the world, as if it's up to someone else, we miss the ways in which healing and our shared capacity arise from our own minds, hearts and bodies. We can't leave it up to someone else to do - but doing it also calls on our courage, our care, our truthfulness, our love, and our capacity to cultivate a many-chambered heart... to hear one another's joys and anguish, love and anger, and hold it tenderly without either escalating or ignoring, so that something more true and whole-hearted can emerge in us and between us.
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
The Healing
This planet will not be healed by powerful politicians in big cities who spend trillions on a global strategy that never quite begins. They also burn much fuel. Earth will be healed by villagers who sing, by backyard gardeners like you, who walk more slowly right here, who feel the green through bare soles, speaking fewer words, cradling each others anger like mothers, awakening the heirloom seeds of the heart.
by Alfred K. LaMotte
Photo by Nikola Knezevic on Unsplash
When our inner worlds are in turmoil, perhaps in response to the outer world, how should we respond? Might there be a way to honour other parts of ourselves that easily get sidelined in heightened times? And how might that be a way to hold onto our dignity, care and humanity?
*Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
Thursday
When the dusk comes in as quiet as this
as low as this, as dense as this,
like your whole world has gone back to where it began
and you wonder how you got into this mess,
the kind of mess you cannot see an end to
as if it may already have ended very badly
and all you can hear is the sound of your own name
spoken deep inside your own head,
it is probably best to step back
from whatever kind of brink you imagine
you have reached
and think about something else,
something small and practical
like boiling an egg. Elaine Beckettwww.elainebeckett.comPhoto by Rodrigo Pereira on Unsplash
*There are so many reasons to harden ourselves to the world. But what we long for, in ourselves, from one another, is for our ‘clenched fists to unfurl, ready to hold whatever small things drop inside’.
It’s not the easiest thing to do when our worlds are filled with hurt and pain, or when we are feeling tender and fragile. So how might we begin? And help one another stay open?
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
Stay Like Clay
How we want hard things to soften
and change right away, for frost
to lift off stiff blades of grass
before the summer green can fade,
and for a gentle rain to prevail over
sleet that coasts each leaf left
clinging to gleaming black branches.
For the furrowed brow of a loved one
to smooth back into a smile,
and for every clenched fist to unfurl
into a small bowl, ready to hold
whatever small thing falls inside.
Maybe the trick is never to harden
in the first place, to stay like clay
outside the kiln, willing to be
molded, reshaped by the rough
and tender hands of this world.
James Crews
www.jamescrews.net
*Underneath many of our common-sense understandings of who we each are, there is a deeper mystery. How did I get to be the person who I am today? How does the stream of life that began long before me, and will continue long after me, shape me?
And is there a way we can come to know ourselves and our mystery more fully in the way we listen to and come to know one another - in friendship, community, or the kind of helping that coaching provides?
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
We never know who we are
We never know who we are
(this is strange, isn’t it?)
or what vows we made
or who we knew
or what we hoped for
or where we were
when the world’s dreams were seeded.
Until the day just one of us
sighs a gentle longing
and we all feel the change
one of us calls a name
and we all know to be there
one of us tells a dream
and we all breathe life into it
one of us asks “why?”
and we all know the answer.
It is very strange.
We never know who we are
Margaret WheatleyPhoto by Joshua Kettle on Unsplash
Where does our courage come from? It certainly (and paradoxically) doesn’t come from our efforts to make ourselves safe, or strong, or to armour ourselves against the world.
Indeed, it may be that our courage really comes from what is most vulnerable in us, and what is most true - the something in us that lives very close to fear, and is also a neighbour to joy.
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
Blessing of Courage
I cannot say
where it lives,
only that it comes
to the heart
that is open,
to the heart
that asks,
to the heart
that does not turn away.
It can take practice,
days of tugging at
what keeps us bound,
seasons of pushing against
what keeps our dreaming
small.
When it arrives,
it might surprise you
by how quiet it is,
how it moves
with such grace
for possessing
such power.
But you will know it
by the strength
that rises from within you
to meet it,
by the release
of the knot
in the center of
your chest
that suddenly lets go.
You will recognize it
by how still
your fear becomes
as it loosens its grip,
perhaps never quite
leaving you,
but calmly turning
into joy
as you enter the life
that is finally
your own.
by Jan Richardson
*True patience isn’t ‘going slow’, it isn’t ‘tuning out’, and it isn’t a stick to beat ourselves with.
Instead it’s our capacity to turn towards what is actually happening without turning away, and to turn towards our own responses - including our irritation, anger, frustation - without turning away either.
It’s in this kind of patience that the seeds of a genuine kind of compassion for the messiness of a human life can arise, and the possibility that we might grow in ourselves an ever wider range of responses when we find ourselves in the thick-of-things.
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
When tough times cause our love to fray into annoyance, our compassion to be overwhelmed by our fear, and our insight to evaporate, then patience begins to make sense. To me it is the most substantial, most serviceable, and most reliable of all spiritual qualities. Without it all other qualities are shaky. The practice of patience is simple enough. When difficulty arises, notice the obvious and not so obvious ways we try to avoid it. The things we say and do, the subtle ways in which our very bodies recoil and clench when someone says or does something to us that we don’t like. To practice patience is to simply notice these things and be fiercely present with them (taking a breath helps; returning to mindfulness of the body helps) rather than reacting to them and flailing around. Paying attention to body, paying attention to mind. And when possible, giving ourselves good teachings about the virtue of being with, rather than trying to run away from, the anguish we are feeling in this moment.
Training in Compassion: Zen Teachings on the Practice of Lojong by Norman Fischer
Photo by Melanie Vaz on Unsplash
*Within us are great forces for the destruction of one another. But also great forces for mutual support, mutual strengthening, and the mutual amplification of care and goodness. Which will we draw upon when we are in trouble?
It’s the 6th birthday of ‘Turning Towards Life’, and we are feeling celebratory, and also a mix of hopefulness about the world and tenderness at the many difficulties we are all in. We invite you to join us for this conversation about how we might find a path through, together.
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
The world is meant
for building each other
into castles, for holding
each other in times of
duress and struggle.
*We are not meant to
burn each other to the
ground.
If we cannot support
each other in the times
we need to come together,
we will be left in ashes.*
Courtney Peppernellwww.peppernell.com
Photo by Xavier Senente on Unsplash
*The possibility of taking up both remembering and forgetting as intentional practices.
So that we can remember, and not forget, one another’s gifts and goodness, sacredness and possibility, strength and tenderness. So we can forget all that we hold onto in one another that keeps us from who we could be, and meet one another afresh in each brink of time.
And so we can remember what needs fixing and healing - so that it can be fixed and healed - and forget the patterns in us that break and hurt, so that we don’t continue repeating them.
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
The Gift of Forgetting
Forgetting has its uses. Were it not for our ability to forget, we would never be free from melancholy. No joyous occasion would dispel sadness. The events that could delight us would give us no pleasure, while we recalled every trouble of life. Even from the success of our hopes we could not expect to derive rest and peace of mind. We would never refrain from grieving. So both memory and forgetfulness, different and contrary as they are, are both gifts given to us, and each of them has its uses in our lives.
Bachya Ibn Pakuda, Duties of the Heart
Photo by Michael Jasmund on Unsplash
*Look around at the people you know, and you’ll quickly see how particular each person’s response is to what life brings to them. You might say that each person has cultivated, over time, a particular ‘flavour’ for their engagement with life, or a particular ‘way of being’ in response to the world.
And yet this ‘flavour’ is often all but invisible to us in our understanding of ourselves, falling into the background of habit and familiarity. How might we help one another awaken to the ways we’re living, and support one another as we practice and experiment with wild new possibilities for ourselves?
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
Fighting the Wind
The trick is not to.
Not to struggle, thrusting
the anvil of your
body against the
gale, not to compete, but to
sway and bend, threading
the edge of the air,
welcoming dishevelment.
Who is in charge of
corralling the squall
into meager breezes, these
air conditioned spaces?
Who is bold enough
to slam open the windows
let the shouting in?
You want to be brave.
But you yearn also to curl
beneath the blanket
of wind, a small fold,
your breath a small sigh beneath
the world’s loud exhale
and also
to be the window
it shoves into and through, a
portal for the sky.
The wind reminds you
of what you can be, tousled
dismantled,
a being
that can continually
be remade.
Teresa Breeden
Photo by Oliver Hihn on Unsplash
*We human beings are very sensitive to truth. So when we find the place inside us from which we can talk, truthfully, about the many aspects of our experience, it can be deeply connecting and safety-making. It also goes a long way to having the many parts of us themselves feel named and seen, and in doing so to become less desperate and fearful. And this place from which we can talk? We might call it the ‘essential self’.
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
The body is a great sage, a many with one purpose, a war and a peace, a flock and a shepherd, a purpose that includes the free and the determined together, conflict and harmony together, multiplicity and unity as one
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Within you is a place of love and grace.
It is a place without fear
Where there is no need to defend or prove,
No need to lie or hide.
From this place spring words of truth,
Actions of courage,
And a life of love.
Wait patiently for the voices of fear in your mind
To cease their frantic call to action.
Become aware of what the next clear step
Of love might be.
Be patient with yourself.
The qualities of a lover
Do not depend on externals.
They take root in your own soul
And grow as you attend to them.
They all lie within you.
WILLIAM MARTIN
Photo by manu schwendener on Unsplash
*A conversation about slowing down so we can, with gentleness, relax our own patterns and habits and then see them with truthfulness. About how we might be the ones for each other that make this possible. And about how radical, counter-cultural and necessary true rest can be.
Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
So, I wrapped myself
tightly in a silk cocoon.
And I told myself that
the only way I was going
to survive was if I slowed
down my healing and I gently
reasoned with all my being.
Because to reason with yourself
is to reflect, and to reflect must
always start with rest.
Courtney Peppernellwww.peppernell.com
Photo by Victoria Berman on Unsplash
*The wider culture of the world doesn’t teach us much about how to see and name the goodness of people. But we quickly learn how to compare, criticise, and find all the ways we’re wanting or falling short, or how other people are. What does it take to start to see the goodness that underlies even the mistakes we make, and be ones who can help liberate that goodness into ever fuller expression? Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Because we're travelling this week, the sound quality is a little different from our more regular episodes. We hope to be back to our usual sound quality next week.*
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
Saint Francis and the Sow
The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.
Galway Kinnell
Photo by ali mahmoodi on Unsplash
*Listening is the foundation of all human relationship. But what is it to listen? Who do we have to be, to be ones whose listening connects, heals, restores, and supports our being true with one another? Could a machine ever do this? Or is there a way in which the depth and particular ethical freedom of being human lends our listening a quality which only we can bring to the world? Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Because we're travelling this week, the sound quality is a little different from our more regular episodes. We hope to be back to our usual sound quality next week.*
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
Hush
Have you ever just
sat and listened to
a loved one vent?
Silently you held space,
'til from darkness
they'd rallied back?
Support
need not be complex,
it only needs to be only
....that.
Listen
until the clouds crack
and bleed them some sunshine.
Smileand be their lifelifef,
'til their worst feels like
it's just fine.
Broms the PoetPhoto by Michael & Diane Weidner on Unsplash
What if a life of purpose isn't so much found by looking far from ourselves, towards some future goal, but instead by paying attention to the way that life is already moving through us? What does it take to kindle life's energy in us so that the qualities that we uniquely have to bring have a chance to get brought? And how might we stay awake to the splendour and energy of life that is always waiting to be known in us and through us, rather than collapsing into self-pity or demanding that the world meets us 'just so' before we'll live?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
A Splendid Torch
This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no “brief candle” for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
George Bernard ShawPhoto by Olga Bast on Unsplash
*The wider culture no longer honour elders in the way it once did, and so we lose a source of wisdom and depth that we so need in these times.
Because of this, the culture also doesn’t give many of us a route to become elders ourselves as we age, so we can easily fall into patterns of rigidity of thought and opinion, insisting that the world and others stay the same rather than meeting the world with the wisdom and grace that is called for.
So how might we support ourselves in staying open, deepening, wisening up and becoming the ones the world cries out for? And how might we support other people in doing the same?*
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
Older, and Wiser
The passing of time makes everyone older, but not necessarily wiser. People either wise up to who they are at their core of their soul or else tend to slip into narrow, egocentric patterns. Either they develop a greater vision of life as they mature or they simply lose sight of who they were intended to be and what they came to give to this world. Many actually become more childish in old age. An extended old age can easily lead to a return of infantile attitudes and exaggerations of basic neediness.
In traditional societies the old people became the guardians of the mysteries and keepers of the higher laws of life. Having grown both older and wiser they knew best what needed to be preserved and remembered in order for human life to be noble and meaningful and in tune with nature. Those “old enough to know better” would become living depositories of wisdom for the next generation to draw upon; if not, everyone would suffer a loss of knowledge and greater disorientation in the world."
Michael Meade, "Fate and Destiny"
Photo by Chris Andrawes on Unsplash
How our familiarity and what we’re comfortable with builds a whole world, with its own particular horizon of possibilities. Why it might be that the very thing that’s most called for to change things in the ways we long for is to do the last thing we’d imagine. And how we can help one another grow by being the ones who lovingly find a way to welcome and explore the unfamiliar in one another.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
The Awkwardness Principle
*“The practices that carry the greatest potential for transformative change are usually counter-instinctual.”
—Bruce Tift*
if you’re trying to get better at life in some way – more patient, or better at listening, or less prone to procrastination or anxiety or self-sabotage – the necessary actions are pretty much guaranteed not to feel especially good. They’re more likely to feel scary, or at least awkward, like wearing an ill-fitting shirt, or writing with your non-dominant hand. While learning to be patient, you should expect to feel restless. As you embark on a long-postponed creative project, you should expect to feel unready. One way or another, change will feel crappy.
This shouldn’t really come as a surprise. After all, you’re attempting in some way to be different than you are. (That’s true, by the way, even if your goal is to become more accepting of how things are.) Yet your entire personality, up to this moment, has been one long exercise in getting good at being who you currently are. So of course you’ll feel ungainly and self-conscious when you try to do otherwise...
Most of us grow up with the deep-seated belief that there are certain feelings we can’t allow ourselves to feel. Maybe you were raised with the message that you shouldn’t depend too much on others, or that you shouldn’t stand out from the crowd, or that you should stand out from the crowd, or that you should always have a clear plan for the future, or that people are out to take advantage of you...
For a small child, falling in with these family patterns feels like a matter of survival. So by the time you’re an adult, you’re deeply convinced that easing up on them – that is, by allowing yourself to depend on others, or stand out, or operate without a clear plan, etcetera – would be to invite disaster. No wonder the prospect seems utterly terrifying.
Oliver Burkemanwww.oliverburkeman.com
Photo by Ion Fet on Unsplash
In a wider culture that has told us to turn away from our own suffering and grief, to harden up and plough through, it’s a deeply counter-cultural and necessary move to turn towards it and towards one another. How might we do this? And how do we trust the deep wells of goodness and capacity within and between us that can, with patience and faithfulness, transform our difficulty into love?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Therapy
the hard season
will
split you through.
do not worry.
you will bleed water.
do not worry.
this is grief.
your face will fall out and
down your skin
and
there will be scorching.
but do not worry.
keep speaking the years from
their hiding places.
keep coughing up smoke
from all the deaths you have
died.
keep the rage tender.
because the soft season will
come.
it will come.
loud.
ready.
gulping.
both hands in your chest.
up all night.
up all of the nights.
to drink all damage into love.
Nayyirah Waheedwww.instagram.com/nayyirahwaheedwords
Photo by Evie S. on Unsplash
How do we attend to our inner complexity? Are there ways we might relate to the many parts of us that honour both subtlety and certainty, practicality and mystery, hardness and softness, ground and sky? And what might it take for us to be the ones who bring ourselves to all of this - and to each other - in a way that fosters relationships that are nourishing and truthful, inviting and care-taking, so that we don't fall into habitual patterns that end up elevating one side of each polarity at the cost of the destruction of the other?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Bird and Stone
*There is a bird and a stone
in your body. Your job is not
to kill the bird with the stone.*Victoria Changfrom the book "The Trees Witness Everything"
victoriachangpoet.com
Photo by Sneha Cecil on Unsplash
*It's our 300th episode, so we are feeling very celebratory. This week our conversation takes up the question of permission. What do we make possible - give permission for - in others, by our way of being and interacting with the world? And what do we make impossible?
Can we begin to catch on to the patterns that have become habitual to us (and often invisible to us) so we can start to be more intentional about what others can bring us, and what they can't? And can we find a way to open the horizons of welcome so we less and less try to control others so they're 'just the way we want them' and instead meet them and welcome them more fully exactly as they are?*
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
The Walking Permission Slip
As I walk the world, I walk as a set of permissions.
Around me you can break.
Around me you must behave.
Around me you must be ashamed.
Around me you can be yourself.
Around me you can be honest. Truly, messily honest.
As I walk the world, I walk as a set of permissions.
I want to know if you’re suffering.
I want to know only your good bits.
I want to know if you’re sad.
I want to know of your successes but not your failures.
I want to know the ways you love me.
As I walk the world, I walk as a set of permissions.
What are my implicit permissions? What do I imply by the way I speak, act, the language I use? How do my responses either welcome more or tell others to cut off of or edit themselves? What do I make it OK for you to be by me being me, with you?
As I walk the world, I walk as a set of permissions.
This set of permissions can thankfully change. We can give up the set we got given for another set that allows people around us to be fully themselves if we like. It really is possible.
We can ask ourselves what shows up around us, what doesn’t, what others feel safe to reveal to us, what they feel they have to hide. And we can make some decisions about what we actually want the answer to that to be. And then the work begins. Of becoming that which we intend rather than that which we unwittingly, habitually invite by walking the world the way we walk it.
Lizzie Winn 7/7/23
Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash
We easily forget that inside us, and inside everyone, is something delicate, solid, sweet, and very tender - a source of life and dignity and care. And when we forget this it’s easy to treat the surface of things - our disagreements, our hurriedness, our fear - as what is most true. But it’s the depth of being human that gives us access to the most life-giving of gifts we each have to bring. Can we find our way back to contact with this depth, this holiness, in our everyday lives and relationships, and navigate life’s complexity from there?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
What is Most Holy In Me *Something exquisitely sweet and tender, like a hummingbird’s tongue.
Some kernel of something, a breath.
If I hold still enough, I can feel it.
If I move slowly enough, I can hold it in both hands, gingerly, like an offering.
I have to be quiet to be with it – move too fast and it feels like I may lose it, like holding a tiny feather without gripping it.
But I know it’s also lodged in there, in here, like the tree I saw that had grown through and around a fence. “I’m not going anywhere”.
This delicate, solid, holy thing.*
Another breath, another flutter.
*What is most holy in me?
That part that wants to cry out and weep with the world these days and drop onto the sidewalk, exhausted.
But also to feel the gentle warmth of the sun on my skin once I’m down there.*
Anna Rich, from ‘Please Scream Inside Your Heart’www.soulwriting.org/books-nonstorePhoto by Andraz Lazic on Unsplash
*As the poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer teaches us, even as the whole world can seem to be falling, we have a choice whether to contribute to isolation and fear or to a vast net of generosity and kindness in which we hold one another. Perhaps when we feel most afraid and most isolated, it's the time to ask ourselves the other side of the question too - are we willing to receive and be open to the support that's there? Because our turning away from receiving is also our turning away from giving.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Here’s our source for this week:
Safety NetThis morning I woke
thinking of all the people I love
and all the people they love
and how big the net
of lovers. It felt so clear,
all those invisible ties
interwoven like silken threads
strong enough to make a mesh
that for thousands of years
has been woven and rewoven
to catch us all.
Sometimes we go on
as if we forget
about it. Believing only
in the fall. But the net
is just as real. Every day,
with every small kindness,
with every generous act,
we strengthen it. Notice,
even now, how
as the whole world
seems to be falling, it
is there for us as we
walk the day’s tightrope,
how every tie matters.By Rosemerry Wahtola Trommerfrom her newest book ‘All the Honey’
Every experience we have of another person is first about us (our hopes, our fears, our way of interpreting, our projections). And every experience another person has of us is first about them. We live, in some very deep way, in a ‘hall of mirrors’.
*So, do we have any chance of truly ‘receiving’ one another? What in ourselves might we have let go of to make that possible? And then what do we have to do, to listen in a way that meets the ‘other’ instead of meeting ‘ourselves’?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
What Listening is For
We project everything we perceive onto the world, including the world of others: their beauty, their emotions, their personalities, their hopes, and their fears... While what you perceive about another person is indeed in reference to your interactions with them, your perceptions still take place internally to you, though they arise from the space between you and them. This means that [what you experience as] their personality is in a very literal sense your personality transposed. Their fears are your fears transposed... Likewise, other people's perceptions of you are exactly the same. You too are created as a function of them. You contain all the personalities, fears, and colors of the others you perceive...
... so what we need to each our children and each other is the ability to 'just stop' when listening, not only in conflict but always - in order to listen differently. Listening is the diminishment of the answers we project onto the world.
Beau Lotto, from 'Deviate'
Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash
*A conversation for any of us who find ourselves resisting our bodies ageing and changing: about all the painful comparisons we can get into; about the way the narratives and economic structures (and algorithms) of our wider culture are built to enrol us in just these comparisons and just this pain; about how we might attend joyfully to our own inner lives so that we can come to discover and appreciate and delight in our own splendour... and in doing so free up the splendour and wonder of others.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Don’t prioritise your looks my friend, as they won’t last the journey.
Your sense of humor though, will only get better with age.
Your intuition will grow and expand like a majestic cloak of wisdom.
Your ability to choose your battles, will be fine-tuned to perfection.
Your capacity for stillness, for living in the moment, will blossom.
Your desire to live each and every moment will transcend all other wants.
Your instinct for knowing what (and who) is worth your time, will grow and flourish like ivy on a castle wall.
Don’t prioritise your looks my friend,
they will change forevermore, that pursuit is one of much sadness and disappointment.
Prioritise the uniqueness that make you you, and the invisible magnet that draws in other like-minded souls to dance in your orbit.
These are the things which will only get better.
Judi Dench
Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash
*The kind of attention we bring to the world can enslave, reduce or destroy us and others, or support us, and them, in flourishing. But we're rarely taught anything about this, because it's not largely in the interest of the systems around us to have us cultivate the broad open attention that brings out meaning and richness from others and the world. So what can we do to start to pay attention to the kind of attention we're bringing life? And how can we cultivate the very attention that evokes the depth and possibility of what and how is around us?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
A Kind of Attention
Everything that exists is made up of the same set of particles – what makes the difference between you, a tree, and a boiled egg is just the relationship of the particles to one another. The meaning comes not from the particles, the bits, which are in themselves undifferentiated, meaningless, but from the relationship between them. The most moving piece of music you ever heard is just a collection of meaningless notes from one point of view: from the other the meaning arises from the relationship, which makes the melody, the harmony and so on. And so it is with everything in life we value: its meaning comes from relationship – with your loved ones, the place where you belong, your friends, the natural world itself, a work of art, a poem or a symphony. It all lies in relationships, not in things themselves. When we see the world with targeted, narrow beam attention it is just a meaningless heap of things to be grabbed. When we see the world as a whole with broad open attention its meaning and richness come to meet us ...
When Hamlet said: ‘There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so’, he didn’t mean that we can make up our own ethics as we go along. I believe what he meant was that how you choose to think of, to regard, attend to, anything in this world is a moral act, because it changes what it is you find there – and it changes you yourself. A certain attitude, a kind of attention to others and the world at large, can make you, and them, and the world flourish; another kind can enslave, reduce and destroy everything around us, all the good we live for.
Iain McGilchrist
Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash
*How do we find our way back to remembering who and what we really are, in the midst of lives that so easily call us into busyness, distraction, fear and the gnawing sense that something is always missing? How might we speak with one another, and write, in a way that evokes one another's depth? And why it is that, in these days of an new explosion of machine-writing software tools such as ChatGPT, we need the honesty and generosity of writing and speaking to one another that can come only from our humanity - from the inside of this one, mysterious and infinitely precious experience of being alive.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
One Stubborn Layer at a Time
Peace finds me today, meets me
in the clear waters of poets' words,
in the distant call of mourning dove,
in the bursting buds of the old mossy oak. Even
the black fly is an almost-welcome visitor,
its relentless buzz challenging me to meet it again
and again. It flies up close to my open eyes
and asks—even this?
The young men painting the house next door
play their festive music and sing and sing,
they sing as if not a thing in the world hurts,
as if this singing moment is guaranteed.
Or maybe they sing because
there is so much hurt
in the world and none
of it is guaranteed.
I love how, for once, I feel no need to justify
this not-doing, afternoon spent cradled
in hammock's kind lap, pen and notebook close
for when words decide to come—
and when they do, I catch one
at a time, like a child catching snowflakes
on her tongue. I say thank you
for each one—
for what else but words point me back,
show me how to, one stubborn layer
at a time, undress myself—how to dive naked
into the clear waters of what is here.
Julia Fehrenbacher
www.juliafehrenbacher.com
May 16th, 2023
Photo by Radek Grzybowski on Unsplash
How do we face life as it is, with all its inevitable difficulty and with all the meaning and love we might be able to bring to it? And how do we find that in ourselves that is life itself, and live more often from there so that we can meet life with life? This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
The Facts of Life
That you were born
and you will die.
That you will sometimes love enough
and sometimes not.
That you will lie
if only to yourself.
That you will get tired.
That you will learn most from the situations
you did not choose.
That there will be some things that move you
more than you can say.
That you will live
that you must be loved.
That you will avoid questions most urgently in need of
your attention.
That you began as the fusion of a sperm and an egg
of two people who once were strangers
and may well still be.
That life isn’t fair.
That life is sometimes good
and sometimes better than good.
That life is often not so good.
That life is real
and if you can survive it, well,
survive it well
with love
and art
and meaning given
where meaning’s scarce.
That you will learn to live with regret.
That you will learn to live with respect.
That the structures that constrict you
may not be permanently constraining.
That you will probably be okay.
That you must accept change
before you die
but you will die anyway.
So you might as well live
and you might as well love.
You might as well love.
You might as well love.
Pádraig Ó Tuamawww.padraigotuama.com
Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash
*How much of each us gets excluded when we constantly compare ourselves to one another, and to the expectations we're handed by our culture. And how much we exclude the gifts of others by the very same process. Is there a way we could give up inappropriate comparison and in so doing learn to include so much more everyone's talents and gifts, and the supportive ground of life itself?
In this conversation we talk about different kinds of learning, mischief, the attitudes we take that portray us as 'better than' or 'worse than' others, and what it is to deeply and gladly welcome the many kinds of difference and intelligence that are available in the world.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
People ask me
why I am happy.
What can I say ?
I stopped trying to be
the sharpest tool
in the shed.
Once I gave that up,
I could rest in all this love.
Relaxed, I opened the door,
stepped out and discovered
the whole bliss garden
I'd been missing.
Ingrid Goff-Maidoffingridgoffmaidoff.com
Photo Credit: Lizzie - Picture of a House that Vesper built.
*When we stop walling ourselves off from the suffering of the world - our own, other people's - we give ourselves a chance to meet one another's moonlight beauty in the midst of the inevitable undoing that is part of every human life. In this week's conversation we wonder together about what it is that makes this possible, and the relationships with one another that can grow as a consequence.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
This Ruined House
Last year, the poet Jane Hirschfield shared with me that her life broke open when she first read a haiku by Izumi Shikibu. Izumi was a tenth century Japanese poet of the Heian period. This beautiful haiku is about risk, suffering, permeability, tenderness, and courage, the inner integuments of altruism.
Izumi’s haiku:
Although the wind
blows terribly here
the moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house.Jane later wrote, “Wall up your well, and you will stay dry, but also stay moonless.” I believe that we have to let life into our lives, let others into our lives, let the world into our lives, let love into our lives, and also let the night into our lives, and not let the roof over our head, our knowing, our fear, keep out the moonlight. Altruism is exactly this permeability, this wall-less wilderness of the world, this broken roof that lets the moonlight flood our ruined house, our suffering world.
Roshi Joan Halifax
Photo by Jonny Gios on Unsplash
*What happens when we stop demanding of one another that we change, and instead generously come alongside one another with a measure of faithfulness in what John O'Donohue calls the 'hesitant light' which is still present in us even in our greatest difficulties?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
This is the time to be slow
This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall
Until the bitter weather passes.
Try, as best you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
And your hesitant light.
If you remain generous,
Time will come good;
And you will find your feet
Again on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind
And blushed with beginning.
John O'Donohue
Photo by Maria Lupan on Unsplash
*What if we could hold gratitude and sorrow together in us, rather than reducing ourselves to only one or the other, and rather than tuning out of life so as to avoid losing things? What might it be to honour and experience the gratitude that is inside all sorrow, and the sorrow that is inside all gladness, and in so-doing come to honour the exquisite and extraordinary depth and inner multiplicity of being a human being?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.(the audio of Justin's voice this week is not the usual recording quality we'd hope for... we'll be back to our usual clarity next week)
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
Losing It
This morning, after swimming, I overhear a conversation between two men who are sitting by the water. One has lost his sunglasses on an earlier swim and is quite distressed.
‘They were expensive. Armani.’ he says. ‘I paid a lot of money for them. And they are the third pair I’ve lost this summer’.
He is too agitated to be present with his friend who, after some minutes of listening, says ‘You seem really shaken up by this, too shaken up even to really be interested that I’m here with you. You’re saying the same thing, over and over again. But,’ and here he pauses, ‘tell me something. Did you enjoy having them? Did they bring you pleasure? Because although you’ve now lost them, for a while you did have them too’.
For a while, you did have them. And having them, while it lasted, was a gift.
And at that moment it occurs to me that this is true for everything, and for all of us. We wail and fret about what we lose, and rightly, because our loss is so often a source of suffering for us. But we will all lose our sunglasses, eventually, just as we will lose all our possessions, our friendships, our bodies, and everything we know.
And because losing is terrible and difficult to bear, we can spend our lives fretting about what’s yet to lose, and clinging madly to it, or becoming consumed with longing or remorse for what we’ve lost.
And all the while forgetting that, for a time, we did have all of this, and missing the wonder that there is anything at all – sunglasses, friendships, work, life – worth having enough that its loss matters to us in the first place.
Justin Wisejustinwise.co.uk
Photo by Sergey Chuprin on Unsplash
*We greatly misunderstand ourselves and other people when we take ourselves to be 'fixed', just ‘one-way’. However stuck we've become, there is something of us that is always changing, and even when we can't see it there's always the seed of change waiting for the right moment to burst forth.
So how do we learn to trust that in ourselves and others that is life's never ceasing unfolding into itself? How do we undo the rigid stories and judgments that increase the distance between us? And how do we take up an understanding about ourselves and other people that allow us to be faithful to, as our dear friend Rosemerry writes, 'uncertainty as a sacred path'?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
Never the Same
Sometimes a person wakes
believing they are a storm.
It’s hard to deny it, what,
with all the rain pouring out
of the gutters of the mind,
all the gusts blowing through,
all the squalls, all the gray.
But by afternoon, it seems obvious
they are a garden about to sprout.
By night, it is clear they are a moon—
luminous, radiant, faithful.
That’s the danger, I suppose,
of believing any frame.
Let me believe, then, in curiosity,
in wonder, in change.
Let me trust how essential it is
to stumble into the trough
of the unknown, marvel how
trough becomes wings becomes
faith becomes math. Let me trust
uncertainty is a sacred path.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommerahundredfallingveils.com
Photo by Lizzie Winn
We can make a whole life around avoiding the tender places inside us, our ‘sore spots’, and in doing so keep ourselves away from many of our gifts and deepest longings.
So how might we, instead of turning away, turn towards that in us which longs to sing, dance, speak or feel? And how might we help one another work compassionately with the sophisticated ‘protective patterns’ that keep us away from feeling our own longing, shame, grief and tenderness, so that life can come bursting through? This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
Protecting the Sore Spot
Everyone has one. It’s the part of ourselves we won’t look at, acknowledge or risk disturbing. It’s the story or trauma or situation that must be avoided at all costs.
People will choose careers, families and opportunities simply to avoid confronting the little tiny voice that is hiding inside. And marketers with low standards will brazenly manipulate us to extract money spent to protect the sore spot.
It’s almost impossible to make it go away. But if we’re brave enough to acknowledge it exists, it’s possible to help it take up far less room.
Seth Godinseths.blogPhoto by Sven Brandsma on Unsplash
*We really don’t have long. And the world keeps telling us that the answer to that is to hurry. But our hurry and fearfulness, our sense that we always have to be in control, distracted and in action, obscures a different kind of attention that is greatly needed in the world - the kind of attention we would call ‘love’.
So what becomes possible when we turn ourselves truthfully to the world with the attention of love? Not a syrupy love, but a love that’s courageous enough to receive the world and to care for it in a much deeper way than our hurried minds make possible?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
We Have Not Long to Love
We have not long to love.
Light does not stay.
The tender things are those
we fold away.
Coarse fabrics are the ones
for common wear.
In silence I have watched you
comb your hair.
Intimate the silence,
dim and warm.
I could but did not, reach
to touch your arm.
I could, but do not, break
that which is still.
(Almost the faintest whisper
would be shrill.)
So moments pass as though
they wished to stay.
We have not long to love.
A night. A day...
Tennessee WilliamsPhoto by Jonatan Pie on Unsplash
*It’s so easy to feel separate from the world - indeed we’re taught in many ways that human beings are in some profound way separate, different, and apart from nature. So what happens when we start to allow the world around us to be our teacher... when we look within us to find resonance with that which we find around us? And when we let the living and non-living world teach us new ways of relating, understanding, acting and loving?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
Nature is Imagination
[The phrase] the ‘more than human world’ refers to a way of thinking which seeks to override our human tendency to separate ourselves from the natural world… the erroneous idea that there is a neat divide between humans and non-humans, between our lives and the teeming, multitudinous living and being of the planet.
The ‘more than human world’ acknowledges that the very real human world - the realm of our senses, breath, voice, cognition and culture - is but one facet of something vastly greater. All human life and being is inextricably entangled with and suffused by everything else. This broad commonwealth includes every inhabitant of the biosphere: the animals, plants, fungi, bacteria and viruses. It includes the rivers, seas, winds, stones and clouds that support, shake and shadow us. These animate forces, these companions on the great adventure of time and becoming, have much to teach us and have already taught us a great deal. We are who we are because of them, and cannot live without them…
[These] things are beings: not passive props in the drama of our own preoccupations, but active participants in our collective becoming… Everything is really everyone, and all those beings have their own agency, points of view, and forms of life...
[And] Being itself is relational: a matter of interrelationship. All that is required for sticks and stones to leap into life… is our own presence...
There is only nature, in all its eternal flowering, creating microprocessors and datacentres and satellites just as it produced oceans, trees, magpies, il and us. Nature is imagination itself. [Let us] begin to imagine anew, with nature as our co-conspirator: our partner, our comrade and our guide.
James Bridle, from 'Ways of Being'jamesbridle.comPhoto by Hamish Duncan on Unsplash
Lizzie and Justin are partners in Thirdspace, an organisation which supports people to recognise their goodness and capacity, helping them bring their whole selves to the world. In this special episode Lizzie and Justin talk about the Thirdspace Professional Coaching Course, a certification programme in integral development coaching which is at the heart of Thirdspace's work and a project of great joy and love for both of us. Our next cohort is open for applications now, and begins in July 2023.
Over the course of our conversation you'll hear what makes this special programme unique, how it changes participants and what it makes possible, the distinction between 'developmental' and other kinds of coaching, and more about the details and structure of the programme.
You can read more about the course (the 'PCC') right here.
The world is calling out for change, and still we need to take care of one another. How can we remember to meet each person ‘as if they are a whole world’, whatever scale we’re working on?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here’s our source for this week:
I’ve noticed something about people who make a difference in the world: They hold the unshakable conviction that individuals are extremely important, that every life matters. They get excited over one smile. They are willing to feed one stomach, educate one mind, and treat one wound. They aren’t determined to revolutionize the world all at once; they’re satisfied with small changes. Over time, though, the small changes add up. Sometimes they even transform cities and nations, and yes, the world.
Beth Clark
Photo by nina lindgren on Unsplash
We can be beacons to one another, showing one another ways of being courageous, or ways of being loving, or ways of relating to others that we’d never imagined before. What might it be for us to stay open to one another in this way? To see one another as living invitations - on the scale of the everyday (washing the dishes) and on the biggest scale (what’s worth committing to).
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
The Appointment
What if, on the first sunny day,
on your way to work, a colorful bird
sweeps in front of you down a
street you’ve never heard of.
You might pause and smile,
a sweet beginning to your day.
Or you might step into that street
and realize there are many ways to work.
You might sense the bird knows some-
thing you don’t and wander after.
You might hesitate when the bird
turns down an alley. For now
there is a tension: Is what the
bird knows worth being late?
You might go another block or two,
thinking you can have it both ways.
But soon you arrive at the edge
of all your plans.
The bird circles back for you
and you must decide which
appointment you were
born to keep.
Mark Nepo
Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash
*How can we learn to bring enthusiasm and aliveness to what's happening, without turning away? How do we welcome in ourselves that which we've exiled - and that very same something on others - and do so with joy and gladness? How do we hold together our wildness and our seriousness, our wide-eyed wonder and our practicality, our delight and our shame? How do we orient to life so that everything that is alive in us has a chance to belong?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Promise to Stay Wild With Me
Promise to stay wild
with me.
We’ll seek and return
and stay and find beauty
and the extraordinary
in all the spaces we can
claim.
We’ll know how to live.
How to breathe magic
into the mundane.
We can be in love with
one thousand views
and skylines and souls
and minds at once.
Don't apologize for
your burn, your passion,
or your enthusiasm.
Enthusiasm propels the
world.
by Victoria Erickson
Photo by Matt Houghton on Unsplash
*'There are only two directions,' writes Quinn Bailey, 'towards and away'. Towards our lives or away from them. Towards life itself, or away from it. But is it always a choice? And when it is a choice, how do we go about even noticing which we are choosing? And what is it to act in harmony with life's longing for us, what with all the complex shaping forces within us and around us that can sometimes be so hard to comprehend, let alone work with?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
The Only Two Directions
This world has only two true directions:
Towards and away.
The big fear, in the end, is to awake and find that
You chose away.
That the hand
Which held you down
Was none other
Than your own.
Remember
The pursuit
Of that which is not truly us
Renders even the most
Powerful vision useless
Recognize
When the boulder in front of the cave begins to shift
When that first illuminating shaft
Pierces the dark
Do not hesitate long
Do not waste time
Anticipating the griefs
Yet to come
They cannot be helped and perhaps are necessary
On that long
And awkward walk
Towards yourself
by Quinn Bailey
Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash
*We can live our whole lives caught up in ideas of ourselves that were handed to us from others - our family, our culture, or structures that work to constrain us. But in the midst of all of that, sometimes, if we look out of the corner of our eye or listen to the quiet voice inside us, we discover that something truer to us is calling.
Stepping out onto that path - whether it's the call away to something new, or a deeper way into what we're already up to - will surely expose us to intense experiences and much uncertainty before it can become a home of its own. So how can we support one another in walking the path of vocation when it is no longer possible to ignore it?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
“A true vocation requires shedding anything that would impede or obscure the call. A true pilgrimage requires letting go of the very things most people try to hold onto. In seeking after what the soul desires we become pilgrims with no home but the path the soul would have us follow. As the old proverb says, “Before you begin the journey, you own the journey. Once you have begun, the journey owns you.” After all, what good is a dream that doesn’t test the mettle of the dreamer? What good is a path that doesn’t carry us to the edge of our capacity and then beyond that place? A true calling involves a great exposure before it can become a genuine refuge."
Michael Meade, "Fate and Destiny"
Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash
*A 'contract' is a way of making sure our interests are met in our relationship with another person, a business, a career. But contracts are a shallow framework for what really matters in our lives - friendships, long-term partnerships, marriages, parenting, or dedication to a vocation. Before long, if we've lived a life of bargains and contracts, we may find our hearts in a deep longing for something with more depth and meaning. And, in this opening, perhaps we might start to consider what it is to live in a frame of 'promises made from love' or, said another way, a life of covenants and vows to something bigger than ourselves.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
A commitment is a promise made from love
A commitment is a promise made from love. A commitment is making a promise to something without expecting a return - out of sheer lovingness. There may be a psychic return in a good marriage, or from a commitment to a cause, or from making music, but that is not why one makes it or why one does it ...
There is something that feels almost involuntary about a deep commitment... Somewhere along the way you realised, I'm a musician... I'm a scientist... I love her. I am his beloved...
In this way, a commitment is different from a contract. A person making a contract is weighing pros and cons. A person entering into a contract doesn't really change. She just finds some arrangement that will suit her current interests. A commitment, on the other hand, changes who you are... Rabbi Jonathan Sacks clarifies the difference: "A contract is a transaction. A covenant is a relationship. Or to put it slightly differently: a contract is about interests. A covenant is about identity. It is about you and me coming together to form an 'us'. That is why contracts benefit but convenants transform."
David Brooks, from 'The Second Mountain'
Photo by Emma Frances Logan on Unsplash
*When a wild god arrives at our door... do we just shut it, or could we find a way to let the wildness in? What would it take to inhabit the 'wild' end of the wild-civilised polarity in a way that honours our lives, brings us to life, includes it - so that our wildness does not only live in the shadows but can live in our conversations, our creativity, the way we dance, and the way we respond to the vast mystery we're all in the middle of (but which we often hide away from)? And could it be that by including the wildness within us and between us, rather than pretending it isn't there, we give ourselves a chance to respond with courage and openness to the call of the world around us?
This week's Turning Towards Life conversation begins with an extraordinary poem by Tom Hirons and is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Sometimes a Wild GodTom Hirons
https://tomhirons.com/poetry/sometimes-a-wild-god
Sometimes a wild god comes to the table.
He is awkward and does not know the ways
Of porcelain, of fork and mustard and silver.
His voice makes vinegar from wine.
When the wild god arrives at the door,
You will probably fear him.
He reminds you of something dark
That you might have dreamt,
Or the secret you do not wish to be shared.
He will not ring the doorbell;
Instead he scrapes with his fingers
Leaving blood on the paintwork,
Though primroses grow
In circles round his feet.
You do not want to let him in.
You are very busy.
It is late, or early, and besides…
You cannot look at him straight
Because he makes you want to cry.
You can read the whole of this wonderful poem at Tom’s website
Photo by Max Saeling on Unsplash
*What we won't own in ourselves often finds its way out into the world anyway, but in distorted or destructive form - sometimes at great consequence to ourselves and to those around us. Or we'll project it onto others - seeing anger in them, for example, when it's really ours to work with. But there are other paths, one of which is to turn towards what is 'shadow' in us and find a way to integrate it so it can belong. When we do this, the shadow has a much better chance of making the life-giving contribution it's here to make. This is, perhaps understandably, a far from easy path to walk, but one with many riches - and much to offer in the way of creating cultures in which we're able to take care of others and ourselves with dignity and compassion.
Our conversation this week, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace, draws on the work of Carl Jung as we wonder together about the courage, creativity, and openness it can take - and our willingness to allow ourselves to get messy and porous - in order to meet, with sufficient openness, that which we would otherwise turn away from.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Meeting the Shadow
Letter from C. G. Jung to P. W. Martin, founder of the International Study Centre of Applied Psychology, Oxford, England, 20 August 1937
Dear Mr. Martin,
It is a very difficult and important question, what you call the technique of dealing with the shadow. There is, as a matter of fact, no technique at all, inasmuch as technique means that there is a known and perhaps even prescribable way to deal with a certain difficulty or task. It is rather a dealing comparable to diplomacy or statesmanship.
There is, for instance, no particular technique that would help us to reconcile two political parties opposing each other. It can be a question of good will, or diplomatic cunning or civil war or anything. If one can speak of a technique at all, it consists solely in an attitude. First of all one has to accept and to take seriously into account the existence of the shadow. Secondly, it is necessary to be informed about its qualities and intentions. Thirdly, long and difficult negotiations will be unavoidable.
Nobody can know what the final outcome of such negotiations will be. One only knows that through careful collaboration the problem itself becomes changed. Very often certain apparently impossible intentions of the shadow are mere threats due to an unwillingness on the part of the ego to enter upon a serious consideration of the shadow. Such threats diminish usually when one meets them seriously. Pairs of opposites have a natural tendency to meet on the middle line, but the middle line is never a compromise thought out by the intellect and forced upon the fighting parties. It is rather a result of the conflict one has to suffer.
Such conflicts are never solved by a clever trick or by an intelligent invention but by enduring them. As a matter of fact, you have to heat up such conflicts until they rage in full swing so that the opposites slowly melt together. It is a sort of alchemistic procedure rather than a rational choice and decision. The suffering is an indispensable part of it. Every real solution is only reached by intense suffering. The suffering shows the degree in which we are intolerable to ourselves. “Agree with thine enemy” outside and inside! That’s the problem! Such agreement should violate yourself as little as your enemy. I admit it is not easy to find the right formula, yet if you find it you have made a whole of yourself and this, I think, is the meaning of human life.
Sincerely yours,
C. G. Jung
Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash
*What happens when we find out that we are not, as we had thought, separate from the world, but are instead participants in a vast context that stretches back into deep time and that holds us and makes us, even as we make it?
From this vantage point perhaps we get to see that in being living, sentient, relational beings in such an inescapably relationship-rich context we are in some ways very small, and in other ways have the enormous power to shape what we pay attention to, and what we cultivate in response to the the world. And that it is exactly this capacity to choose that can make the difference between our making cultures of kindness, care and inclusion, or those that tear us apart.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
WORKING TOGETHER
We shape our selves
to fit this world
and by the world
are shaped again.
The visible
and the invisible
working together
in common cause,
- to produce
the miraculous.
I am thinking
of the way
the intangible air
passed at speed
round
a shaped wing
easily
holds our weight.
So may we,
in this life
trust
to those elements
we have yet to see
or imagine,
and find the true
shape of our own self,
by forming it well
to the great
intangibles about us.
David Whyte
Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash
*It's so easy to feel how small we are in the face of the world, and there's so much in our contemporary culture that tells us that we are insignificant - either because we're not famous or because to be human is, itself, inconsequential.
But what if we were to live our lives in an orientation of reverence and wonder to the extraordinary power we have to shape things through the way we pay attention, and the intention we bring to our most everyday of actions? And what if we were to see not only that every act ripples out into the world in powerful and unknowable ways, but also that every act in one way or another affects how life shows up in this mysterious existence we share with one another?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
A Heartbeat Away From The Miraculous
... the everyday human gesture is always a heartbeat away from the miraculous – that ultimately we make things happen through our actions, way beyond our understanding or intention; that our seemingly small ordinary human acts have untold consequences; that what we do in this world means something; that we are not nothing; and that our most quotidian human actions by their nature burst the seams of our intent and spill meaningfully and radically through time and space, changing everything... our deeds, no matter how insignificant they may feel, are replete with meaning, and of vast consequence, and they constantly impact upon the unfolding story of the world, whether we know it or not ...
All action provokes change. Nothing is ineffectual. Nothing...
Rather than feel impotent and useless, you must come to terms with the fact that as a human being you are infinitely powerful, and take responsibility for this tremendous power. Even our smallest actions have potential for great change, positively or negatively, and the way in which we all conduct ourselves within the world means something. You are anything but impotent, you are, in fact, exquisitely and frighteningly dynamic, as are we all, and with all respect you have an obligation to stand up and take responsibility for that potential.
It is your most ordinary and urgent duty.
Nick Cave, from The Red Hand Files
Photo by Elia Pellegrini on Unsplash
*The radical act of loving others both for who they are right now, and who they could yet become... and our willingness to 'leap ahead' on behalf of one another's being as a way of bringing our love into the world. What it is to love as a choice rather than as a feeling, to act in the best interest of others, to love those our culture tells us not to love, and a conversation along the way about the coaching work we do and teach at Thirdspace.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
The Meaning of Love
Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of their personality. No-one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless they Love them.
By the Spiritual act of Love they are enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, they see that which is potential in them; which is not yet actualised but yet ought to be actualised.
Furthermore by their Love, the Loving Person enables the Beloved person to actualise these potentialities. By making them aware of what they can be and of what they should become, they make these potentialities come true.
Victor Frankl
Photo by Adam Hornyak on Unsplash
*What we will point ourselves towards this year? Will it be dignifying, for us, our lives, the lives of those around us? Will it be generous, heartfelt, courageous, compassionate, kind, creative, patient, principled, inclusive, daring, fierce, loving, joyful, grateful, truthful or some other set of life-giving qualities? Or will we just take up the projects and commitments we’ve been handed by those around us, by our social media feeds, by advertising, by the current political discourse, by habit?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Gardening Ourselves Awake Again“If you were to be able to ask a bee, or an ant, ‘for the sake of what are you going about your business?’, and if they were able to respond in a way you could understand, my guess is that you’d hear an answer that would be striking in its consistency. “It’s my role to take care of the hive”, one might say. “I search for food”, might say another. And even if the kind of bee you were able to talk to had multiple roles, they’d be very circumscribed. Queen Bees don’t do the foraging. Worker bees don’t lay the eggs. No bees build computer software or become lawyers or compose orchestral symphonies. It’s not that the world of the bee is shallow or meaningless, or that it’s without purpose. It’s just that the range of ways of being - the range of purposes - available to a bee are strongly shaped by the bee’s physiology. The being with the body of the bee, with its particular kind of nervous system and musculature, occupies a very specific and wondrous and circumscribed set of purposes in the web of living communities of which it is a part.
We humans are, of course, subject to many of the same constraints, the ones that come from our lives being supported by physical bodies with musculature, organs and nervous systems. But, at the same time, we are radically different in that our nervous systems support an extraordinary kind of openness to possibility. We can decide to create new possibilities - we can learn to make software, or be an artist, raise a family - or not, pursue a craft, or a fortune, or fame, or love, point our lives towards being a teacher, an astronaut, a plumber, a pickpocket, a politician, a cinema attendant, a tuba player, a clown. We - because of the way we invent shared artifacts, objects, processes and practices, because of the way we use language and generate interpretations which we can make explicit to one another, and because of the way we build a vast web of shared meanings, culture and tools that exist between us rather than ‘in’ us - are the kinds of beings who can point ourselves towards a huge array of possibilities, purposes and intentions. In that way we are very unlike bees, or ants, or foxes, whose bodies and interactions are ‘built in’ in a way quite unlike ours.
We are the ones who can build societies that include, or exclude. We are the ones who can take care and steward, who can extract and abuse, who can point ourselves towards the needs of those who will come after us or who take care only of our own immediate gratification. We are the ones who can do this consciously, by declaration in language, or unconsciously, by following the grooves of habit laid down by the lives we’ve lived so far or the possibilities that were handed to us by others.
And that’s another defining characteristic of us humans as we ‘press possibilities into being’ through our way of living. We can do so intentionally, declaratively, in response to the question ‘for the sake of what am I doing whatever I’m doing?’. And we can also do so habitually, routinely, unreflectively, automatically - as if we’re on an autopilot whose direction was set long ago.
There’s no doubt that it can feel easier to live on the automatic-pilot option, especially when we’re afraid, or overwhelmed, and when we’re surrounded by a culture which provides us with so many ways to distract ourselves or numb ourselves to the vibrancy of life that’s always within us and among us. But it may be one of the great human dignities, and what makes us most human, that we are the ones who can choose, if we wish. We can’t always choose our circumstances, and we can’t always choose the actions or professions or possessions we would like to have, but we can choose with an enormous amount of creativity ‘that which our life is pointed towards’, or, in other words, the ultimate ‘for-the-sake-of-which’ which guides how we do whatever it is we are able to do.
So, what we will point ourselves towards this year? Will it be dignifying, for us, our lives, the lives of those around us? Will it be generous, heartfelt, courageous, compassionate, kind, creative, patient, principled, inclusive, daring, fierce, loving, joyful, grateful, truthful or some other set of life-giving qualities? Or will we just take up the ‘for-the-sakes-of-which’ we’ve been handed by those around us, by our social media feeds, by advertising, by the current political discourse, by habit?
Justin Wise
Photo by Mike Erskine on Unsplash
*What happens in us and between us when we learn to live on the inside of wonder, amazement, and deep gratefulness for the life we have been given - all of it?
Might gratitude, indeed, be exactly what is called for in order for us to turn towards the world with all its difficulties and all its suffering, with the energy, creativity and love to do something about it all?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Thanks
Inside each honest thank you
is a giant open-air pavilion
beside a curving and generous pond
that reflects the sky and is home
to cormorants, white egrets,
turtles, and humble ducks.
There is laughter that rings
through the archways,
wonder that wanders the paths.
There are angels that circle
each thank you spoken with love,
whether we believe in angels or not.
Every sincere expression of thanks
is a choice to meet what is good in the world
and to honor it with our attention.
There are thousands and thousands
of reasons to forget we are grateful,
and yet just one genuine thank you
builds an improbable palace
out of the moment, fills it with beauty,
shares it with the world, asks nothing in return.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommerahundredfallingveils.com
Photo: Nathan Fertig | Unsplash
*What if our attempts to 'manage time' and to somehow escape the constraints (and possibilities) of time always, in the end, disappoint us because in some way we 'are time'? Saying that we are time begins to turn our experience of time inside out and upside down. It offers us the profound possibility that the inevitable passage of time is more an 'unfolding' than a 'passing', or maybe even a 'spiralling' or 'returning again and again'. We are time because we are always becoming something new and always making ourselves, even when we feel like we don't have enough of it (or perhaps when, in boredom, we feel like we have too much of it).
If we 'are' time, we open the possibility that we might cherish time, be intimate with time, get to know time like we would get to know ourselves or a lover. Because time, in this way of taking, becomes our most intimate companion, as intimate as the vein on our neck or the skin on the back of our hands.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
We Are Time
Because you can't dictate, or even accurately predict, so much of what happens with the finite portion of time you do get [to live], you'll never feel that you're securely in charge of events, immune from suffering, primed and ready for whatever comes down the pike.
The deeper truth behind all this is to be found in Heidegger's mysterious suggestion that we don't get or have time at all - that instead we are time. We'll never get the upper hand in our relationship with the moments of our lives because we are nothing but those moments. To 'master' them would first entail getting outside of them, splitting off from them. But where would we go? 'Time is the substance I am made of,' writes Jean Luis Borges. 'Time is a river that sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire'.
There's no scrambling up to the safety of the riverbank when the river is you. And so insecurity and vulnerability are the default state - because in each of the moments that you inescapably are, anything could happen, from an urgent email that scuppers your plans for the morning to a bereavement that shakes your world to its foundations.
Oliver Burkeman, from 'Four Thousand Weeks'
Photo by Jonas Gerg on Unsplash
*Underneath our inner chatter, fear, and attempts to have life go our way, there's a profound and welcoming silence - a silence that is a kind of recognition, a kind of acceptance, and a kind of refuge for the parts of us that clamour and fear... and which can be a refuge also for one another. We could even say that the silence is a kind of ground for who we each are, and in that way we long for it just as we long to feel at home in what can be a disorienting and frightening world.
So what is it, we ask in this conversation, to cultivate that silence as a space for our being together, for our listening and speaking, and for opening to new possibilities? And what is it to cultivate that silence as a way of creating safety and stability in ourselves, so we can be a welcome for others?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
*Perhaps the most important thing we bring to another person is the silence in us, not the sort of silence that is filled with unspoken criticism or hard withdrawal. The sort of silence that is a place of refuge, of rest, of acceptance of someone as they are.
We are all hungry for this other silence. It is hard to find. In its presence we can remember something beyond the moment, a strength on which to build a life.
Silence is a place of great power and healing.*
Rachel Naomi Remen
Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash
*The story that 'my life is about me' that has become central to our culture ignores that we are, without our say-so, always part of a life and a universe that is much bigger than us. While it's understandable that we try to control and dominate life, before long we find out that life is having its way with us too. It may well be truer to say that 'I am about life'. So what would happen if instead of treating life as a problem to be overcome, we started to live as the life we're part of has a deep intelligence of its own - an intelligence that is not oriented particularly towards my life or your life, but towards life's own flourishing.
When we look this way, we see that it is indeed our responsibility to take care of one another. But we also see that we are participants in life and we have choices about whether to try to maintain the fiction that we're in charge, whether to collapse and try to flee from life, or whether to take up our places fully in a partnership with life. Which of these we choose will make a profound difference to what we get to bring forward into the world, and who we get to be for each other.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
What Life Does
Life disappoints you so you stop living from illusions and see reality.
Life destroys everything superfluous, until only the important remains.
Life does not leave you in peace, so you stop blaming yourself and accept everything as it is.
Life takes what you have, until you stop complaining and learn gratitude.
Life sends you conflicting people to heal you, so that you stop projecting and start reflecting who you are inside.
Life lets you fall again and again, until you decide to learn the lesson.
Life takes you off the path and presents you with crossroads, until you stop wanting to control everything and learn to flow like a river.
Life puts your enemies on the road, until you stop “reacting”.
Life frightens you and startles you as many times as necessary, until you lose your fear and regain your faith.
Life takes away your true love, it does not grant or allow it, until you stop trying to buy it with trinkets.
Life distances you from people you love, until you understand that we are not this body, but the soul that powers it.
Life laughs at you many, many times, until you stop taking everything so seriously and can laugh at yourself.
Life breaks you into as many parts as necessary for the light to penetrate you.
Life confronts you with rebels, until you stop trying to control.
Life repeats the same message, even with shouting and slaps, until you finally hear it.
Life sends you thunder and storms, so you wake up.
Life humbles and defeats you again and again until you decide to let your small-self die.
Life denies you goods and greatness until you stop wanting goods and greatness and you begin to serve.
Life cuts your wings and prunes your roots, until you need no wings or roots, but disappear into the forms and your being flies.
Life denies you miracles, until you understand that everything is a miracle. Life shortens your time, so you hurry to learn to live.
Life ridicules you until you become nothing, until you become nobody, and so you become everything.
Life does not give you what you want, but what you need to evolve. Life hurts you and torments you, until you let go of your whims and tantrums and appreciate just breathing.
Life hides treasures from you until you go out to look for them.
Life denies you God, until you see God in everyone and everything.
Life shortens you, prunes you, takes you away, breaks you, disappoints you, cracks you, … until only love abides in you.
Bert HellingerPhoto by Paolo Bendandi on Unsplash
*Being able to live with multiplicity - the ability to accept multiple realities at once - is critical to healthy relationships, and it's critical to our own flourishing too. Because once we see that there are many parts within us - that there we are each a kind of unfolding process of inner community - we can come to see that when two or more people are together there are already many parallel interpretations, narratives, and sets of intentions wanting to be known.
When we want to build community, trust, safety and connection between us - all conditions we long for and deeply need - the primary work is to cultivate our understanding of these many perspectives rather than trying to control things by having our way or making others (including the others inside us) abandon themselves in order to fit in.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Understanding, Not Convincing
*This idea of multiplicity - the ability to accept multiple realities at once - is critical to healthy relationships. When there are two people in a room, there are also two sets of feelings, thoughts, needs and perspectives. Our ability to hold on to multiple truths at once - ours and someone else’s - allows two people in a relationship to feel seen and feel real, even if they are in conflict. Multiplicity is what allows two people to get along and feel close - they each know that their experience will be accepted as true and explored as important, even if those experiences are different. Building strong connections relies on the assumption that no one is right in the absolute, because understanding, not convincing is what makes people feel secure in a relationship.
What do I mean by understanding and not convincing ? Well, when we seek to understand, we attempt to see and learn more about another person’s perspective, feelings and experience. We essentially say to the person ”I am having one experience and you are having a different experience. I want to get to know what’s happening for you”. It doesn’t mean you agree or comply (these would imply a “one thing is true” perspective), or that we are wrong or our truth doesn’t hold: it means we are willing to put our own experience aside for a moment to get to know someone else’s. When we approach someone with the goal of understanding, we accept that there isn’t one correct interpretation of a set of facts, but rather multiple experiences and viewpoints. Understanding has one goal: connection. And because connecting to our kids is how they learn to regulate their emotions and feel good inside, understanding will come up over and over again as a goal of communication.
Dr Becky Kennedy
From Good Inside - A practical guide to becoming the parent you want to be.*Photo by S&B Vonlanthen on Unsplash
*Why it matters to build a life of awareness, wondering, curiosity, truthfulness and facing things as they are. Finding a way to notice when we are letting life itself flow through us, and when we are standing in its way. Paying attention to all inside us that we have exiled or abandoned and doing the courageous, loving, painstaking work of welcoming it back and undoing our inner separation. Attending to all the outer separations - between us and others, between us and our gifts and contribution, between us and life itself - so that we can humbly participate and contribute. Allowing our lives to join the shimmering waves of an endless sea.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
The Shimmering Waves of an Endless Sea
Death loses some of its sting if our more modest sense of self displaces the arrogant illusion of being essential: I do, indeed, need the world and living creatures, but they do not need me - at least not for ever.
I need creation as the garden in which to exult, grow, play, work, struggle, learn and sing. As part of creation, there is a sense in which creation needs me, but only to the degree that I am a willing participant of that creation, an expression of its vitality, and a partner in its process.
Once I separate myself from the world, once I sever my embeddedness in creation, then I set myself up against it and creation no longer needs me. I make myself an alien, requiring the reinforcement of concrete and the glitter of acquisitions to hold my delusions in place.
An embodied, emergent vision of the world as a process ... allows us to transcend our crippling fear of death and our deadly alienation from the rest of creation. We are a part of the world, not apart from it, and our lives join the shimmering waves of an endless sea. We flow from it and return to it ... and we leave a mark precisely to the degree that the sea continues, unimpeded, on its way.
Bradley Shavit Artson, from 'Renewing the Process of Creation'
Photo by Cristian Palmer on Unsplash
*What does it take to be faithful enough in the unfolding of our lives that we let go of our tight grip, our hurry, our trying to control... and fall into letting ourselves be the kind of person we long to be? How might we learn that life will always surprise us, and instead of trying to remove the surprise let ourselves be brought to life by it? And what might it be to lessen the grip of 'hurry' - one of the dominant stories of our times - and discover the depth and meaningfulness of what and who is already around us?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
No Agenda
Don’t do more, hide less.
Transparency is forthright
but goes with the flow.
Embrace change, and allow it
to be different than you thought:
surprise, you will not be
painting outside this afternoon.
Stop outlining. Progress pirouettes,
and pivots on a dime, supple and agile,
not just ploddingly focused forward.
Let the rain pour down on your plans.
Relax into the poetry
of dry earth quenching its thirst.
Be unabashed, unhurried,
able to simply listen with no agenda.
Be meanderingly happy;
content if the story takes a detour,
or diverges the long way around.
Only good can go on, so there’s
no reason to be impatient with passivity,
just savor each morsel of life as it comes.
Know, feel, and embrace the expanse,
and serve better by erasing
obstruction and artifice.
Shine your unselfed better self
with equanimity
and bolster others
with your derived
strength and clarity.
Remove every hurt or deception
with your minuscule
grain of mustard seed faith
moving mountainous impediments
by sending them slinking off,
tail between their legs, ashamed.
All while sitting in this rocking chair,
watching the water gushing in rivulets,
drumming out a palliative cadence,
soothing and serenading every heart here
with rounds in three part harmony,
in a repeating refrain
full of friendship,
restitution, and joy.
by Polly Castorpollycastor.com
Photo credit: Unsplash / martha dominguez de gouveia
*A friend once pointed out to us that conversations sometimes - often even - 'die in the middle' without anyone paying any attention to it happening. And sometimes conversations are robbed of their aliveness by our very wish that they go well, and our trying to fall back on a method in order to bring that about. So that has us wondering together who we each have to be in order that our conversations are genuine, intense, urgent, truthful and alive - in whatever context... It's the central question that animates the existence of this 'Turning Towards Life' project and practice.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Are We There Or Not?
One of the main symptoms of a bad conversation is this: one of the participants is on autopilot.
Imagine you're on a date. Feeling insecure, you've brought along a set of index cards. You know: "7pm Inquire re childhood memories", "7.15pm Praise her outfit"... We really want the date to go well. But every time we glance down at our index cards, this is felt by our date as disengagement. And she's right: we're leaving her out of the process. Our anxiety has made us crave a method, when what the situation demanded was some moment-to-moment responsiveness to what was actually happening (to the true energy of the conversation) ... We prepare those cards and bring them along and keep awkwardly consulting them when we should be looking deeply into our date's eyes, because we don't believe that, devoid of a plan, we have enough to offer ...
Some conversations feel evasive, ill-considered, agenda-laced, selfish; others feel intense, urgent, generous, truthful. What's the difference? Well, I'd say it's presence. Are we there or not? Is the person across the table there (to us), or not?
George SaundersAfterword #3 on 'The Darling', from 'A Swim In the Pond In the Rain', p161-162
Photo by Sunguk Kim on Unsplash
*Somewhere along the way we easily lose contact with the mystery and wonder of a life we're thrown into, a life that comes to us infused with presence and possibility. Perhaps because there are no directions, and perhaps because we're thrown into life without our say-so, and perhaps because there are always pressing practical issues of survival and care to attend to, it's easy for us to find ourselves far from contact with the simple mystery that is around us and between us. So how might we hold both wonder and practicality together with one another? And what inner freedoms might we draw upon to support us in this?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Ordinary
Her sturdy branches
were the towering mountains
to dance on.
Her deep roots,
the rolling rivers to frolic in.
Every inch of her was infused with the wonder of the world.
Ten years later,
I am ten years older.
I walk past the ordinary tree on an ordinary day.
Her trunk was a place of comfort,
just the place to eat my
oatcakes.
In autumn her fallen leaves were
warm blankets
for the fairies.
In spring her golden buds
were the perfect shape
of a fish for my fire.
Ten years later,
I am ten years older.
I walk past the ordinary tree on an ordinary day.
I would look up through
her web of leaves
at the cold sky.
I would sit resting against her trunk,
feeling her rootedness
Into the underground world.
Ten years later,
I am ten years older.
I walk past the ordinary tree on an ordinary day.
On one of my last afternoons with her,
she slipped something into my pocket.
When I asked what it was
she answered
“You will know one day, when
you are aware and awake”
I didn't understand
those words so
I sat,
I forgot.
I trusted.
Ten years later,
I am ten years older.
I walk past the ordinary tree on an ordinary day.
As I grew older
And started to wake,
I forgot what it felt like to feel so content
alone with her.
I forgot what it felt like to dance on her mountains,
or frolic in her rivers.
My focus started to shift,
my life felt
full and heavy,
my mind was only ever thinking
ahead of what was.
My body felt full of weighted dread.
Ten years later,
I am ten years older.
I walk past the ordinary tree on an ordinary day.
One day, long after I had stopped
my visits to the tree,
I reached into my pocket
to find what she had given me
all that time ago.
Now some may only have seen an
oatcake,
but I saw so much more,
I saw the dreams I use to have,
I saw the blissful joy.
Ten years later,
I am ten years older.
I walk past the ordinary tree on an ordinary day.
I saw her mountains,
smelt the rivers,
I saw the fairies passing by.
An explosion of life filled my heart
as tears filled my eyes.
As I looked at the oatcake
resting softly in my hand,
I wondered to myself
how I ever lost this joy.
Ten years later,
I am ten years older.
I walk past the ordinary tree on an ordinary day.
I wanted to keep it forever and ever
and never let it go,
maybe if I gripped it tight enough,
it would surrender and stay with me.
In that moment I heard her voice,
faint,
Carrying the warmth
of a soft summer breeze,
“it is always in your reach,
my love,
it will always be there waiting,
but letting go is part of life,
let this be your
awakening”
Ten years later,
I am ten years older.
I walk past the ordinary tree on an ordinary day.
Bo Holden
October 2022
Photo by Gilly Stewart on Unsplash
There are so many ways we've learned to 'perform' - in work, as parents and friends and loved ones. And for any of us who do anything to help others - coaching or therapy or other helping roles - it's tempting to try to perform as the 'skilful helper' too. But what is most often called for is not any kind of 'performing' but a way of being present with one another, with all of our creativity, wisdom, knowledge and skilfulness right to hand and not 'in-between'. This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we make this possible for one another, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Let Nothing Be In Between
The essence of working with another person is to be present as a living being. And that is lucky, because if we had to be smart, or good, or mature, or wise, then we would probably be in trouble. But, what matters is not that. What matters is to be a human being with another human being, to recognize the other person as another being in there... and that you have to wait for that “person,” that being in there, to be in contact with you. That seems to me to be the most important thing.
So, when I sit down with someone, I take my troubles and feelings and I put them over here, on one side, close, because I might need them. I might want to go in there and see something. And I take all the things that I have learnt... and I put them over here, on my other side, close. Then I am just here, with my eyes, and there is this other being. If they happen to look into my eyes, they will see that I am just a shaky being. I have to tolerate that. They may not look. But if they do, they will see that. They will see the slightly shy, slightly withdrawing, insecure existence that I am, I have learnt that that is O.K. I do not need to be emotionally secure and firmly present. I just need to be present. There are no qualifications for the kind of person I must be. What is wanted for the big therapy process, the big development process is a person who will be present. And so I have gradually become convinced that even I can be that...
So this is my way of saying that: Do not let focusing, or reflecting, or anything else get in between. Do not use it as an in-between... There is a sense that we are armed, you see... We have all this stuff and so it is easy for us to sit there with stuff in between. Do not let it be in between; put it out of the way. You can have at least as much courage as the client has. If not, I would be ashamed of myself, with all the stuff that I have, if I still cannot really look when this person can. So I want to be there in that same way.
Eugene T Gendlin
Photo by Alp Duran on Unsplash
Can we embrace both the acceptable and unacceptable parts of ourselves? Can we act and let go of trying to control the result? Can we hold onto both sides of each of life's great polarities, and in doing so grow in wisdom and in the possibility to contribute? And what might it take, if we did want to become like this, to faithfully practice our way in to cultivating our own goodness and capacity and supporting others around us to do the same? This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Chapter 10 – According to Our Nature
Tao Te Ching, interpretation by William Martin
Can we embrace both the acceptable
and unacceptable parts of ourselves?
Can we breathe as easily as innocent babies?
Can we see the world clearly
and without judgment?
Can we act with loving-kindness
yet remain unknown and unsung?
Can we watch all things come and go,
yet remain undisturbed?
Can we accept our countless thoughts and opinions,
yet not take them seriously?
If we can do this we are acting
according to the virtue that is naturally ours;
nourishing all things, but possessing nothing;
enjoying all things, but clinging to nothing;
working diligently,
but claiming credit for nothing;
growing in wisdom, but controlling nothing.
from freedomsimplicityandjoy.wordpress.com
Photo by Omar Lopez on Unsplash
We're beginning our 6th year of Turning Towards Life today, and in recognition of this we're having a conversation about 'Soulful Repetition' - those practices we can take up in life that return us to ourselves, and to one another, and to meaning and belonging. How do we take up new practices that can help us remember who we are, where we belong, and what is sacred... and which respond to the depth and love in us in a wider world that keeps telling us that 'self-improvement' and individualism are the most valued prizes? Hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Soul Repetition
Repetition is a form of sustained attention, returning us repeatedly to a place, a person, or a practice, that engenders depth and familiarity. It is in the very essence of repetition that we come to know something more intimately, whether a partner, a friend, or our own interior worlds. Any movement toward depth requires repeated contact. Gary Snyder, Zen poet and nature philosopher, wrote that “Getting intimate with nature and our own wild natures is a matter of going face to face many times.” … Repetition is a form of courtship.
… Under the fevered pitch of individualism and the heroic ego, the original practices that wove the individual and the community together, have been largely forgotten. Consequently, the ritual of life is reduced into the routine of existence. That is repetition without soul. That is the drone of addiction. That is repetition that deadens.
… We live in an ongoing tension between forgetting and remembering. Nearly all enduring cultures developed practices designed to help us remember three central things: who we are, where we belong, and what is sacred. Prayer, meditation, and ritual, are, at root, designed to help us stay awake. These practices serve to sustain the ground of remembrance, which is, in turn, a form of permanence.
… Soulful repetition is not boring or bland. It is musical, rhythmic, and enduring. We require touchstones of return to stay connected to what matters to soul and culture. Ultimately, repetition is a gesture of affection, of fidelity. We return again and again to tend what it is we love and by so doing, we keep it alive and vital.
Francis Weller
https://www.francisweller.net/writings.html
Photo by Thor Alvis on Unsplash
At the end of our first 5 years of 'Turning Towards Life' we ask - how do we do the difficult work of reconciliation, of making peace with ourselves and with those with whom we share this one life, without abandoning ourselves or one another? How do we make peace together in a world where there are rarely easy answers, and where the right path is often shrouded in complexity? And can we commit ourselves to peace-making in the most ordinary ways as an endless path to walk, rather than as a 'thing' to be obtained? Hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Making Peace
Peace making doesn’t mean passivity
It is the act of interrupting injustice without mirroring injustice
The act of disarming evil without destroying the evildoer
The act of finding a third way that is neither fight nor flight
but the careful, arduous pursuit of reconciliation and justice.
It is about a revolution of love that is big enough to set both the oppressed and the oppressors free.
From:
‘Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals’ - a book by Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove & Enuma Okoro.
Photo Credit: Lizzie Winn (photo from a wall near my house!)
How do we hold together two truths - that there is so much to be deeply concerned about, and that we have within us many gifts with which we can respond - without collapsing into pessimism or naive optimism?
And how do we find something in our lives and in one another that puts us in contact with those very gifts so that - even if the outcome is far from certain, or even far from what we want - we can still respond?
Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Hope is not Prediction
“F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function,” but the summations of the state of the world often assume that it must be all one way or the other, and since it is not all good it must all suck royally. Fitzgerald’s forgotten next sentence is, “One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.”
You wonder what made Vaclav Havel hopeful in 1985 or 1986, when Czechoslovia was still a Soviet satellite and he was still a jailbird playwright. He said then, “The kind of hope I often think about (especially in situations that are particularly hopeless, such as prison) I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don’t; it is a dimension of the soul; it’s not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prediction. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.”
The despair that keeps coming up is a temporary inability to work for these things that are good, a loss of belief that the task is meaningful. That loss comes from many quarters, from exhaustion, from a sadness born out of empathy, but also from expectations and analyses that are themselves problems.”
Rebecca Solnit, from ‘Hope In The Dark’
Photo by martin bennie on Unsplash
*Being together in a way that makes ourselves available to one another is what we're made for, and is among the most simple and most difficult things we'll ever do. So how do we create the safety and openness in our own way of being that allows us to be deeply connected to and available for others? What does it take to create the kind of relationship with our own bodies that can be a ground of safety for all the parts of us that get afraid and want to run? How can our 'yes' to staying in contact be a real yes, and our 'no' be a real no too, so that when we're with one another we're really with one another? And how can we make encountering one another's depth as ordinary as sitting together with a cup of tea?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
The Body in Relationship
You sit before me,
Body open,
Your eyes meet mine.
My deepest wish,
To make contact,
To come to intimately know you.
And as I reach for you,
I see that I must reach for me first,
That without me, I can’t truly be with you.
First, it has to start here,
Contact with this body I have,
Teeming with senses, feeling and wisdom.
And as I make contact here,
Suddenly I’m confident, settled
Ready to be with you.
And stay here,
Because my body is home,
And I can welcome you.
And when we do this for each other,
We dance between the houses,
Living in community.
Always welcome,
At each others’ table,
We share tea and life.
And all the depths,
And shallows,
Are made normal just like our tea.
Lizzie Winn
Photo by Lizzie Winn
*Could we live inside definitions of 'success' and 'intelligence' that are wildly more life-giving, generous, and generative than the ones we've been handed? And what if we found a way to cultivate ourselves so that we become the ones who stand - in our lives, in our ways of observing life, and in our practices - who choose to cultivate virtues that have us, and the people around us, step into the fullness of our lives?
In this conversation, in the week of the death of Queen Elizabeth II, we find ourselves reflecting on what it is to step into our own self-sovereignty and to bring ourselves as gifts to one another.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Beauty, Obligation, Wildness
The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as we have defined it.
What can educators do to foster real intelligence? We can attempt to teach the things that one might imagine the earth would teach us: silence, humility, holiness, connectedness, courtesy, beauty, celebration, giving, restoration, obligation, and wildness.
David W. Orr
Photo by James Wainscoat on Unsplash
*It can be hard to return to ourselves and one another when we find ourselves caught 'in a thing' that's not life-giving - a tightness, stubbornness, grumpiness, an anger or rage or sourness or grudge, or indeed any way we're holding on to a feeling or idea long beyond its usefulness or appropriateness. The return is often hard because returning means facing ourselves and all the parts of us that might shame us as we come back. And it's often hard because returning can mean facing others with their expectations and longings, and perhaps their judgement too.
So how can we learn to be the ones that graciously and generously welcome ourselves and welcome others in those moments when we become unstuck from something that's been gripping us?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Soft again
I am determined not to let these bold, feathery trees,
With their Fancy Display of greens
And wind blowing gently through their branches,
Pull me back from all the swirling thoughts in my head.
And this sunshine will not thaw the brittleness of my heart in this moment.
I am determined not to let its warmth slip through my defences and into my bones.
I’m in a grumpy, ungenerous, grey-coloured mood and I’m going to stay that way.
The relentless push and liveliness of the river flowing past me will not gently pick up my worries and carry them downstream.
I am determined, you see, to hold onto my position. To maintain this stuckness. To keep myself rooted right here.
The clouds drifting above my head, combined with the blue of the wide sky will not, I repeat, will not take any of my breath away.
I am going to sit here, in this nearly-comfortable camping chair - and hold on tight. I am not going to be moved or softened.
I have every right to work with all my might against these bright forces that are trying to melt me, to reach me, to remind me and bring me home.
Like the rock that stands still at the bend of the river, I will not be moved.
But - oh dear - now my children are jumping off a rock into the silky water of the river. They are full of courage and delight and they are letting out whoops of Yes towards the water below them as they push themselves forwards through the air.
And my plan begins to crumble.
With every whoop, my determination is less rock like and more like the small branch that is being swept away downstream and around the next corner, beyond which I cannot see.
They’ve won again, all of them conspiring against me. The trees, the water, the clouds, the sun, and now the babies I gave birth to, who sit at the centre of my life as brilliant and undimmable lights.
I breathe in the river air deeply (is there any air as fresh I wonder?) and start all over again for the millionth time and turn my face towards the sun.
I am made soft again.
Hollie Holden
www.instagram.com/hollieholdenlove
Photo by Davide Cantelli on Unsplash
*In a culture that values 'keeping it all together', it is no small thing to trust ourselves - to welcome the parts of ourselves that are scared, or confused, or unravelling. When we remember that there's always something of ourselves that we can trust, perhaps we can turn towards those parts of us - that we might otherwise try to push away - and hold them in just the ways in which they long to be held. And when we do this for each other, we strengthen the bonds of trust in one another that support us as we voice our differences, our lostness, our gifts and and our grief.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Above the Paradox Valley
/after Ocean Vuong, “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong”/
You do not need to know what comes next.
There is always another storm, and you
cannot hang the tent out to dry before
it has gotten wet. You cannot shovel snow
that has yet to fall.
Put down the shovel. Breathe
into the dark spaces of your back,
feel how they open like cave doors
to let in the light.
Let your face soften. Let the creases
fall out of your brow. The mind,
no matter how clear, will never become
a crystal ball.
The wisest part of your body
knows to run when it hears
the first crashes of rock fall.
It does not pause then to consider
metamorphic or igneous,
nor does it hesitate to wonder
what might have pushed them down.
It is no small thing to trust yourself.
It’s okay to cry. It is right
that love should shake your body,
that you should find yourself trembling
in the rubble and dust
after all your certainties come down.
Your breath has not left you.
Here is the morning rain. It opens
the scent of the leaves, of the air.
All around you the world is changing.
What are you waiting for?
Here is the cup of mint tea
growing stronger in itself.
Here on this cliff of uncertainty
there is a stillness in you
so spirited, so alive
the wisest part of your body
is dancing.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
https://ahundredfallingveils.com/
Photo by Davide Cantelli on Unsplash
*Whenever we speak, there's a something from which speech arises which is not itself yet, quite, words. And when we make art, there's a something from which the art arises that is itself not yet, quite, art. And it's in this vast unspoken background of before and between, of body and world and story and imagination, that so much of who we are and who we can be is found. Can we learn to see and hear each other as the unfolding, budding, opening works of art and worlds of possibility that we are? And might not this be a greatly powerful act of dignity and care, countering the narratives of fear and separation of our times?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
We’re always rationally explaining and articulating things. But we’re at our most intelligent in the moment just before we start to explain or articulate. Great art occurs - or doesn’t - in that instant. What we turn to art for is precisely this moment, when we ‘know’ something (we feel it) but can’t articulate it because it’s too complex and multiple. But the ‘knowing’ at such moments, though happening without language, is real. I’d say this is what art is for: to remind us that this other sort of knowing is not only real, it’s superior to our usual (conceptual, reductive) way.***George Saunders
From A Swim in the Pond in the Rain***
Photo by Inge Maria on Unsplash
*We've often internalised a particularly destructive story about what it is to be human - that we're inherently selfish, grasping, and inevitably violent to one another. And that because of that we ought to live very warily indeed. But, as the writer David Graeber reminds us, the 'common-sense' story of what it is to be human is just one story out of many. And we are filled with many different kinds of qualities and capacities, some of which we choose to prioritise over others - and some of which we've practiced more than others. But which qualities we bring to the world is a choice - the unique gift of being sentient, choosing humans. And the real question is which qualities we choose take as the foundation of our humanity, and therefore, make the basis of our civilisation.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
“Freuchen tells how one day, after coming home hungry from an unsuccessful walrus-hunting expedition, he found one of the successful hunters dropping off several hundred pounds of meat. He thanked him profusely. The man objected indignantly:
‘Up in our country we are human!’ said the hunter. ‘And since we are human we help each other. We don’t like to hear anybody say thanks for that. What I get today you may get tomorrow. Up here we say that by gifts one makes slaves and by whips one makes dogs.’
… The refusal to calculate credits and debits can be found throughout the anthropological literature on egalitarian hunting societies. Rather than seeing himself as human because he could make economic calculations, the hunter insisted that being truly human meant refusing to make such calculations, refusing to measure or remember who had given what to whom, for the precise reason that doing so would inevitably create a world where we began “comparing power with power, measuring, calculating” and reducing each other to slaves or dogs through debt. It’s not that he, like untold millions of similar egalitarian spirits throughout history, was unaware that humans have a propensity to calculate. If he wasn’t aware of it, he could not have said what he did. Of course we have a propensity to calculate. We have all sorts of propensities. In any real-life situation, we have propensities that drive us in several different contradictory directions simultaneously. No one is more real than any other. The real question is which we take as the foundation of our humanity, and therefore, make the basis of our civilization.”
**― David Graeber,
Debt: The First 5,000 Years**
Photo by Darrell Chaddock on Unsplash
*In the choices about what to pay attention to, the wider culture many of us inhabit tells us - be afraid, be in a hurry, get things done, be productive, panic about the future, distrust your own senses, distract yourself. So much of the media that comes our way reinforces all of those messages. But what if we turned towards the beauty and wonder that is, alongside all there is for us to worry about, always here? And what if our attention to the beauty, wonder, mystery and relationship could spur us to take care - of ourselves, of those around us, of the wider world - with eyes and hearts of a deeper love and courage than any fear and any panic could ever generate in us?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
IN THE MEANTIME
Tom Hirons
Meanwhile, flowers still bloom.
The moon rises, and the sun.
Babies smile and somewhere,
Against all the odds,
Two people are falling in love.
Strangers share cigarettes and jokes.
Light plays on the surface of water.
Grace occurs on unlikely streets
And we hold each other fast against entropy
And the struggles of our time.
Life leans towards living
And, while death claims all things at the end,
There were such precious times between,
In which everything was radiant
And we loved, again, this world.
IG: @bearspeakstothestars
Photo by Daniel Thomas on Unsplash
*In the choices about what to pay attention to, the wider culture many of us inhabit tells us - be afraid, be in a hurry, get things done, be productive, panic about the future, distrust your own senses, distract yourself. So much of the media that comes our way reinforces all of those messages. But what if we turned towards the beauty and wonder that is, alongside all there is for us to worry about, always here? And what if our attention to the beauty, wonder, mystery and relationship could spur us to take care - of ourselves, of those around us, of the wider world - with eyes and hearts of a deeper love and courage than any fear and any panic could ever generate in us?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
IN THE MEANTIME
Tom Hirons
Meanwhile, flowers still bloom.
The moon rises, and the sun.
Babies smile and somewhere,
Against all the odds,
Two people are falling in love.
Strangers share cigarettes and jokes.
Light plays on the surface of water.
Grace occurs on unlikely streets
And we hold each other fast against entropy
And the struggles of our time.
Life leans towards living
And, while death claims all things at the end,
There were such precious times between,
In which everything was radiant
And we loved, again, this world.
IG: @bearspeakstothestars
Photo by Daniel Thomas on Unsplash
*So many of us have been taught to flatten our imaginations, and in the space that is left we so easily feel as if we somehow have to magnify our experiences of life, always striving for something more intense or more meaningful or more vibrant. And, while there are times for that, we wonder what would happen if we allowed ourselves to kindle our radical amazement (itself an imaginative act) with what or who is right here with us in this moment. What new wonder could we then find gazing into the eyes of a friend, lover or child; or mopping the kitchen floor; or allowing ourselves to be playful in the midst of the ordinary every-day?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
MAGNIFIES AN OBJECT TEN TIMES
is what it clearly said
on the handle of the magnifying glass
my father received on his fifth birthday.
He took it as a warning; the birthday gift
would only work its magic ten times
and no more, becoming, after that,
just a small round window with no miracle,
toy giant’s monocle, a circle of simple glass.
And so he went about his days with curious thrift,
weighing how much he needed to see any part
of the world up close, observing as best he could
with his own eyes first, thinking, Do I need to see
that dead bug big? That dandelion, that blade
of grass, that wriggling moth in the spider’s web?
I can imagine most of nature’s gifts and crimes.
Best not to waste one of my ten precious times.
He lost count of how many miracles he’d left,
and for weeks after half-expected the magic of the glass
to simply stop. And I have asked him to tell me
of the thrilling moment he realized, or was told,
“ten times” in this context simply meant tenfold
and not ten instances, but he cannot remember.
Likewise the joy that must have come with such
a limitless epiphany. But what he does recall
and says most he misses still is the way the magic
made him see the world the rest of the time,
not through the glass, but all the time
he thought that magic would not last.
Taylor Mali
Photo by Stephen Kraakmo on Unsplash
*There are moments when we suddenly find out that we're not separate from one another or from life... and in those moments we discover that what we're here to do is to love. Isn't that a possibility we all long for, and sometimes find so difficult to entertain - the opportunity to give love, to receive love, to have love flow through us into our work, into our relationships, into our friendships, into the street?
Perhaps if we quieten down our striving and inner chatter enough, we'll find deep rivers of love waiting to be expressed. Or maybe we could put ourselves in situations where - because of what we're practicing, or opening to, or how we're softening - we might be reached by the grace of the moment and discover all of this from what and who is around us.
Whichever way, it's our contention that to love and to trust in the capacity to love this heartbreaking and beautiful world, with all its tragedies and all its possibilities, is a necessary act of great faithfulness in life.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Grace
It was Grace Stunned by the last light of the sun We were swimming in a green sea, as deep as a drum There are things I must record, must praise There are things I have to say about the fullness and the blaze Of this beautiful life The beloved watched the world on its knees with an infinite degree of separation That was something to see And my friend told me death is like taking off a tight shoe And when I stopped looking for me I was able to find you Right there where everything is transcendent I can feel myself opening up, getting closer No hope is enough I've stopped hoping, I'm learning to trust I came to under that red moon I was completely crushed Please use me Please move through me Please unscrew me Please loosen me up Make music with me Make everything stop Make noise and make silence with me Make love Let me be love Let me be loving Let me give love, receive love and be nothing but love In love and for love and with love In love and for love and with love Surrender, I do surrender Move through me and feel me get out of the way And tune into something more deep and reflective than what's to be achieved Or perceived Or affected What's my problem? I'm always drawn back to that wrestling match Ten thoughts in the ring of my mind playing catch I can't live for the noise in my head I just want to dig a big ditch in the soil of my breath and bury my brain there But love said "If you bring forth what is within you What you bring forth will save you But if you do not bring forth what is within you What you do not bring forth will destroy you” It was Grace Stunned by the last light of the sun Swimming in a green sea as deep as a drum There are things I must record, must praise There are things I have to say about the fullness and the blaze Of this beautiful life, of this beautiful life
Kae Tempestwww.kaetempest.co.uk
Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash
*We can change - that much is certain. But change doesn't come by magic, and rarely does it come alone from a moment of inspiration, but instead by the steady, faithful application of practice - the walking of a path, step by step. The magic is that even practices that turn us by just a degree or two can, when held with dedication and consistency, make a huge difference in our lives and in the lives of those around us. And the second magic is that changing ourselves is best done with others - in a spirit of 'it's never too late, and we are not alone'.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives,* is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Holding the Angle
Things change slowly, over time, through incremental shifts. Human beings are complex, living systems where a small change can have far-reaching effects. I liken the process (…) to turning a cargo ship at sea. A large vessel with that much momentum can’t make sharp turns. However, a one- or two-degree course correction of the rudder, if held steady, will take that ship in a very different direction over time.
This process of change often occurs in two stages. First, we gain an insight or new understanding into some aspect of ourselves or our world. This is the initial spark that sets the cycle of transformation going. Insight turns the angle of the ship’s rudder.
Insight can feel great. Clarity dawns, and a weight has been lifted. Seeing things in a new light often comes with a rush of inspiration, a sense of freedom or spaciousness. (…)
Many practitioners make the mistake of stopping there. Insight is the beginning of transformation, not the end. It opens us to a new possibility, but as quickly as we change the angle of the rudder, the currents of our life come rushing in. The tyranny of habit exerts its force, pushing us back toward our old ways.
This is the second stage: holding the angle. It’s what turns a moment of insight into lasting change. We work in a patient and steady way, applying effort to integrate this insight. Each day, we recollect the new perspective and practice this new way of being. Inevitably, we lose our grip and the rudder slips back into its old position. We course correct, readjust, and work to hold the angle.
The second stage of change isn’t glamorous or exciting, yet it’s where real transformation takes place. It takes dedication, patience, and genuine interest to sustain. It’s the meditator showing up at their mat each morning, come what may; the artisan diligently throwing another pot on the wheel.
Over time, the steadiness of that effort takes root, and a new way is forged. (…) The transition often occurs so slowly that we only notice it in retrospect. One day we turn around and realize something is different.
Oren Jay Sofer
Photo by Mathieu Stern on Unsplash
*What we long for, what we most need, is the simple kindness of others. But the world teaches us otherwise - that what we need most is away from one another. What a tragedy unfolds for all of us when we live in forgetfulness of our deepest longing. We think the world can be different - and this conversation is about just that.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Coaching For Developmentprogramme for people who work in organisations, which we talked about a couple of episodes ago.
Here's our source for this week:
Shoulders
A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.
No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.
This man carries the world's most sensitive cargo
but he's not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.
His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy's dream
deep inside him.
We're not going to be able
to live in this world
if we're not willing to do what he's doing
with one another.
The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.
Naomi Shihab NyePhoto by Aditya Chinchure on Unsplash
*Holding on too tightly to expectations of just about anything can trap us in a cycle of frustration and despair. And often our expectations are really ways we're trying to be in control of a situation rather than surrendering ourselves to the unfolding moment. Of course, our ability to control many circumstances so they will be just the way we want them is often beyond us. And so perhaps we might cultivate a kind of openness to the way things actually are combined with a fierce kind of intention to bring ourselves to whatever is happening with as much of our essential goodness as we can, whether that be courage, tenderness, creativity, love, truthfulness or any other of the many virtues available to human beings.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about meeting the always unexpected happenings of life with grace and presence. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Coaching For Developmentprogramme for people who work in organisations, which we talked about a couple of episodes ago.
Here's our source for this week:
Knee Sounds
The older I get the more I notice knee sounds my own quiet desires dumb egos baby’s sharp intuition the return of the blackberries boneheaded binaries. Sometimes I long for an organized drawer or a morning without the realization that one went to school with unbrushed teeth but then I remember how short life is how wide my forgiveness mostly of others more and more myself. The noticing is mostly small. Sometimes it’s big. This life I walk through is not what I expected. How could I have imagined her first questions upon waking or his tender body? How could I have known I would birth my own much-needed teacher on solitude? Or care so much about those two red poppies? Aging is a long, drawn out experiment in being wrong about how you will live, who you will be, what you will love and see and love and see and love and see and that’s okay. It’s more than okay. Each day unpromised and fecund. I am worse than I thought and also better. Humanity, too. When the violence is too much I touch a lot of tree trunks eat some more bread. watch my kids sleep their sweaty sleep and try not to let any of it tragic or tender feel inevitable.
Courtney Martincourtneyemartin.com/writing/Photo by Harli Marten on Unsplash
*It’s easy to try to resist the inevitable passage of time, as if our ignoring time would some how save us from its consequences. But what if we found an everyday way to make time sacred, by honouring its transitions rather than turning away?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the rituals we can create to mark life’s big changes and its more ordinary ones - sleep, waking, eating, the start and end of experiences, births, deaths, the moments when we arrive and the inevitable moments of moving. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Coaching For Developmentprogramme for people who work in organisations, which we talked about a couple of episodes ago.
Here's our source for this week:
Every Day Is A Threshold
At any time you can ask yourself: At which threshold am I now standing? At this time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter? What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold? What gift would enable me to do it? A threshold is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms, and atmospheres. Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience or a stage of life that it intensifies toward the end into a real frontier that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up. At this threshold a great complexity of emotion comes alive: confusion, fear, excitement, sadness, hope. This is one of the reasons such vital crossings were always clothed in ritual. It is wise in your own life to be able to recognize and acknowledge the key thresholds: to take your time; to feel all the varieties of presence that accrue there; to listen inward with complete attention until you hear the inner voice calling you forward. The time has come to cross.
John O’Donohue
Photo by Kairat Murataliev on Unsplash
*The background culture that surrounds us very often makes the unspoken claim that what's most true about existence is cold, hard matter, and that anything else we encounter - meaning or love for example - is just something we humans invented. But what would happen if we trusted instead that there is an ancient light doing its best to shine forth through us and between us? And what would happen if we could treat the most difficult aspects of our experience, and the most challenging and painful parts of ourselves, as if they were right next to this source of light that could illuminate them? And if we treated ourselves and one another as if the light was the very surrounding in which we move and which wants to move within us?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about what opens when we understand the context of our lives and our experience to be an ancient light that's trying to find us and shine through us. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
Here's our source for this week:
How the light comes
I cannot tell you how the light comes. What I know is that it is more ancient than imagining. That it travels across an astounding expanse to reach us. That it loves searching out what is hidden, what is lost, what is forgotten or in peril or in pain. That it has a fondness for the body, for finding its way toward flesh, for tracing the edges of form, for shining forth through the eye, the hand, the heart. I cannot tell you how the light comes, but that it does. That it will. That it works its way into the deepest dark that enfolds you, though it may seem long ages in coming or arrive in a shape you did not foresee. And so may we this day turn ourselves toward it. May we lift our faces to let it find us. May we bend our bodies to follow the arc it makes. May we open and open more and open still to the blessed light that comes.
Jan Richardson Photo by Rene Böhmer on Unsplash
*What happens when we give up trying to control each other, and instead allow ourselves be changed by our encounter with one another? Could we let the extraordinary beauty and mystery of others really reach us? What would happen if we did this in the roles where we have the most power over others - when we're teachers, parents, employers, or leaders? And what are the costs if we don't, if we stay closed off to the gifts we each have to bring one another?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the wisdom and possibility that can come from learning from all our encounters and all our relationships. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
Here's our source for this week:
Let Me Become Orange
They say people don’t change.
But when you came along it was obvious that new territory beckoned.
All the ways I had begun to take myself less seriously began to make sense.
Like a hungry horse hearing the shaking bucket of carrots held by the little girl as she comes to visit.
I come bounding towards you, galloping.
Wanting to eat your carrots.
And I soften so that the carrots can make me orange.
If I’m not open to you changing me, how can I truly receive all you’ve come to give ?
Lizzie Winn 9th June 2022 Photo by Ben Mater on Unsplash
How can we learn be the ones who don't turn away when we encounter other people's difficulties and suffering? And how can we learn to be the ones who offer a profound welcome... to others and to ourselves? One way we've learned to do this is to take up a regular 'sitting' practice - an apparently simple practice of sitting very still for long enough that we get to encounter our own inner vastness and all that comes with it.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how to practice being the ones who turn towards all of it. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Coaching For Developmentprogramme for people who work in organisations, which we talked about last week.
Why Sit Still
The point of sitting through anything is to cultivate trust in our own strength and ability to meet whatever arises in our lives, and to know that we can welcome everything, resist nothing, and allow it all fully into our hearts without walking away. The point of sitting is to see just how equipped we are at dealing with the unknowable, and with what feels intolerable — and then, we might feel able to offer our presence and strength to others. You’re suffering the insufferable? Okay, I’ll go there with you, I’ll help you hold that. I will not abandon you.
I began a sitting practice because I felt gutted and ill equipped to meet the circumstances of my life – much less anyone else’s. I know you’ve felt abandoned by someone who could not meet you in your darkest hour. I’ve felt it, too, and it breaks my heart to see how I’ve been an abandoner, as well. Yet I feel a becoming, and a transition that I feel only the persistence of residency has allowed: a turning outward and the cultivation of, I hope, an ability to not abandon the world or others in painful service to my own wounds.
Cassandra Moore and Norman Fischer Photo by Christian Paul Stobbe on Unsplash
When we take a moment to look, we'll probably find that we're listening more to ourselves than to one another. But how can we create things together, coordinate together, learn together, trust one another if we're not listening? And what does it take to listen - in our organisational life, in our families, in our friendships, in our communities? It's both simpler, and harder, than it seems.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the courage, practice and support it takes to listen in a way that opens up possibility. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Coaching For Developmentprogramme for people who work in organisations, which we talked about today.
Listen
It’s when we actually listen to another human being that they get to be human too. Listening allows a shift from I-It relating in which the other is essentially an object to us (an irritation, a way to get what I want, a way to feel good about myself) to I-You relating, in which the other gets to be a person.
As Martin Buber points out, I-It relating is essentially a form of It-It relating, since it’s impossible for us to show up as full human beings, even to ourselves, when we are in the midst of making another, or a group of others, into a thing. To relate to another in an I-You way, to listen to them in their fullness, bestows dignity on everyone and opens wide horizons for understanding, compassion, truthfulness, and relationship. Listening ought to be the easiest thing to do. After all, it requires no complex framework, no technique, no technology. And yet it can be so, so hard.
Most of us have a lot of practicing to do in order to drop our need to be right, to be ‘the one’, to be liked, and to hear only what we want to hear. In order to listen we have to relax our defensiveness, be skilful with the inner attacks of our own inner critic (which is ready to judge us even when there’s no judgement coming from the speaker), get over our wish to control everything, and be willing to welcome whatever we experience. We have to be able to question our own stories and accounts, be open to seeing things in a whole new way, and quiet our inner world sufficiently that what is being said can reach us. And we have to learn how to be in contact with ourselves, a fundamental prerequisite for being in contact with others.
Perhaps all of this is why real listening is so absent in our fearful, impatient culture. And why we could all benefit from doing some inner work if we want to do the vital outer work of listening well to the people around us.
from Justin Wise's 'On Living and Working' Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
When love depends upon a feeling, it comes and goes as the feeling comes and goes. And when love depends upon the way someone else is - beautiful, or kind, or successful - it’s vulnerable to the inevitable changes in a human life.
But what if love could depend upon something deeper - not something inside me, nor something inside you, and maybe not even something between you and me? What if we came to know love as the very ground we could stand upon, or a wellspring we could draw upon that flows into actions and responses? Then love could include and infuse many experiences, including joy and grief, clarity and confusion, and all those times we feel let down or surprised or changed.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about a grown up love we might cultivate over time, a path to walk, that is deeper and more inclusive. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Leading from Essential Selfprogramme which we talked about in a previous episode and which is is coming up soon. And our year-long Professional Coaching Coursewhich begins in June 2022.
This week we're bringing a (characteristically concise) source from 'Pirkei Avot', an ancient Jewish wisdom text ('The Wisdom of the Elders').
Any love that depends upon a some-thing, when that something disappears, the love disappears. But when love does not depend upon a thing, it never disappears.
Pirkei Avot, 5:19
Photo by Adam Hornyak on Unsplash
*There's something inherently artistic about living a human life, in all the ways we're called to respond creatively, sensitively, boldly to the conditions and relationships in the midst of which we find ourselves. But, for many of us, the 'artist in us' got suppressed by being unsupported, or unwelcome. So what would it be to reclaim our artistry and direct it towards the unfolding of life-giving possibilities in the world? And what would it be to be ones who can sincerely welcome the artistry in others, even when it (especially when it) challenges a way of understanding ourselves in the world that we my have clung onto for a long time?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about generosity, welcome, creativity, and owning our lives in an expressive way. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Leading from Essential Selfprogramme which we talked about in the previous episode and which is is coming up soon, and to our year-long Professional Coaching Course*which begins in June 2022
Turning Towards Life is hosted by Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
The Art Spirit,
(Written in 1923, the pronouns reflect the period)
“When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressing creature. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and opens the way for a better understanding. Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, he opens it, shows there are still more pages possible.”
by Robert Henri
Photo by Danny Howe on Unsplash
*So often our lives are ruled by 'clock time' - we're counting off how long there is to get something done, or we're aiming for a time-bound goal, or we're measuring time wasted or time used productively. But although this is the dominant way of understanding time for many of us, it is only one way of relating to the flow of things. What if, instead of filling time with work or play, we turned things around and allowed time to flow into our activity? And what if instead of trying to secure ourselves against an unpredictable future, we took up a playfulness with the unfolding of time itself?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about living into our lives as an infinite unfolding, rather than a finite game. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Leading from Essential Selfprogramme which we talked about in the previous episode and which is is coming up soon, and to our year-long Professional Coaching Course*which begins in June 2022
Turning Towards Life is hosted by Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
What Is Time?
There are two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play…
For an infinite player there is no such thing as an hour of time. There can be an hour of love, or a day of grieving, or a season of learning, or a period of labour.
An infinite player does not begin working for the purpose of filling up a period of time with work, but for the purpose of filling work with time. Work is not a way of passing time but engendering possibility. Work is not a way of arriving at a desired present and securing it against an unpredictable future but of moving towards a future that itself has a future.
[So] infinite players cannot say how much they have completed in their work or love or quarrelling, but only that much remains incomplete in it. They are not concerned to determine when it is over, but only what comes from it…
A finite player puts play into time. An infinite player puts time into play.
James Carse, from ‘Finite and Infinite Games’
Photo by Joe Pregadio on Unsplash
*Our amazing capacity to separate parts of ourselves from ourselves - to keep the inner experiences of grief, or joy, or longing away and out of view. How this serves us. And how it can also lead us away from ourselves and all that we have to bring to the world. The letting go, falling in, opening that's available to us that can play its part in reuniting ourselves with what would otherwise be lost.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the possibility of letting ourselves tumble into our own hearts - something that many of us have been taught never to do. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Leading from Essential Selfprogramme which we talked about in the previous episode and which is is coming up soon, and to our year-long Professional Coaching Course*which begins in June 2022
Turning Towards Life is hosted by Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Falling Down
We try so hard to stay up
To keep from falling down
Yet there is a falling into ourselves,
That is of the essence.
There is a tumbling
Into the heart
That means we must open
To our beauty and our pain.
Without a willingness to surrender
To a flow of feelings,
Receive them with compassion,
We may never come to know
That sweet sense of oneness
With ourselves,
That simple bliss in being
Beneath all our distress.
We try so hard to stay up
Yet there is a falling down,
That is of the essence.
— Nanna Aida Svendsen
Photo by Angga Indratama on Unsplash
*The cultural story of money that we all live in has opened up all kinds of opportunities for trade and exchange in the world. And at the same time, the story is easily one of transaction rather than relationship, of fleeting contact rather that the weaving of deep reciprocal obligation and care, of efficiency, mechanism and convenience over the vulnerability and gifts of connection and reciprocity and community. Is there a way we can live in the story of money in a way that binds us into the gathering of life?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we find our way back to living relationship when the story of money might isolate us and have us feeling separate from one another. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Leading from Essential Selfprogramme which we talked about in the previous episode and which is is coming up soon, and to our year-long Professional Coaching Course*which begins in June 2022
Turning Towards Life is hosted by Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Sometimes to accept is also a gift. The anthropologist David Graeber points out that the explanation that we invented money because barter was too clumsy is false. It wasn’t that I was trying to trade sixty sweaters for the violin you’d made when you didn’t really need all that wooliness. Before money, Graeber wrote, people didn’t barter but gave and received as needs and goods ebbed and flowed. They thereby incurred the indebtedness that bound them together, and reciprocated slowly, incompletely, in the ongoing transaction that is a community. Money was invented as a way to sever the ties by completing the transactions that never needed to be completed in the older system, but existed like a circulatory system in a body. Money makes us separate bodies, and maybe it teaches us that we should be separate.
Rebecca Solnit, from 'The Faraway Nearby'
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
*How can we be the ones who welcome what has been lost in others, and in doing so be the ones who welcome again what has been lost in ourselves? It's a central question for our fragmented times.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we find our way back home to what was here all along, and the crucial role of welcome, truth-telling and relationship in making that possible. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Leading from Essential Self*programme which we talked about in the previous episode and which is is coming up soon.
You can find out more about other Thirdspace programmes we talk about this week on the Thirdspace website here: * Our two-day Foundations of Coachingprogramme on 25-26 April 2022 * Our year-long Professional Coaching Coursewhich begins in June 2022
Turning Towards Life is hosted by Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
The birth of new life is something to behold, but have you ever witnessed a revival? Have you seen a person meet themselves after years apart, hands touching through a mirror, eyes locked together, a smile so strong it echoes. Have you ever watched a person breathe after drowning, deep gulps of air that lungs welcome with shouts of, finally, finally, finally! Have you ever witnessed the moment soul sinks into body, the calm when mind and heart look at each other with love instead of longing. Have you ever placed your hand on your chest and with absolute clarity been able to say what was lost is now found.'
by L.E. Bowmanhttps://www.instagram.com/l.e.bowman.poetry/
Photo by manas rb on Unsplash
*Stepping into leadership, on whatever scale, immediately asks a central question of each of us: What kind of person will I be? Can I be a person who brings out virtues of dignity, creativity, courage, compassion, persistence, humility, generosity and wisdom in myself and the people I am alongside? Can I catch on to the ways in which I contract into fear, or reactivity, or habit? Can I find others who will help me walk the path of attention, inquiry and practice that can support me in bringing myself to the world in a way that’s most fully expressive of my intentions?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we lead together in a way that draws upon our essential goodness. And it's an invitation to a new learning community we're launching. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Leading from Essential Self*programme which we talk about in this episode and which is is coming up soon.
You can find out more about other Thirdspace programmes we talk about this week on the Thirdspace website here: * Our two-day Foundations of Coachingprogramme on 25-26 April 2022 * Our year-long Professional Coaching Coursewhich begins in June 2022
Turning Towards Life is hosted by Thirdspace. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
The Call of Leadership
We’re ‘called to leadership’ any time we find ourselves caring deeply about the world and people around us and want to respond with wisdom, resourcefulness, dignity and creativity – whether that’s in an organisational setting, in national-scale leadership, in a family, because we’ve taken up a role in a community that we care about, or whenever we want to bring a new idea, possibility, cause or work of art into the world.
Stepping into leadership, on whatever scale, immediately asks a central question of each of us: What kind of person will I be? Can I be a person who brings out virtues of dignity, creativity, courage, compassion, persistence, humility, generosity and wisdom in myself and the people I am alongside? Can I catch on to the ways in which I contract into fear, or reactivity, or habit? Can I find others who will help me walk the path of attention, inquiry and practice that can support me in bringing myself to the world in a way that’s most fully expressive of my intentions?
Another way of saying this – can I lead from my 'Essential Self’, the goodness and wisdom that’s at the heart of each of us? Can I attend to being ‘right sized’, inhabiting fully the life-giving possibilities that are mine to bring without shrinking away or trying to be bigger than I really am?
Justin Wise
Photo by Simon Berger on Unsplash
*When we're afraid, but not acknowledging our fear, we're most likely to act out of line with our deepest intentions. It's easy from the midst of fear to try to assert our power and control - by being right or over-certain or dominating others - or to shrink away from our own dignity by saying 'yes' when something else is called for. What if we could learn to notice and name our fear, to ourselves and others, and in doing so return to the qualities of wisdom, truthfulness, and reciprocity that give us the greatest chance of addressing the challenges of the moment at a right size and in right relationship with others?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about 'right sizing' ourselves so we can respond to the world with the depth that is the heritage of each one of us. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
You can find out more about the Thirdspace programmes we talk about this week on the Thirdspace website here: * Our two-day Foundations of Coachingprogramme on 25-26 April 2022 * Our year-long Professional Coaching Coursewhich begins in June 2022 * Our new Leading from Essential Selfprogramme from 25-27 May 2022
Here's our source for this week:
Fear Is ContractionFear unites the disparate parts of our false selves very quickly. The ego moves forward by contraction, self-protection, and refusal, by saying no. Contraction gives us focus, purpose, direction, superiority, and a strange kind of security. It takes our aimless anxiety, covers it up, and tries to turn it into purposefulness and urgency, which results in a kind of drivenness. But this drive is not peaceful or happy. It is filled with fear and locates all its problems as “out there,” never “in here.”
The soul or the True Self does not proceed by contraction but by expansion. It moves forward, not by exclusion, but by inclusion. It sees things deeply and broadly not by saying no but by saying yes, at least on some level, to whatever comes its way. Can you distinguish between those two very different movements within yourself?
Fear and contraction allow us to eliminate other people, write them off, exclude them, and somehow expel them, at least in our minds. This immediately gives us a sense of being in control and having a secure set of boundaries—even holy boundaries. But people who are controlling are usually afraid of losing something. If we go deeper into ourselves, we will see that there is both a rebel and a dictator in all of us, two different ends of the same spectrum. It is almost always fear that justifies our knee-jerk rebellion or our need to dominate—a fear that is hardly ever recognized as such because we are acting out and trying to control the situation.
Fr Richard Rohr
Available at the Centre for Action and Reflection website
Photo by Ashley Batz on Unsplash
*In the words of Marie Howe’s beautiful poem that is our source this week, “whatever leads to joy, to more life, to less worry”. Can we learn to live this way in the midst of it all - attending to joy in its deepest sense, in the way it brings us into contact with what is most real? And is there a way to not pile worry on top of everything that it already matters for us to take care of?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the faithfulness it takes to lean into our lives, and to face their realness in doing so. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
You can find out more about our Professional Coaching Course, which we talk a little about in this episode, on the Thirdspace website here.
Here's our source for this week:
My Dead Friends
I have begun,
when I’m weary and can’t decide an answer to a bewildering question
to ask my dead friends for their opinion
and the answer is often immediate and clear.
Should I take the job? Move to the city? Should I try to conceive a child
in my middle age?
They stand in unison shaking their heads and smiling—whatever leads
to joy, they always answer,
to more life and less worry. I look into the vase where Billy’s ashes were — it’s
green in there, a green vase,
and I ask Billy if I should return the difficult phone call, and he says, yes.
Billy’s already gone through the frightening door,
whatever he says I’ll do.
Marie Howe
Photo by Sergey Pesterev on Unsplash
In those moments when, in the midst of the brokenness of the world, any of us find ourselves able to kindle our resolute love or contagious joy, we're being of much needed service - both to ourselves and to those around us. And we don't always know that we're doing that. So what would it be to begin to notice this most human of capacities in ourselves, and share it with others - as a complement to all the other strong feelings and orientations that sweep through us when we are also in contact with the fragility of things?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about celebrating our capacity to be generous, courageous gifts to one another, this week seeded from a source from the wonderful work of David Abram. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
You can find out more about our Professional Coaching Course, which we talk a little about in this episode, on the Thirdspace website here.
Here's our source for this week:
Holding Together
There are so many unsung heroines and heroes at this broken moment in our collective story, so many courageous persons who, unbeknownst to themselves, are holding together the world by their resolute love or contagious joy. Although I do not know your names, I can feel you out there.
David Abram Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash
How do we make contact with our own kindness, generosity, creativity, patience, courage, compassion, fierce or gentle love, and our capacity to stay in contact with life, right when we're afraid or wanting to turn away?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we find that in ourself that's ready to stay faithful, when other parts of us strongly want to turn away - and how we help one another to do that. Our conversation is seeded from a source from the wonderful work of Maya Stein. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
You can find out more about our Professional Coaching Course, which we talk a little about in this episode, on the Thirdspace website here.
Here's our source for this week:
What If?
Whatever you’re afraid of. Whatever you’re warding off, trying to hold back
from being true. Whatever keeps sniffing at your legs, and whatever you keep
kicking away. Whatever draft you’re trying to seal. Whatever risk you push
to the perimeter. Whatever old whisper you’re turning from to deafen. Whatever exit
you’re avoiding, eyes locked on the straightaway. Whatever breakage you think is yours
to mend, and the endless ministrations of that mending. Whatever call you keep
not picking up. Whatever blank piece of paper. Whatever Hail Mary. Whatever salt
you keep throwing over your shoulder. One day, it will stop being enough
to keep you from your own magnificence. And what if, what if, what if
this was that day?
Maya Steinmayastein.substack.com
Photo by Grant Whitty on Unsplash
*We might imagine we can choose the 'threshold moments', when we're called to step into the unknown. Sometimes we can. But as events in the world remind us this week, what changes around us and within us often comes without warning and without our say-so.
One response to transitions on whatever scale is to run from them, or to try to be in control of them on our own. But that rarely works out, because for us to be in charge would mean having powers that none of us have. Instead, can we turn towards them and have them be an opportunity for us to connect with one another's lives more deeply, listen more fully, and support one another? And what kind of world might open if we did?*
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about turning towards what's being born, perhaps right when we're least ready for it. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
You can find out more about our Professional Coaching Course, which we talk a little about in this episode, on the Thirdspace website here.
Here's our source for this week:
Liminal Space
In this
waiting place
we loiter, hover,
on a tentative cusp,
a threshold,
between the familiar
and the unknown,
with no possible retreat.
The customary comfort zone
is gone, and where
the entrance ushers
is not yet seen.
Our new question
(let alone its answer)
still is ambiguous.
We are in limbo.
We can either hesitate
or go forward.
The gossamer veil
of divine nearness
flutters ever so lightly,
breathing inseparably close,
as we step to embrace
the unrevealed with trust,
a shimmering opportunity
for connection and listening
and being led right on through.
Lean into this portal;
it is the doorstep
to fruitful ground.
by Polly Castor
pollycastor.com
Photo by Mark Basarab on Unsplash
How do we approach our lives when they don’t go how we want? Or when we find ourselves judging the value of our lives by the outcomes of our actions and projects? When we find out we’re not nearly as ‘in charge’ as we imagine, and that every choice is riddled with complexity, it’s easy to tune out and seek the promise of easy answers or to demand of ourselves a level of control and power that’s impossible for us humans. So how else might we live? Might we find a way to honour that our lives are not made of ‘final destinations’ but are a process of becoming, in which each choice and action has a chance to move the world somewhat but, more importantly, to shape who we are?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about watching where we are going, leaning into what we love, and telling the truth. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
You can find out more about our Professional Coaching Course, which we talk a little about in this episode, on the Thirdspace website here.
Here's our source for this week:
Choice There isn’t a right answer.
There just isn’t. The game show
where the bells ring and the points
go up and the confetti falls
because you got the answer
is a lie. The preacher who would assure you
of how to attain salvation
is making it all up. The doctor
who knows just how to fix
what ails you will be sure
of something else tomorrow.
Every choice will
wound someone, heal someone,
build a wall and open a conversation.
Things will always happen
that you can’t foresee.
But you have to choose.
It’s all we have—that little rudder
that we employ in the midst
of all the eddies and rapids,
the current that pulls us
inexorably toward the sea.
The fact that you are swept along
by the river is no excuse.
Watch where you are going.
Lean in toward what you love.
When in doubt, tell the truth.
Lynn Ungarlynnungar.com
Photo by Cory Woodward on Unsplash
*Can we look at ourselves and others around us as we all grow older with eyes of wonder... seeing and receiving the luminosity and depth that shines out from beneath the skin? Or will we get caught up in our culture's dominant meta-narratives - that to grow old is to be diminished, and that time is a 'resource' that we get less of as we age? What if, instead, life is a ripeness that we grow into, and growing into our elderhood is a deep gift we can bring to others?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about what might become possible as we grow into the wildness of our bones, and attune to the gifts of the ones who walk the path ahead of us. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
You can find out more about our Professional Coaching Course, which we talk a little about in this episode, on the Thirdspace website here.
Here's our source for this week:
Beneath the Sweater and the Skin
How many years of beauty do I have left?
she asks me.
How many more do you want?
Here. Here is 34. Here is 50.
When you are 80 years old
and your beauty rises in ways
your cells cannot even imagine now
and your wild bones grow luminous and
ripe, having carried the weight
of a passionate life.
When your hair is aflame
with winter
and you have decades of
learning and leaving and loving
sewn into
the corners of your eyes
and your children come home
to find their own history
in your face.
When you know what it feels like to fail
ferociously
and have gained the
capacity
to rise and rise and rise again.
When you can make your tea
on a quiet and ridiculously lonely afternoon
and still have a song in your heart
Queen owl wings beating
beneath the cotton of your sweater.
Because your beauty began there
beneath the sweater and the skin,
remember?
This is when I will take you
into my arms and coo
YOU BRAVE AND GLORIOUS THING
you've come so far.
I see you.
Your beauty is breathtaking.
Jeannette Enciniaswww.jeannetteencinias.com
Photo by Ýlona María Rybka on Unsplash
*It's hard to turn towards the basic condition of our lives - that everything changes, and that everything ends, including ourselves. That we will lose it all. But our resistance to this truth can easily end up with us trying to freeze our lives in place, holding us back from encountering what's here in an effort to never have to face loss or grief. But we know not to do that with that which flows - we don't try to freeze each wave on the sea, for example, because we know that what makes a wave a wave is that it is free to arise and fall away in exactly the way that waves do.
And so this week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about what might become possible if we understand ourselves and everyone around us as flow, arising from the bigger flow of life or existence itself. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
You can find out more about our Professional Coaching Course, which we talk a little about in this episode, on the Thirdspace website here.
Here's our source for this week:
The Great Gift of Selfhood
“You will die. You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor any thing. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood. For we have only what we know we must lose, what we are willing to lose… That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes; it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself? Would you give up the craft of your hands, and the passion of your heart, and the light of sunrise and sunset, to buy safety for yourself - safety forever?”
Ursula K. Le Guin, from 'The Farthest Shore'
Photo by Ryan Moulton on Unsplash
We’re taught that what’s most of value in life is what we can explain, that which can be illuminated by the daylight, and which we can see and know. But the shadows and darkness have gifts too - gifts of belonging, and gifts of freedom, and a way of teaching us what to give up in order to take up the one life that is our own.
What if we approached the non-obvious not as something to run from, but as a doorway into a life beyond? Can we honour the underneath and the behind and the dark and what cannot be put into words?
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
You can find out more about our Professional Coaching Course, which we talk a little about in this episode, on the Thirdspace website here.
Here's our source for this week:
Sweet Darkness
by David Whyte (davidwhyte.com)
When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone,
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognise its own.
There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your home
tonight.
The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.
You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
Photo by David Gabrić on Unsplash
There’s a prevalent understanding in the world that the very definition of ‘professional’ is a kind of machine-like activity - efficient, rule based, predictable, rational but unfeeling. Even when it’s not talked about we see it shaping our participation in organisations of all kinds - businesses, schools, health-care. And beyond work it shapes our entire orientation to life.
But what if we started to notice the deadening qualities of this way and started to attend to a life-giving alternative: professionalism as a kind of deep care and sensitivity, to one another, to wisdom, to life itself?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about all of this, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
You can find out more about our Professional Coaching Course, which we talk a little about in this episode, on the Thirdspace website here.
Here's our source for this week:
The Professionalism That Will Kill Us All
by Charles Davies (www.howtobeclear.com)
“The professionalism that requires us to be unmoved by what we meet through the day is a professionalism that will kill us all.”
About fifteen years ago I started regularly going to Denmark to teach at the Kaospilots, a school of creative and social entrepreneurship. What I loved about the school was that, rather than teaching people to be ‘businesspeople’, they asked: What do you need to learn to live and work well in an unpredictable world? And so the students learned how to listen to each other. And how to listen to themselves. How to see what is happening and see what is needed — and feel able to respond. How to stand for something. They were learning how to be sensitive. How to be sensitive at work...
The insensitivity required to be part of the system is unsustainable. Without sensitivity to life as a whole, everything starts to die...
[So] how can we do the work we need to do in a way that increases rather than blocks our sensitivity? What does professionalism look like when it is something you feel your way through, moment by moment? When it requires vulnerability and uncertainty? When being more professional means being more human? Kinder, wiser, more generous, more forgiving, more loving. And — not doing these things for their own sake, not doing these things because they’re nice, but doing them because that’s what works. Because, if we go to work and we‘re on autopilot, then everything starts to die.
Photo by Davide Cantelli on Unsplash
Lizzie and Justin are partners in Thirdspace, an organisation which supports people to recognise their goodness and capacity, helping them bring their whole selves to the world. In this special episode Lizzie and Justin talk about the Thirdspace Professional Coaching Course, a certification programme in integral development coaching which is at the heart of Thirdspace's work and a project of great joy and love for both of us. Our next cohort is open for applications now, and begins in June 2022.
Over the course of our conversation you'll hear what makes this special programme unique, how it changes participants and what it makes possible, the distinction between 'developmental' and other kinds of coaching, and more about the details and structure of the programme.
You can read more about the course (the 'PCC') right here.
Being open to the world, to experience, to being changed by what's around us and within us, may be one of the great human capacities, and precisely what allows us to make community and relationship, and to respond with wisdom, creativity and love to the challenges and gifts of our times. But it's greatly diminished by that in us which wants to manipulate and control, which insists on reducing to right and wrong, and the impulse in us which demands certainty. Those qualities are needed, indeed, but as support to our openness rather than as a way of dominating it. So how do we stay open to life as it happens? And how do we keep ourselves from closing down?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the practice of standing in our lives prayerfully and willingly, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
You can find out more about our Professional Coaching Course, which we talk a little about in this episode, on the Thirdspace website here.
Here's our source for this week:
What Open Means
To be open means receptive,
able to be touched.
Open means undefended,
with an inner "yes" resounding
loud and clear. It means
really being here, present
and awake. Open means willing
to take the moment in.
It is a choice, a discipline,
a surrender of my being
to the truth. Open is a state
of mind, a way of life,
a refusal to close down.
Imagine a flower in full bloom.
In your mind's eye, see a tree
with leaves that welcome in
the sunlight. See the night sky
filled with stars and empty spaces.
I pray to be that open today,
with plenty of room for the
mystery to fill. I pray to be
so open the universe spills in,
pours out, and leaves me
drenched in wonder.
Danna FauldsPhoto: Katerina Pavlyuchkova | Unsplash
We are not machines, even though most of us have grown up, quite without noticing it, as if we were in some essential way meant to be shiny, efficient, perfect, unstopping, optimal, results-producing mechanisms. And so we easily miss seeing the already-miraculous living beings that we are.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about loving our messiness, our incompleteness, our glorious particular just-who-we-are-ness, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Loving our brokenness
We have to find a way to love our brokenness No, not loving ourselves in spite of our failings But loving the brokenness itself We have to love all the ways we’re late And all the ways we missed the point We have to love that we were scared And that we were ashamed to say it We have to love that we didn’t get it all done And love that we imagined it was doable in the first place We have to love that we’re such a glorious mess And how we struggle to meet our own standards We have to learn to love, in short, all the ways we fall short Because our grace, courage and capacity to stand Our care of what’s broken in the world around us Is strongest when we’re carried by that which we’ve learned to cherish And not when we’re mired in that which we’ve chosen to hate.
Justin Wise (from a blog post, here)
Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash
Learning to live with a many-chambered heart; relating to ourselves, others and life by taking into account the astonishing richness and complexity that’s always here; honouring that there’s never just one story or explanation for what’s happening, or what we’re feeling, or what’s emerging, or what’s intended. And, along the way, how movies, trees, parks and people can be teachers of all of this to all of us.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about learning to live in a host of stories, rather than just one, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
There Are Days When
There are days when
I’m bored rigid by my singular story.
I wear it like a prize or a prison.
Who might this soul be if it had been sown in different soil?
I long to forsake my temperate fields for exotic climes;
of course I do.
But how small a leap an opposite is,
the same story niftily rebranded.
A story of endless wants:
Of not this but that
Not this feeling but that one
Not this father but that one
Not this lover but that one
Not this job but that one
Not this loss but –
No, not that one either.
Perhaps there are days when this soul-seed carried by the elements,
and watered with love,
can grow a host of stories.
Stories of endless vows:
Of this and this
Yes, this joy and this sorrow
Yes, this adventure and this homecoming
Yes, this freedom and this constraint
Yes, this loss -
and yes, this one too.
A host of stories:
beyond compare;
beyond comparison.
Janeena Sims
Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash
To be a living, conscious, experiencing being is one of the great miraculous wonders of the universe. And being ‘this one’, the unique one each of us is, will never happen again. And yet… we learn to discount the unique first-person experience of being ourselves, pushing our ordinary everyday sacredness to the side, often in favour of treating ourselves and others more like objects or production machines than the sacred conscious beings that we are. *What would it be to let ourselves honour the beauty and mystery of our everyday consciousness, our joys and losses, our lost-and-found-ness, and to honour the sacredness of that in each other?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about saying hello, with love and reverence, to the miracle of the everyday experience of being a person, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.* This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade
Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen
to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas,
how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took
questions on how not to feel lost in the dark.
After lunch she distributed worksheets
that covered ways to remember your grandfather’s
voice. Then the class discussed falling asleep
without feeling you had forgotten to do something else—
something important—and how to believe
the house you wake in is your home. This prompted
Mrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing
how to chant the Psalms during cigarette breaks,
and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts
are all you hear; also, that you have enough.
The English lesson was that I am
is a complete sentence.
And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation
look easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions,
and feeling cold, and all those nights spent looking
for whatever it was you lost, and one person
add up to something.
Brad Aaron Modlin
Photo by Leonardo Toshiro Okubo on Unsplash
We each carry a whole implicit world with us, a way of being that profoundly shapes what's possible for others in relationship with us. But because it's implicit, the 'background', it can be hard to see how much more there is to our relationships than the actions we take and the words we say. As Lizzie writes in this week's source, "What’s implied in your words, your actions, your feelings towards me. That’s what’s most powerful. What’s implied. That’s what shapes me most profoundly. "
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about profound ways we affect one another before we even speak. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Your implicit = my possibility.
You see me as whole, you trust me. You treat me as capable, you encourage me. You feel me to be complete, you allow me. Each day you welcome me as new, you accept me. No fixing. No changing. Something way deeper. Something far wider. What’s implied in your words, your actions, your feelings towards me. That’s what’s most powerful. What’s implied. That’s what shapes me most profoundly. That you trust me makes me trustworthy. That you love me makes me loveable. That you honour me makes me honourable. That you have faith in me makes me faithful. We are connected. Not separate. My depth, and all that comes comes from my background shapes what’s possible for you. Your depth, and all that comes from your background shapes what’s possible for me. Lizzie Winn
Photo by Billy Huynh on Unsplash
We live in a time when truth gets pulled apart by the move towards ‘I am right, you are wrong’ and the parallel move to make all truths equal and indistinguishable from one another. And in coming at truth this way, we easily pull ourselves and one another apart.
But what if finding out ‘what’s true’ is a process, not a thing? A process of loving, disciplined attention, in which walk a path together, taking one another’s judgements into account, bringing our best reason, imagination, intuition to bear, in which we experiment together?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the lives we might build it we treated the search for truths to live by as a loving, attentive path of responsibility and openness. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
What is Truth?
Truth is an encounter: it needs to be 'felt in the blood and felt along the heart', in Wordsworth's famous phrase... We have become accustomed, in our Western way, to see all exchange of ideas as a kind of battle-ground in which there will be conquest and defeat. In the East, ancient truths have not commonly been thought such that they can convince (the word comes from the Latin 'vincere', to conquer) through argument, but rather that they become appreciated (the word comes from Latin 'pretium', value) through a patient, disciplined opening up of the self to experience. Jan Zwicky puts it like this:
'Truth is the asymptotic limit of sensitive attempts to be responsible to our actual experience of the world ... 'sensitive attempts to be responsible' means truth is the result of attention*. (As opposed to inspection). Of looking informed by love. Of really looking.'
... Though truth is always my personal judgement, it is not just possible, but necessary, that my judgment should take into account yours and many others. It is far from random, but is, rather, informed by experiment, perception, reason, intuition and imagination. Ian McGilchrist, from 'The Matter With Things' pp396-397
[in mathematics, an asymptotic limit is a value that you get closer and closer to, but never quite reach]
Photo by Mads Schmidt Rasmussen on Unsplash
The wonderful Robert Bly died just a short time ago, leaving behind him countless invitations to each of us to step into our lives more fully. Our conversation this week honours his work by taking up his poem 'He Wanted to Live His Life Over'.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the nature of time, what it might be to allow our lives to be enriched by all that has come before, and what it is to say 'yes' to life, no matter what. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
He Wanted to Live His Life Over
What? You want to life your life over again?"Well, I suppose, yes ... That time in Grand Rapids ...
My life - as I lived it - was a series of shynesses."
Being bolder - what good would that do?"I'd open my door again. I've felt abashed,
You see. Now I'd go out and say, 'All right,
I'll go with you to Alaska.' Just opening the door
From inside would have altered me – a little.
I'm too shy ..." And so, a bolder life
Is what you want? "We could begin now.
Just walk with me – down to the river.
I'll pretend this boat is my life ... I'll climb in." Photo by Hari Nandakumar on Unsplash
It's hard to be of genuine service to others from the part of us that worries about being liked. But there is something deeper in all of us that is not at all concerned about favour and is at once fiercely committed, gentle, loving and true enough to serve in an authentic, generous way.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might cultivate the shameless leadership that's called for right now. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Shameless
To be in favour or disgrace
is to live in fear.
To take the body seriously
is to admit one can suffer.
What does that mean,
to be in favour or disgrace
is to live in fear?
Favour debases:
we fear to lose it,
fear to win it.
So to be in favour or disgrace
is to live in fear.
What does that mean,
to take the body seriously
is to admit one can suffer?
I suffer because I’m a body;
if I weren’t a body,
how could I suffer?
So people who set their bodily good
before the public good could be entrusted with the commonwealth,
and people who treated the body politic
as gently as their own body
would be worthy to govern the commonwealth.
Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching, Ch13, Translated by Ursula Le Guin Photo by Victória Kubiaki on Unsplash
What if beauty isn't something we add to the world, but an already-existing quality of everyone and everything that we can uncover through the way we learn to look, feel, sense and hear? What world would present itself to us if we practiced skilfully looking for beauty everywhere, including in those places (ourselves, others, our collective endeavours, the situation we find ourselves in) where we've already concluded that beauty, and all its attendant possibilities, is absent?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might look anew, and in doing so breathe life back into places where we've allowed it to wither. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
We have often heard that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This is usually taken to mean that the sense of beauty is utterly subjective; there is no accounting for taste because each person's taste is different. The statement has another, more subtle meaning: if our style of looking becomes beautiful, then beauty will become visible and shine forth for us. We will be surprised to discover beauty in unexpected places where the ungraceful eye would never linger. The graced eye can glimpse beauty anywhere, for beauty does not reserve itself for special elite moments or instances; it does not wait for perfection but is present already secretly in everything. When we beautify our gaze, the grace of hidden beauty becomes our joy and our sanctuary. John O'Donohue Excerpt from the books, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (US) / Divine Beauty (Europe)
Photo by Harry Quan on Unsplash
We add difficulty to our difficulty if we imagine, as we often do, that difficulty should not happen, that it must be our fault to be living a life that is far from perfect, and that we have to blame one another when the world turns out to be full of problems. Mostly, we've been taught to respond to difficulty in this way by a culture that tells us that everything can be fixed and that if it's not fixed, already, someone must be doing something wrong. The resulting despair turns us away from qualities we could bring to the difficulties around us - from the personal to the global: compassion, creativity, gratitude, openness, dedication, patience.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might learn to treat difficulties as an inevitable part of the path and, in doing so, learn new ways to respond that include and honour ourselves as we are, and the world as it could be. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week: Turn All Mishaps Into the Path We are, after all, not talking about miracles, we are not talking about affirmations or wishful thinking. We are talking about training the mind. If you were to meditate daily, bringing up this slogan, Turn all mishaps into the path, in your sitting, writing it down, repeating it many times a day, reflecting on it, reading the words of this book many times and thinking about them, then you could see that a change of heart and mind could take place in just the way I am describing. It simply makes sense. The mind and heart react according to their well-worn habits. Whatever habit of mind you have now comes from your actions and thoughts of the past (however unexamined or unintentional they may have been). Whatever habits of mind you will have in future depend on what you do or don’t do from now on. The way you spontaneously react in times of trouble is not fixed. Your mind, your heart, can be trained. Once you have a single experience of reacting differently, you will be encouraged. Next time it is more likely that you will take yourself in hand. Each time becomes easier than the last. And little by little you establish a new habit. When something difficult happens, you will train yourself to stop saying, “Damn! Why did this have to happen!” and begin saying, “Yes, of course, this is how it is, let me turn toward it, let me practice with it, let me go beyond entanglement to gratitude.” Because you will have realized that because you are alive and not dead, because you have a human body and not some other kind of a body, because the world is a physical world and not an ethereal world, and because all of us together as people are the way we are, bad things are going to happen. It’s the most natural, the most normal, the most inevitable thing in the world. It is not a mistake, and it isn’t anyone’s fault. And we can make use of it to drive our gratitude and our compassion deeper.
— from 'Training in Compassion' by Norman Fischer
Photo by Trevor McKinnon on Unsplash
If we look patiently, we'll sometimes see that underneath the 'presenting surface' of our lives is something within us working away persistently, lovingly, courageously. That something - a kind of essential goodness - has often begun working with what we care most about even before we've consciously begun ourselves. What would it be to see and trust that essential goodness within us and within one another, and to give it a name - as David Whyte does in the luminous poem that's our source for this week's conversation?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about seeing the goodness in ourselves and one another, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
YOU KNOW WHEN ITS TIME TO GO
Even in the midst of thinking you’ll never be ready even when you feel you have never deserved that freedom to go even under the comforting illusion that you never had a single speck of faith in what you want you have already packed, your silent reluctance away, lifted your ear to the morning birdsong and before anyone can wake you are already out the door, down the road round the corner and on your way. … Excerpt from ‘You Know When It’s Time to Go’ from ‘STILL POSSIBLE’ Poetry by David Whyte
Photo by Andriyko Podilnyk on Unsplash
'Imagination is everything', we were once taught by a teacher of ours. And so in this episode we take up the imaginative possibilities of play and laughter, wondering together what possibilities can come from holding the 'darkness and vulnerability in the heart of everything' alongside the joyful, expansive possibilities of play. Along the way we laugh a lot, imagine what it would be to welcome the joy of others, and consider how 'authenticity' always involves some measure of playfully cultivating what's been so far marginalised or not included.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about living in the big 'and' of life rather than splitting life into opposites, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Knowing Now You’ll Never Be a Clown
But if you were, and if your grin were painted red as a Coke can, a fire engine, red as the Tabasco sauce you spilled on your mother’s carpet, and if it lifted itself from the inside of one huge ear to the other, and if your nose were a ping pong ball almost begging for a swipe, and if your feet slept within white shoes, three feet long and flapping, would you be able then to talk to everything you really want to talk to: the chickadees who come closer than your nieces, that piece of paper blown across your lawn, the rain, each nudge of green in your garden? And when you put on your coat, that U.N. of colors and scraps, that coat that would make Joseph feel he had folded himself into the pages of GQ, the one with the shoulders rolling up to your cheeks, with buttons the size of pancakes, and a hem like the border of Czechoslovakia, would you want to walk into church, quietly take your place with the choir and just as the minister finishes the benediction, honk your horn? And when you put on your polka dotted tie, wide as a summer afternoon, would you want to pin the squirting yellow daisy on your lapel, sit in the business meeting, and after the ayes have it, squeeze the rubber bulb in your pocket? Then again, maybe you would just stay home, listen to jazz, the blues, or some swing, open each of your cupboards and talk about Tuesday or the way the light falls across the counters, invite Lou Jacobs, Emmett Kelly, Felix Adler, Otto Griebling, hell, the whole clown alley, rent a calliope, a center ring, one elephant, and get out the pies.
–Jack Ridl
Photo by Rex Pickar on Unsplash
When we learn to include more and more of ourselves, we also become more able to include more and more of one another. Being able to do this - to welcome that in us that's fearful, ashamed or lonely, as well as what's joyful, grateful and love-filled - is greatly helped by finding the bigger-something that we are... the something of us that's wide and deep, curious and compassionate and which is, essentially, welcome. And that's something we can also help one another with.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how 'inclusivity' starts with us and between us, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
VULNERABLE
Always be vulnerable To your pain, your fear, your loneliness, To your pleasure too, and your joy, To all that travels through you. Don’t close the doors To these pilgrims from a far-off land, But welcome them all --- One a wild, restless spirit Secretly longing to be tamed, Another a lover on a long, sweet night, Who only wants to melt in your embrace. For this is how you grow --- By including everything. Always, always be vulnerable To all that you are.
From “Poems of Love and Awakening” by John Welwood
Photo by Erika Fletcher on Unsplash
Whenever we come to ‘conclusions’ about ourselves or one another we run the risk of missing our marvellous multiplicity - the way we can be both gentle and wild, curious and assertive, narrow and wide, afraid and courageous. There’s an inclusiveness and dignity that comes quite naturally when we see one another’s complexity, and we see it in ourselves, and when we learn to trust our own capacity to turn towards, to be with, to welcome that very complexity as we live alongside one another, love one another, work together on projects and commitments that matter to us.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might learn to include more of ourselves and others and, in doing so, undo the fear and certainty about one another that keeps us far apart, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Our source this week is from the singer/songwriter May Erlewine.
Never One Thing
I'm the underbelly, I am the claw
Never one thing no, not one thing at all
I'm a street fighter, I'm a prayer for peace
I'm a holy roller, I'm a honey bee
I am the truth, I am a lie
I am the ground, I am the sky
I am the silence, I am the call
Never one thing no, not one thing at all
I am hope, I am defeat
I am broken, I am complete
I am the grace, I am the fall
Never one thing no, not one thing at all
I am the beggar, I am the queen
I am the end, I am the means
I am the hammer, I am the wall
Never one thing no, not one thing at all
I am a victor, I am the loss
I am a profit, I am the cost
I am the salve, I am the sting
Never, no never, no never one thing
I am a mother, I am the child
I am the meek, I am the wild
I am the witch, I am the saint
I am alive, never one thing
I am the lion, I am the swan
I am the bull, I am the fawn
I am a woman, I am the ring
I am my own, never one thing
I'm the underbelly, I am the claw
Never one thing no, not one thing at all
I'm a street fighter, I'm a prayer for peace
I'm a holy roller, I'm a honey bee
May Erlewine
Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash
What would be if we could each help one another remember the ways in which we matter, the ways in which are are unarguably of value, the ways in which our mere presence is a gift? Perhaps it would help us find some respite from the strong cultural pressures to think of ourselves as incomplete, or faulty, or missing something. Perhaps it would help us give up equating our value with our looks, our circumstances, our difficulty. And maybe it would give us the courage to respond to the world when our response is most called for.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might give one another the gift of a profound kindness - remembering our goodness - hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
As You Have Done for Me
If you were here
I would put my hand
on your heart
and hold it there
until our breaths
became a single tide,
hold it there until
I could feel the moment
when you remember
your infinite value.
It’s so easy to forget
we are treasure.
So easy to lose track
of our own immeasurable worth.
The chest rusts shut.
We think we are empty.
Amazing how easily
we are fooled into believing
we’re paupers.
Sometimes it takes another
to remind us
we have always been
not only the treasure
but also the key.
Though the hinges
are a metaphor,
the treasure is not.
We were made to open,
to share our priceless gift,
to press our hands
to each other’s hearts
until we all remember.
by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommerahundredfallingveils.com
Photo by Dan Farrell on Unsplash
It’s easy to judge and berate ourselves for getting distracted, especially when we find ourselves on social media rather than attending to the things that matter most to us - the projects, conversations, commitments that we know are most meaningful in our lives. But when we see that our distraction is a result of something very tender - our attempts to not feel grief at how little control we have of how things turn out, and at the realisation that everything, even what matters mosts, ends - then perhaps we can understand ourselves in a way that kindles our courage and compassion.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might find a kinder way to hold the fearful tender parts of ourselves and help them to step in when they would rather we checked our email, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
The Discomfort of What Matters
Why, exactly, are we rendered so uncomfortable by concentrating on the things that matter to us - the things we thought we wanted to do with our lives - that we'd rather flee into distractions, which, by definition, are what we don't want to be doing with our lives? ... Whenever we succumb to distraction, we're attempting to flee a painful encounter with our finitude - with the human predicament of having limited time, and more especially, in the case of distraction, limited control over that time, which makes it impossible to feel certain about how things will turn out...
When you try to focus on something you deem important, you're forced to face your limits, an experience that feels especially uncomfortable precisely because the task at hand is one you value so much... You're obliged to give up your godlike fantasies and to experience your lack of power over things you care about...
What we think of as 'distractions' ... are just the places we go to seek relief from the discomfort of confronting limitation... 'Checking your phone beneath the dinner table' is what you do because it's hard to focus on the conversation - because listening takes effort and patience and a spirit of surrender, and because what you hear might upset you, so checking your phone is naturally more pleasant.
The most effective way to sap distraction of its power is to stop expecting things to be otherwise, to accept that this is simply what it feels like for finite humans to commit ourselves to the kinds of demanding and valuable tasks that force us to confront our limited control over how our lives unfold... There is a very down-to-earth kind of liberation in grasping that there are certain truths about being a limited human from which you'll never be liberated. You don't get to dictate the course of events. And the paradoxical reward for accepting reality's constraints is that they no longer feel so constraining.
Oliver Burkeman, from 'Four Thousand Weeks'
Photo by Dimitri Tyan on Unsplash
We're conditioned to think of ourselves and other people as in need of fixing, and it makes it so difficult for us to open to one another's beauty and mystery. So what if we could cultivate eyes and hearts of wonder at the luminescent half-moon of one another's presence, and receive one another as rivers do as they give their power and beauty to one another?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might walk a path of loving mutual inclusion, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Love
Though I am undeniably broken,
I come to you with no need to be fixed.
I come to you the way one river
Meets another river - not joining
Out of thirst, but because
there is so much power
And beauty in giving oneself
To another, in moving
Through the world together.
I come to you the way the half moon
Comes into the yard - I could be more
Whole, but in the meantime,
I will bring you everything
I have.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
ahundredfallingveils.comPhoto by nousnou iwasaki on Unsplash
Sometimes we catch a glimpse of ourselves that shows us that we are not as small as we think, and we start to see the shining beauty and brilliance that we are. Knowing ourselves this way can open us up to a deeper appreciation of the beauty of others, and offers us a vibrant, compassionate path towards the generosity and creativity that is available to every one of us.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about about opening to what we really are, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
The proximity of death, the ultimate failure, seems to open us this way. In his novel the idiot, Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote a thinly veiled account of the time the tsar played a terrible joke on Dostoyevsky and his circle of revolutionary intellectual friends. The czar had them all arrested. And then one morning they were awakened at dawn and told they were to be executed. As Dostoyevsky rode to the execution with his friends in an open wagon, a strange sensation began to overcome him. He felt a spacious, oceanic sense of time. He felt as if the limits of time had opened wide. In a few minutes he would die, but he felt as if he had all the time in the world to do what he needed to do. What he needed to do, he now realised, was to say goodbye to his comrades for the final time. He did this in a full and leisurely way, the great love he bore for his companions welling up to the bursting point. And then he decided to spend his last moments on earth looking around at the world for the last time. As he did so, he found himself gazing at the tin roof of a nearby barn. A brilliant morning sun was shining, and a great burst of sunlight shone off the tin roof. Suddenly he knew for certain that this was what he would become. In a few minutes he would die, and he would become this blazing, radiant light. This knowledge filled him with an ecstasy so intense he thought that if it went on for even another minute, he wouldn't be able to bear it. It was then that the czar’s captain told them it was all a joke. The czar had only wanted to frighten them. They wouldn't die after all. Dostoyevksy was changed forever by this experience. It showed him what he really was. It took him to the core of his being, and he was a different man for the rest of his life.
Alan Lew, from ‘This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared’Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash
*Language is a doorway through which we can step into new relationships with the world and with one another, and as such our ways of speaking and listening are a profound kind of power. We are changed by what we say and by what others say. So how do we find ways with language that honour its power, and that open up possibilities and understanding for one another? And how might we be ones who, by our listening, gift others around us with the possibility of speech, so they they can bring themselves and their powers of creation fully to the world?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about about giving name to what would otherwise be hidden, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
In Hebrew the term davar (דבר) means both ‘word’ and 'deed.’ Thus to say something is to do something. I love you. I hate you. I forgive you. I am afraid. Who knows what such words do, but whatever it is, it can never be undone. Something lay hidden in the heart that is irrevocably released through speech into time, is given substance and tossed like a stone into the pool of history, where the concentric rings lap out endlessly.
Words are power, essentially the power of creation. By my words I both discover and create who I am. By my words I elicit a word from you. Through our converse we create each other.
Frederick Buechner
Photo by chris liu on Unsplash
*Can we learn to live with the certainty that we'll lose the ones we love, and they will lose us, without tuning out, avoiding, denying or imagining that it's some form of punishment? Can we learn how to bring together the fullness of the joys of loving as well as the sorrows?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might find ways to help one another enter into the fierce grace of living in a world in which love and loss are inseparable, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week, written by our dear friend and partner in Thirdspace, Neena Sims
Falling
There is a moment upon waking
full of grace
empty of knowledge, free of suffering
the length of a breath - only and then we’re falling,
thrown once more
into the certain heart-wrenching knowledge
that he’s dead
that she’s ill
that our beloved is leaving - or we are our greatest fears made flesh
our cherished tomorrows torn asunder - we’re left grasping and gasping Perhaps this is what it’s like to be born,
to arrive blinking and crying into the light Perhaps this is what Eve accepted and Adam received:
that to be human is to know
to be human is to wake-up
to be human is to keep breathing -
big painful gulps of paradise that to be human is to fall
again and again
not from grace,
but into it.
Neena Sims
Photo by Bruce Christianson on Unsplash
*We easily forget that we are quite literally born of the Earth, which is itself the cradle and origin of the life we call our own and the life of everything around us. And in our forgetfulness, we easily forget ourselves and the wonder and mystery of a life we were born into without our say-so and without any instruction manual. Sometimes, it's necessary to shift our attention so we can rekindle our sense of belonging, hope and devotion to the world which we call home.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might keep reminding ourselves of the beauty and mystery from which we come, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Sometimes the desire to be lost again, as long ago, comes over me like a vapor. With growth into adulthood, responsibilities claimed me, so many heavy coats. I didn’t choose them, I don’t fault them, but it took time to reject them. Now in the spring I kneel, I put my face into the packets of violets, the dampness, the freshness, the sense of ever-ness. Something is wrong, I know it, if I don’t keep my attention on eternity. May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful. May I stay forever in the stream. May I look down upon the windflower and the bull thistle and the coreopsis with the greatest respect.
Teach the children. We don’t matter so much, but the children do. Show them daisies and the pale hepatica. Teach them the taste of sassafras and wintergreen. The lives of the blue sailors, mallow, sunbursts, the moccasin flowers. And the frisky ones—inkberry, lamb’s-quarters, blueberries. And the aromatic ones—rosemary, oregano. Give them peppermint to put in their pockets as they go to school. Give them the fields and the woods and the possibility of the world salvaged from the lords of profit. Stand them in the stream, head them upstream, rejoice as they learn to love this green space they live in, its sticks and leaves and then the silent, beautiful blossoms.
Attention is the beginning of devotion.
Mary Oliver, from 'Upstream'
Photo by Jachan DeVol on Unsplash
*One of the characteristics of being human is that we have the capacity to transcend ourselves - to grow beyond narrow conceptions of ourselves, to imagine and live into new possibilities, to unfold creatively into ways of living and knowing that give us a chance to bring our own gifts to others. It can be painful when we try to resist this happening, or when we try to walk the path of our own development alone.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might see and support one another in the process of dropping our leaves so that new ones can grow, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Preparing the Way
So long as you haven’t experienced this: to die and so to grow, you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth. —GOETHE
To die is not a bad thing. Cells die every day. Paradoxically, it is how the body lives. Casings shed. Coverings fall away. New growth appears. It is how we stay vital. Likewise, ways of thinking die like cells, and we suffer greatly when we refuse to let what’s growing underneath make its way as the new skin of our lives. It is the stubbornness with which we refuse to let what’s growing underneath come through that pains us. It is the fear that nothing is growing underneath that feeds our despair. It is the moment that we cease growing in any direction that is truly deadly. When resisting this process, we become a troubled guest, moaning like a human crow. We double the pain of living when we try to stop the emergence that all life goes through. Imagine if trees never shed their leaves, or if waves never turned over, or if clouds never dumped their rain and disappeared. I say this as much to remind myself as you: Little deaths prevent big deaths. What matters most is waiting its turn underneath all that is expending itself to prepare the way.
Mark Nepo, from 'The Book of Awakening'
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
*Genuine communication is a kind of intimacy in which we let ourselves be changed and affected by the gifts brought by the other person we're communicating with. In this way it's different from other forms of speaking (convincing, making a point, offloading). And it requires of us a certain kind of receptivity not just to the other, but to what's going on with ourselves as we speak and listen.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might watch our capacity to receive while we're in the midst of conversation, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
“To communicate is to enter the other, while watching ourselves carefully, to enter without usurping…to usurp the other is to annul them, to prevent them from returning the gift; it is the refusal to accept their discrete word; it is to violate his inner home without allowing him to enter ours; it is the arrogance of someone who believes themselves to be an entirely fecundating force and refuses to receive. The univocal gift, without reciprocity… is not communication, but violation.”
MF Sciacca
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash
*Are feelings like objects, like forces, like waves, like eruptions? The metaphors we use for what we feel profoundly shape how we'll respond to them. Should we let them pass, push them away, be overwhelmed by them? Or, as we consider in this conversation, perhaps we could treat them as beings in their own right, with their own kind of intelligence, sensitivity, commitments, and ways of relating to the world. When we see our feelings and the feelings of others this way, we become more inclined to be curious, to listen, to bear witness.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about ways we can include what we might ordinarily try to dominate, ignore or push away, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Since I've been a child, I've been in an antagonistic relationship with an important part of myself. I have consistently tried to ignore, repress, or force my feelings away. I have tried to create unnatural feelings or force away feelings that were present. I've denied I was angry, when in fact I was furious. I have told myself there must be something wrong with me for feeling angry, when anger was a reasonable and logical response to the situation. I have told myself things didn't hurt, when they hurt very much. I have told myself stories such as "That person didn't mean to hurt me"... "I need to be more understanding". The problem was that I had already been too understanding of the other person and not understanding and compassionate enough with myself. I have tried to use spiritual energy, mental energy, and even physical exertion to not feel what I need to feel to be healthy and alive. Emotional control has been a survival behaviour for me. I can thank that behaviour for helping me get through many years and situations where I didn't have any better options. But I have learned a healthier behaviour - accepting my feelings. We are meant to feel. Part of our dysfunction is trying to deny or change that. Part of our recovery means learning to go with the flow of what we're feeling and what our feelings are trying to tell us. We are responsible for our behaviours but we do not have to control our feelings. We can let them happen. And we can learn to embrace, enjoy, and experience - feel - the emotional part of ourselves.
Melody Beattie, from 'The Language of Letting Go'Photo by Ahmad Odeh on Unsplash
*Many of us have grown up immersed in a culture that teaches us to be anywhere but 'here'... to feel an emptiness we imagine we must fill from outside ourselves, to pursue what takes us far from our most genuine needs, to hide from one another the effect that doing so has on us. Turning back towards our own lives isn't easy, but it always begins with a choice not to continue to abandon ourselves and, with some simple attention and care towards one another, it is something we can help one another with.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about ways we can be of profound support to each other in choosing our lives, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Fast Forward
The awkwardness of this silence. Let me fill the space with whatever. Any nonsense is better than this. The sinking shame of a mistake. Let me make all the ‘sorry’ or 'back off' noises. Move the spotlight from my disgrace. The dread of beginning again. Let me delay just one more day… The nagging need I won’t admit. Netflix! Ebay! What’s App! A prospect dashed by disappointment. ‘I’m fine. I’m fine.’ (Oh God, I wish I was fine.) And then there are moments, Quiet still moments Before my itchy finger can hit the button. I realise that fast forward isn’t doing what it promised. I’m still here. Doubts still perched on my shoulder. Fear still churning my gut. 3-year-old me still wailing in my throat. One day, curiosity calls before the dread. I peel off the 'fast forward' sticker from the button. There it is in faded red letters... ‘Abandon Yourself.’ The betrayal is complete. Maybe this time will be different. If I can just stay still for a moment longer I can resist the easy fix. If I can gather up that shaking part of myself and tell her, ‘It’s okay. I’m here. Let’s feel it all together…’ Not to abandon. To be my own companion. Maybe this time, I can choose.
By Debbie DanonHere’s a link to the poem on Debbie’s website: https://www.debbiedanon.com/blog/fast-forward
*We're mostly told that our job is to be in control of life - that's the whole narrative of 'self-improvement' and 'progress' and 'optimisation' that permeates much of contemporary culture. But it's an interpretation of life that barely meets life's real conditions - that we're always in the middle of things, and that many things keep on falling apart and coming together quite without our say-so. So can we find a different story to live in, one that allows us to receive our lives rather than stand outside them, and one that supports us in welcoming and participating, in giving and receiving, in being with what comes as well as bringing ourselves to what comes?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about 'dancing' or 'playing' in life rather than trying to 'engineer' it, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
In Between
Life is a good teacher and a good friend. Things are always in transition, if we could only realise it. Nothing ever sums itself up in the way that we like to dream about. The off-center, in-between state is an ideal situation, a situation in which we don’t get caught and we can open our hearts and minds beyond limit. It’s a very tender, nonaggressive, open-ended state of affairs.
Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.
From ‘Things Fall Apart’ by Pema ChödrönPhoto by Ben Collins on Unsplash
*If you sit long enough, and still, the world might reveal itself in ways you had not, yet, imagined. If you'll dance with the people and things of your life, you might find they come forward and dance with you in return. Because the world is always offering us to our imagination... and our capacity to be in the world 'as if' is one that we don't always remember to draw upon.
This week's Turning Towards Life is conversation about how the world is always being shaped by the way we're engaging in it, and shaping us in return, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
If you sit long enough
If you sit long enough, and still, the birds will come and you will see that the world you thought was all yours to carry all alone has only a veil between it and all the other worlds. The birds know this and delight to draw your gaze and ignite your heart by pulling back the curtain and modelling what it is to live and build and feed and grow trusting that all you will ever need has already been provided. Possessing such wisdom why wouldn't you sing and shout and show off your colours in loopy flights, and try, for the millionth time to dance on an acorn?
by Beth Rookwood
Photo by Gary Bendig on Unsplash
*We're taught by our culture to think in polarities - something is either good, or bad; worthwhile, or a waste of time; valuable, or worthless. And because of this we often judge ourselves and our lives in polarised terms too - we're broken, or whole; empty, or full - which in turn leads us into efforting to 'get' the side of the polarity we judge as the right one. Where does this polarised thinking lead us? And might there be another way?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a dive into the depths beneath and beyond polarisation, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Growing downward
Be broken to be whole.
Twist to be straight.
Be empty to be full.
Wear out to be renewed.
Have little and gain much.
Have much and get confused.
So wise souls hold to the one, and test all things against it.
Not showing themselves, they shine forth.
Not justifying themselves, they’re self-evident.
Not praising themselves, they’re accomplished.
Not competing, they have in all the world no competitor.
What they used to say in the old days,
“Be broken to be whole,” was that mistaken?
Truly, to be whole is to return.
Ursula K Le Guin, translation from 'Tao Te Ching' by Lao Tzu
Photo by Motoki Tonn on Unsplash
*We've all selected parts of us that we present to the world, while other perhaps wilder parts of us have been pushed to the margins, as a strategy we chose earlier in our lives so we could belong, or be safe. In our adulthood, though, there's an opportunity for those precious exiled parts - with their many gifts - to be returned to our lives. They can do this with our own help, when we discover our own capacity, love and courage - and with the help of others who are generous, brave and loving enough to see beyond the 'stall of goods' we've laid out for the world so far.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about being the ones who welcome the wholeness of others in just this way, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week, written by Lizzie
Here's to Wildness
I am the jelly wrestler. Peeking out from my everyday way of being, This part that I put away long ago for fear of it taking over. It did take over once. And I was too small to handle it. And now I’m stronger, more grounded, more me. It’s asking to come back again. And here I am present and ready. So tentative, the thought of it is embarrassing. Frightening even. And somehow others can see this in me. And are asking it forth. And I’m willing to let it have a voice. Let it take action. I can feel it’s gifted. Gifts to be given. To me. To others. To life. And turning towards it might be shameful. I wonder if I can bare it. What help do I need ? What would make it safe enough ? Welcome Jelly Wrestler. I’m here and I can handle you. Here’s to wildness. Freedom and more of me.
Photo by MIKHAIL VASILYEV on Unsplash
*What would happen if we could see that the many 'young parts' of ourselves, with their fears and worries, with their plans and advice, are doing their best to take care of us - even if the information they have is partial and, sometimes, applies only to a much earlier time in our lives. Could we come at them with kindness, appreciation and welcome instead of trying to dominate and suppress them? Could we bring them the gifts of the deeper patience and spaciousness that we are so that we can benefit from their presence rather than being gripped by them? And could we extend the same kindness to others?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about all that can come from being a space of welcome and curiosity- hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
One Source of Bad Information
by Robert Bly
There’s a boy in you about three years old who hasn’t learned a thing for thirty Thousand years. Sometime it’s a girl. This child had to make up its mind How to save you from death. He said things like: ``Stay home. Avoid elevators. Eat only elk.’’ You live with this child, but you don’t know it. You’re in the office, yes, but live with this boy At night. He’s uninformed, but he does want To save your life. And he has. Because of this boy You survived a lot. He’s got six big ideas. Five don’t work. Right now he’s repeating them to you.
Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash
*We go around our lives hiding much of ourselves from view, 'setting out a stall' that we've learned to set out through all that's happened for us so far. There are gifts behind the face we present to the world, gifts that could be brought for the benefit of many. But often we run from the very truthfulness about what's peeking out from the shadows, what's waiting in our messy, beautiful selves, because we've assumed that what is hidden is somehow inherently shameful, or because we've not yet felt welcome to bring it.
If we had the right kind of safety, the right kind of support, the right kind of conversation, and if we were to be held in relationship with the loving, uncompromising, truthful presence of another, we might find that we could ever more bring our fullness into the world - and that is what coaching (as well as parenting, friendship, community) could be for.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about all of this - hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week, written by our friend Kate Van Akin:
Where love flows through
A prayer / invocation inspired by the PCC 'Y' community
May this be a space of welcome A space where you are seen, unmasked and bathed in loving attention. Mine - and your own. May we discover in our time together what is peeking out from the shadows yearning to be noticed. May our space be big enough to hold both the stories you tell about yourself and the truth of your existence. May I see beyond those stories to the unique, wondrous beauty of your soul and may I shine a light on your beauty and your truth while honouring and dignifying all parts of you. May I stand tall in bringing you my observations and offerings starting close in, inviting you two steps further along the tightrope than you may have gone alone. May this be a space where love flows through, and where our hearts can speak to each other freely.
by Kate Van Akin
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
*It's natural that the process of our growing into adulthood results in our leaving a whole lot of ourselves behind - as we navigate what it takes to belong, to not be shamed, to stay safe, to build a life with some measure of predicability in it. But alongside all of that, what gifts and wonders, what song and words, what works of the creativity that is uniquely human might we bring to the world in service of others? And how might we support one another in doing that?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the faith in one another's bigness - and in our own - that can help us step into what's calling, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
I believe in all that has never yet been spoken
I believe in all that has never yet been spoken. I want to free what waits within me so that what no one has dared to wish for may for once spring clear without my contriving. If this is arrogant, God, forgive me, but this is what I need to say. May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children. Then in these swelling and ebbing currents, these deepening tides moving out, returning, I will sing you as no one ever has, streaming through widening channels into the open sea.
Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Anita Barrows & Joanna Macy)
Photograph of Durdle Door by Justin Wise
*Many of us avoid ever really saying what we think is true because we're afraid it will rupture the relationships that matter to us. But it's our truthfulness with one another - especially about our experiences, our values, our promises and commitments - that's so often called for if we're going to step forward into the unknown future together. So what about learning to be the ones who, in the face of rupture in our relationships, help one another to return and, in doing so, help one another tell the truth?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about 'becoming the weavers of that circle that could bind us' - in our personal relationships, communities, and society - hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week, written by our friend Craig O'Flaherty:
Homecoming
Aloneness is a journey within, as we seek to unlock doors we’ve closed behind us. Its only through each other that our hesitant seeds might break through a baked, red earth. How might we become the weavers of that circle that could bind us? Craig O'Flaherty
Photo by Lubo Minar on Unsplash
*Even if we're doing work we really care about, many of us are steeped in a narrative that our work should always be 'busy' and that it is only 'work' if it profoundly depletes us. But in exhausting ourselves, in living in the 'heroic' narrative of always more and always faster, can we really say that we get to bring our width, and depth, and wisdom as a gift to others? And what is the cost to the world that so many of us orient in this way to our contribution?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about all of this, and about the humility called for to speak about what we care about even when we're all 'never done', hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week.
There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralises our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.
Thomas Merton
Photo by José Martín Ramírez Carrasco on Unsplash
*What does it take to let go so that something new that is calling has a chance to be freed up in our lives? And what does it take to be the ones who can support others - especially those we love and want to cling to - to let go when it's called for?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about hope, grief, leaving, and letting ourselves be changed, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week, from a song by 'Villagers'. You can find a performance of the song here.
Set the Tigers Free
Farewell to my only friend You've been so good to me Now the carnival has ended Let's set the tigers free The spring was always early And the winter never came But since I got this hunger It just hasn't been the same I'm leaving for the great wide open plains Leaving while this holy spark remains I see you've written promises to make me stay But it really doesn't matter now anyway I'm leaving True love feeds on absences like pleasure feeds on pain So no matter where I'm standing I still love you all the same And I hope you feel the same way when its your turn to disappear I'll be cheering from the sidelines with a sandwich and a beer And all at once I step outside into the wind and rain I let it wash my weary eyes and see you do the same (And all at once I step outside into the wind and rain I let it wash my weary eyes and see you do the same) by Villagers (song lyrics by Conor O'Brien)
Photo by Derek Liang on Unsplash
*As Maya Stein writes in her beautiful poem this week, our lives aren't 'a stage rehearsal where you skip the high notes to save your voice'. So this week we wonder together about what it is that has us hold back, and hold others back, from bringing ourselves fully into our lives... 'the songs we could be singing while the light takes its own sweet time to change'.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about, in part, an aspect of diversity and inclusion: can we welcome the 'otherness' of others and the 'otherness' of the parts of ourselves that have not yet had a voice? Hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week, written by poet Maya Rachel Stein:
press play
Listen, friend. This isn’t a poker game, some thick-smoked room to keep your cards hidden until the final ante. This isn’t the stage rehearsal where you skip the high notes to save your voice, or those practice runs in the parking lot with a map of orange cones guiding you into reverse and parallel. Yes, the tide will keep going out and back like clockwork. We will always look to measure and mete out our efforts in incremental intervals, testing the recipe of our purpose, licking our fingers clean. We will want to glimpse what is too much or not enough without the sacrifice of embarrassment or, worse, the fallen soufflé of failure. But my goodness, the songs we could be singing while the light takes its own sweet time to change. The dust we could be kicking up
as the dance finds us on inexpert legs, spilling out the door and into the waiting streets.Maya Steinmayastein.com
Photo by Jackson David on Unsplash
*It can seem so difficult to connect to one another and listen to one another, but when we soften and open and quieten down it's not beyond us to know others and their worlds with enormous depth and sensitivity. As Lizzie says in this episode, we're made for connection, because we were never really as separate as we feel to begin with.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about our shared heritage as participants in a vast unfolding process that brought all of us into being, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
Here we might observe that the basic mood of the future might well be one of confidence in the continuing revelation that takes place in and through the earth. If the dynamics of the universe from the beginning shaped the course of the heavens, lighted the sun, and formed the earth, if this same dynamism brought forth the continents and seas and atmosphere, if it awakened life in the primordial cell and then brought into being the unnumbered variety of living beings, and finally brought us into being and guided us safely through the turbulent centuries, there is reason to believe that this same guiding process is precisely what has awakened in us our present understanding of ourselves and our relation to this stupendous process. Sensitized to such guidance from the very structure and functioning of the universe, we can have confidence in the future that awaits the human venture.
Thomas Berry, “The New Story,” in The Dream of the Earth, 137
Photo by Beat Schuler on Unsplash
*We return this week to our exploration of relational power and ask what would happen if we gave up using our power to control people (and in doing so our attempts to get what we want) and instead used our power to liberate the creativity and contribution of others? And how would this shape our parenting, our leadership, and our friendships?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about ways in which we might turn whatever power we are given from 'control' into love, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week:
The Relational Power of Parenting
I have seen people who loved children enough to realize that mere unilateral obedience is the least of virtues, valuable for preventing children from running out in front of trucks but with little use for understanding or nurturing children’s hopes, dreams, and creative abilities. Merely demanding obedience gives adults little power to teach children to think for themselves, to make their own decisions, develop their own values or creativity, or grow in mutually loving relationships with their parents and others. Parenting that exercises relational power is hard work. It takes a lot of patience, self-control, emotional strength, and a willingness to bear much of the price for the children’s mistakes. But the reward for relational parenting is a greater joy at children’s accomplishments, and a deeper, more mutual love as children develop their own relational power.
From Process Relational Philosophy by Robert C Mesle
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
*It's easy to use whatever power we have in the world as a way to make ourselves feel safe and in control. But what if we used our power not to reinforce being in a position of 'power-over-others' but instead to cultivate the conditions in which mutuality, emergence, and reciprocity between us could be born - in our organisations, with our life-partners and romantic partners, in friendships, as parents?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about ways in which we might turn whatever power we are given from 'control' into love, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Relational Power as Love
Faced with inevitable inequalities, people with relational power will choose to bear a larger burden so that the weaker have a chance to develop their own relational power. Unlike unilateral power, relational power is not competitive in the sense of being mutually exclusive. Relational power is like love: The more we love each other, the more both of us can grow in love. To achieve this state will require that we take turns carrying the burden of love when one of us is less loving, but, in the long run, your goal is to increase my love, my relational power, and for me to increase yours.
As Loomer explains, “In the life of relational power, the unfairness means that those of larger size must undergo greater suffering and bear a greater burden in sustaining those relationships that hopefully may heal the brokenness of the seamless web of interdependence in which we all live.”
People who live in relational power discover values to which they would otherwise have been blind. By listening with active openness, they help other people to articulate their own values more clearly and so to bring a richer vision of value into the relationship. “Under the relational conception of power, what is truly for the good of anyone or all of the relational partners is not a preconceived good. The true good is not a function of controlling or dominating influence. The true good is emergent from deeply mutual relationships.”
From Process Relational Philosophy by Robert C Mesle
Photo by Dan Stark on Unsplash
*It can be so hard, and so painful, to apologise sometimes. But what would happen if we saw that rupture and repair were an inevitable part of every relationship? If we knew that it is the very act of repair that knits us together into something more real, more durable, more connected?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about a loving, mutually respectful, dignified path we can follow when we're in difficulty with others, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
How to Apologise
by Ellen Bass
Cook a large fish—choose one with many bones, a skeleton
you will need skill to expose, maybe the flying
silver carp that’s invaded the Great Lakes, tumbling
the others into oblivion. If you don’t live
near a lake, you’ll have to travel.
Walking is best and shows you mean it,
but you could take a train and let yourself
be soothed by the rocking
on the rails. It’s permitted
to receive solace for whatever you did
or didn’t do, pitiful, beautiful
human. When my mother was in the hospital,
my daughter and I had to clear out the home
she wouldn’t return to. Then she recovered
and asked, incredulous,
/How could you have thrown out all my shoes/?
So you’ll need a boat. You could rent or buy,
but, for the sake of repairing the world,
build your own. Thin strips
of Western red cedar are perfect,
but don’t cut a tree. There’ll be
a demolished barn or downed trunk
if you venture further.
And someone will have a mill.
And someone will loan you tools.
The perfume of sawdust and the curls
that fall from your plane
will sweeten the hours. Each night
we dream thirty-six billion dreams. In one night
we could dream back everything lost.
So grill the pale flesh.
Unharness yourself from your weary stories.
Then carry the oily, succulent fish to the one you hurt.
There is much to fear as a creature
caught in time, but this
is safe. You need no defense. This
is just another way to know
you are alive.
Photo by Steve Mushero on Unsplash
*What would we do if we found different questions to ask, bigger ones, than the habitual questions we're asking of life without even knowing we're asking?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about what we might do if we stopped contracting away from life, if we undid our own everyday self-diminishment, if we trusted that we had gifts to bring and that we, and others, could be blessed by the giving, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week, chosen for us by Lizzie.
Questions to Ask When Waking by Bernadette Miller What would you do if you really knew that life was wanting to sing through you? What would you say if your words could convey prayers that the world was waiting to pray? What would you be if your being could free some piece of the world’s un-whispered beauty? What would you stop to bless and caress if you believed that blessing could address our painful illusions of brokenness? What would you harvest from heartache and pain if you understood loss as a way to regain the never-forsaken terrain of belonging? What would you love if your love could ignite a sea full of stars on the darkest night?
Photo by Jared Erondu at Unsplash
*The predominant narrative in our wider culture is that human beings were made for conflict, for dominating one another, for 'getting ahead' of one another. But that's only one story. What if human beings were made for meeting one another, for welcome, for mutual wonder and mutual seeing, for cooperation, for the intertwining of our many gifts? For giving, even when we ourselves have not received and are hurting. For seeing without being seen first. For holding without being held before.
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about what it might take to really welcome one another, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week, chosen for us by Justin.
When we meet
by Emma Ashru Jones
When we meet I don’t just want to meet your perfectly polished self; The productive, capable, holding-it-all-together extraordinaire. I want to meet you. I want to meet your middle-of-the-night fears and the whispers of your longings. I want to meet your heart and to hear what she has to say. I want to meet your wildest desires and the dreams so tender they dare not be declared. I want to greet your despair at the door and welcome her in from the cold And offer your confusion a cushion to lean back into. I want to welcome your body that has carried you this far, To give her a place to rest and be recognised - wise one that she is. I want to listen to the part of you that is beyond language And to give your imagination a paintbrush and let her play. I want you to meet your whole self anew, And to see the truth: That you never needed to be fixed. That your life was never a problem to be solved, But a moment to be met.
Emma Ashru Jones www.emmaashrujones.com
Photo by Bruno Nascimento on Unsplash
Turning Towards Life 'Live' - an online event for everyone - is coming on Sunday 18th April 2021 2pm-5pm UK.Join us! Details are herehttps://bit.ly/2NYkeNC
*How finite everything is, including the time we will get to spend with any of our great loves. And how much we want to turn away from this, avoiding feeling too much of our love in an attempt to try and avoid the inevitable grief that will come with our losses. But to feel it all is one of the great gifts given to us as human beings. So how can we find a way to stay open, ready, and receptive in the midst of it all?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about what it might take to show up for our lives in all their beauty and all their losses, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week, written by Lizzie.
Vulnerable
Connection and Death are not fair as things that go side by side. The more I love the more there is to lose. Of course I just want to not love, then there’s nothing to lose. But then I look at your cheeks, and your lips and the creases behind your knees. And there’s nothing else to do but sink my face into your neck and snuggle. To the point where you’re annoyed with me. To love and to need, and to know that it’s all in the context of temporary. To feel and to laugh and to know it’s all going to end far too soon. It’s too much for my all too human and clingy heart. It will surely break. Be smashed to smithereens. Maybe it needs to break each and every day in preparation for the grand break? The one that will come when ‘the time’ is ‘that time’. I fearfully withdraw and within minutes I’m back there again, Asking to be loved, offering my love and planning how we can be together. Salivating at the ordinary moments of loading the dishwasher while you talk to me. Feeling my pulse race at the next time we can hug full body to body. Even letting our knees touch, rubbing cheeks, knocking glasses. Messing each other’s hair up in celebration. I know I could stay in that withdrawn, safe, small space too. And protect myself against this tsunami of grief that’s sadness. This avalanche of love. There’s too much at stake. Our hearts are too bare. Our skin is too receptive. To be able to stay there, open, ready, receptive. And yet, we’re here, in these bodies. The body holds us to this deal. What else is there to do but love and be broken open by life, by love, by connectedness? I’m done for. So are you. We all are. There’s no way out. From love. Lizzie Winn March 2021
Photo by Andrew Shelley on Unsplash
We're not machines, but we often treat ourselves as if we are. Many of us in our lives become 'busyness machines' or 'target-hitting machines'. But we feel, too, how small this is as a way to live a life. This week we are guided by Parker Palmer's luminous writing into a bigger question - 'What is it to be faithful to something bigger than ourselves?' It's a life-giving alternative that calls us into community, courage, and dedication to repairing and improving even what we know can't be repaired and improved in our lifetimes. Hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Here's our source for this week, chosen by Justin.
Standing and Acting in the Tragic Gap
“By the tragic gap I mean the gap between the hard realities around us and what we know is possible — not because we wish it were so, but because we’ve seen it with our own eyes.” —Parker J. Palmer
If we are to stand and act with hope in the tragic gap and do it for the long haul, we cannot settle for mere “effectiveness” as the ultimate measure of our failure or success. Yes, we want to be effective in pursuit of important goals. But when measurable, short-term outcomes become the only or primary standard for assessing our efforts, the upshot is as pathetic as it is predictable: we take on smaller and smaller tasks—the only kind that yield instantly visible results—and abandon the large, impossible but vital jobs we are here to do.
We must judge ourselves by a higher standard than effectiveness, the standard called faithfulness. Are we faithful to the community on which we depend, to doing what we can in response to its pressing needs? Are we faithful to the better angels of our nature and to what they call forth from us? Are we faithful to the eternal conversation of the human race, to speaking and listening in a way that takes us closer to truth? Are we faithful to the call of courage that summons us to witness to the common good, even against great odds? When faithfulness is our standard, we are more likely to sustain our engagement with tasks that will never end: doing justice, loving mercy, and calling the beloved community into being.
Parker PalmerPhoto by Ashim D’Silva on Unsplash
*What can happen when we share our 'selves' with each other, making our gifts, qualities and experiences available. How we grow through this, how we long for it, and how much we try to defend against it.
This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation of discovery: that our selves are not something we made on our own, but gifts given to us by the sharing of others. Hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Our source this week is chosen for us by Lizzie.
**XV.
by Wendell Berry**
Loving you has taught me the infinite longing of the self to be given away and the great difficulty of that entire giving, for in love to give is to receive and then there is yet more to give; and others have been born of our giving to whom the self, greatened by gifts, must be given, and by that giving be increased, until, self-burdened, the self, staggering upwards in years, in fear, hope, love, and sorrow, imagines, rising like a moon, a pale moon risen in daylight over the dark woods, the Self whose gift we and all others are, the self that is by definition given.
Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash
*The education most of us have had taught us how to know the answer, how to be right, and how to move quickly to solve problems. But, by and large, it didn't tell us much about how to be true to the one life we have, nor what kinds of practices of creativity, inquiry and attention might support us in that project.
This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might start to dignify and honour the unique possibilities of our own lives, guided by the wisdom of Marcus Aurelius, and hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Our source this week is chosen for us by Justin.
What is it in ourselves that we should prize?
Not just transpiration (even plants do that). Or respiration (even beasts and wild animals breathe.) Or being struck by passing thoughts. Or jerked like a puppet by your own impulses. Or moving in herds. Or eating, and relieving yourself afterwards. Then what is to be prized?
An audience clapping? No. No more than the clacking of their tongues. Which is all that public praise amounts to - a clacking of tongues.
So we throw out other people's recognition. What's left for us to prize?
I think it's this: to do (and not do) what we were designed for. That's the goal of all trades, all arts, and what each of them aims at: that the thing they create should do what it was designed to do. The nurseryman who cares for the vines, the horse trainer, the dog breeder - this is what they aim at. And teaching and education - what else are they trying to accomplish?
So that's what we should prize. Hold onto that, and you won't be tempted to aim at anything else.
And if you can't stop prizing a lot of other things? Then you'll never be free - free, independent, imperturbable. Because you'll always be envious and jealous, afraid that people might come and take it all away from you. Plotting against those who have them - those things you prize. People who need those things are bound to be a mess - and bound to take out their frustration on the gods. Whereas to respect your own mind - to prize it - will leave you satisfied with your own self, well integrated into your community and in tune with the gods as well - embracing what they allot you, and what they ordain.
Marcus Aurelius (121-180), from 'Meditations'Photo by Bench Accounting on Unsplash
What does it take to not just say 'yes' to our lives and to one another, but to bring our beauty, dignity, creativity and imagination in response? It's a different path to take from 'turning away', and equally different from 'passive acceptance'. Being a human affords us this possibility - that when we encounter fear, shame, wonder, injustice, confusion, or hope, we have the chance to muster a response that brings something new into the world. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about what it is to hold what we would rather not hold, and to answer it with beauty, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Our source this week is chosen for us by Lizzie, and is written by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.
Saying Yes
And could I, like this picture frame
hold any image I was given?
I think of the news last night—how I would rather not hold
what I saw there.
I think of what I learned just yesterday
about myself and notice how
I would rather push the image away.
But could I be like this picture frame
that will hold anything and in so doing
honor its importance? Honor
everything, no matter how mundane,
no matter how frightening,
as something worth knowing,
something essential to what it means to be alive,
a soup can, perhaps, a petunia, or a scream.
How easily the frame says yes to the world,
takes it in, anything, with no judgement,
and offers it whatever beauty it has.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Photo by pine watt on Unsplash
When we discover that we're not really separate from one another - that in a very ordinary way we are always deeply shaping and affecting one another - we also open to new ways that we might be of help to one another and care for one another. And we can also find that we can be profound teachers to one another - that we learn to see, feel, and hear in new ways by the very act of being present to each other. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the gifts of reciprocity, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Our source this week is chosen for us by Justin.
Learning to See
To learn to see, then, is not simply to trigger a pre-established circuitry but to acquire a new use of one’s own body; it is to enrich and recast the body image.
Put differently and more dramatically, to learn to see—or to hear or speak or feel—is to become a new self, a self that includes (as the previous self did not) perceiving, speaking, or feeling.
This new self emerges at the instigation of other selves already possessing the requisite dimensions of human existence. Just as there are no teachers without students, no husbands without wives, no parents without children, so there are no human selves without human others. For the same reasons, there is no unchanging, independent self. Self and other are nondual. It is as true to say that relationship creates both self and other as to say that self and other enter into and create a relationship.
Milton Scarborough
Photo by Edi Libedinsky on Unsplash
The possibilities of saying a 'bright shining no' where previously we've been in the habit of saying 'yes'. Or a 'bright shining yes' where we've been in the habit of saying 'no'. And on the possibility of newness, creativity and discovery when we greet other people's new ways with wonder and welcome. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about letting our genuineness into the world, and doing the same for the people around us, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Our source this week is written by Hollie Holden and chosen for us by Lizzie.
This Morning I Said No
This morning I said No when I meant No, In honour – and because of - of all the times I have said Yes instead.
Did it feel empowering? No, it did not. It felt frightening, Like risking it all. It felt like finally saying the thing That will make you not love me.
And it felt lonely and cold And I tried to suck it back in, Rewind the tape player, Kill the sound of the word With a knife.
Or paint over it with pastel colours And make you a cup of tea – Distract you from What I just showed you When no other word would come.
But she stayed there, Defiant, Finally freed from the Prison made of Pretty, acceptable, Please-love-me Yeses.
And I do not know what she will do next, This bright, emboldened No. She seems to like it here, Out in the wild.
So I am clearing out a room Full of things I thought I needed, So that she can stay.
by Hollie Holden
Photo by Pete Nuij on Unsplash
When we're faced with difference or conflict it's often easiest to turn away, to give up on ourselves and our own values, or to try to force others to agree with us. But what if we were to learn to trust the creative possibilities that arise precisely because we are different to one another? What if we found a way to enter together into the promise that our encounter with the difference of others - and the difference that lives inside us - can be a path that opens us to something we long for, something we need? This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about taking steps on the path to being opened and affected by one another, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source this week is written by Justin.
Where Conflict Goes
Whenever we bring our commitments, longing, plans and requests to others there’s the possibility of some kind of conflict. We could avoid this only if world were made up of billions of clones, designed to sweetly anticipate and accommodate our every need and wish. But because people are different from us in uncountable ways, we’re always called on to listen, to make ourselves vulnerable, to hear what we’re not expecting to hear and to feel what we’re not expecting to feel, if we’re going to navigate our difference with dignity and for the good of everyone.
Too often, perhaps because it feels safer, we try to find our way around conflict without doing any of this. We imagine we can force our way through (wishing for those clones, again) and in this way spare ourselves from encountering any real resistance, and from having to be changed by the encounter. Or we accommodate, keeping our own wishes, desires and requests quiet, silently and resentfully bending ourselves to fit in. Both of these positions diminish everyone involved. Both appear to keep us safe by keeping us out of contact with one another. And both, I know, are approaches I’ve fallen into countless times.
I’m reminded, though, that avoiding the heat of difference between us doesn’t make the conflict go away. It only changes its form – into silence, or resentment, or insincerity; or shifts its location – from the public realm to our inner lives, where our avoidance of outer conflict leaves us in ongoing conflict with ourselves.
Photo by Alora Griffiths on Unsplash
Asking for what we need is difficult for so many of us, because by genuinely asking we open ourselves up to the possibility that another person might respond in a way we're not expecting. Said another way, making genuine requests shows us that we're not - actually - in control of how other people show up in our lives. But at the same time, it's our capacity to request that opens up worlds - of dignity, mutual relationship, and the possibility that we might actually get met in a way that's much more solid, real and trustworthy than we've experienced so far. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the power and vulnerability of being someone who asks, and who can hear the answer; hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source this week is written by Lizzie.
Making Requests Ask for what I need. Requesting help. How vulnerable. My heart sits in another’s hands. They can say no. Or turn away. They can say yes too. I’m afraid of rejection. Of having needs. Do I even know what I need ? Life taught me pretty well, That independence is king. It’s the way to do life. But is it ? What if depending on others is life ? An allowing them to depend on me too ? And so asking, responding, opening. Turning inward and finding what’s mine. And then asking. Being in conversation. How brave I need to be. And how honouring of myself I need to be. Requests open up relationship. And then we have to swim, In what gets made. And it may open the world. But things may also have to end. And all that needs to be OK to make the request in the first place. What a rip to head into relating this way. And am I willing to take this risk. and say yes to life. Lizzie Winn
Photo by Neil Thomas on Unsplash
A conversation about the essential goodness of people, how it gets misdirected by our misunderstanding ourselves, and the gifts of people who see our goodness, support our stopping our usual defensive ways, and who gladly welcome our remaking… and the possibility of being that way for others… hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source this week is a passage adapted (with a little license to support our reading it out of context) from George Saunders‘ amazing new book ‘A Swim in the Pond in the Rain‘. A little context may be needed – the author is writing here about a story by Leo Tolstoy ‘Master and Man’, which describes the last day in the life of a man named Vasili, who has deeply misunderstood his life and directed his energies in self-centred ways that greatly limit him. We have made a few small changes here to make the source make more sense out of its context in the chapter ‘And Yet They Drove On’.
All the Way Ourselves Again
Transformation, when it happens, happens not through the total remaking of a person or the replacement of our habitual energy with some pure new energy but by a redirection of our (same old) energy.
What a relief this model of transformation is. What else do we have but what we were born with and have always, thus far, been served (and imprisoned) by? Say you’re a world-class worrier. If that worry energy gets directed at extreme personal hygiene, you’re “neurotic.” If it gets directed at climate change, you’re an “intense visionary activist.”
We don’t have to become an entirely new person to do better; our view just has to be readjusted, our natural energy turned in the right direction. We don’t have to swear off our powers or repent of who we are or what we like to do or are good at doing. Those are our horses; we just have to hitch them to the right, uh, sled.
What kept Vasili so small all his life? (What is keeping us so small now?) He wasn’t small, actually… He was infinite. He had access to as much great love as any of our beloved spiritual heroes… What was it that finally jolted him out of it? Well, it was truth. He saw that his idea of himself was untrue. His idea that he was himself was untrue. All of those years, he was only part of himself. He had made that part, was always making it and defending it, with his thoughts and his pride and his desire to win, which continually separated him, Vasili, from everything else. As that entity, Vasili, faded away, what was left behind discerned the fallacy and joined (rejoined) the great non-Vasili of it all.
If we could reverse the process… what we would see would be a mind gradually reasserting a series of lies: “You are separate” and “You are central” and “You are correct” and “Go forth and prove that you are better, that you are the best.”And then he would be all the way himself again.Adapted from ‘A Swim in the Pond in the Rain‘ by George Saunders, 2021Photo by Justin Wise at No 1 Highgate Swimming Pond
Perhaps one of the most difficult steps in each of our development, in our becoming more ourselves, is the push-back we get from the people around us - often the people who are closest-in to our lives. We find ourselves caught between the life that is longing to unfold into the world, and the parts of us that want to keep us safe from shame and disapproval. And at the same time, even as we long to bring ourselves in new ways, we find ourselves holding other people back in the name of staying safe - or at least staying familiar.
This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might undo this constricting way of relating to one another, so that we can act as a welcome to gifts that might not otherwise be brought into the world, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Here's our source, written by Lizzie:
Who do I become in disappointing ? *I don’t do what’s expected.
They try and shame me back.
To my habitual self. When I’m trying to be me.
But I want to keep the door open.
To living MY life. Not the one they envisage for me.
As I disappoint others. Maybe even my Mum.
I find a kind of emptiness that’s mine to explore.
A blank canvas that’s inviting me to life.
My precious life. The life that’s calling to me.
And which I know is my path.
I sit in stillness to find my ballast.
My centre propels the noise to the side. For now.
Now when I look at life itself.
I open to the gifts being bestowed.
And dedicate myself to listening.
And the others might get to live something else.
That wouldn’t come if I keep dancing the dance.
And what if by dancing the dance I am stealing.
Stealing an experience away that’s needed.
And which might, with courage, bring untold blessings.*
Photo by Thomas Griesbeck on Unsplash
"Boundaries seem to be the only way that human beings can find a place to stand, a place to begin, a place from which to move out" writes Richard Rohr, and at the same time we need to be able to fight and engage with boundaries before we discover what we really need or want. So what does it take to be one who makes 'enabling constraints' for ourselves so that the full possibility of our lives can be focussed enough to come into the world? And what does it take to be one who extends trust, ground and freedom to others as they make their own boundaries and declarations? This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about our capacity to limit ourselves as a path to freedom, and to allow others to do the same, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Here's our source for this week, from Richard Rohr:
Necessary Boundaries, Enabling Constraints
Law, tradition, and boundaries—what I call /Order/—seem to be necessary both to reveal and to limit our basic egocentricity. Such containers make at least some community, family, and marriage possible. Boundaries seem to be the only way that human beings can find a place to stand, a place to begin, a place from which to move out. Even those who think they don’t have any boundaries usually do. We discover them when we trespass against them.
The human soul flourishes on solid ground, especially in the first years of life. Human beings seem to need to fight and engage with something before they can take it seriously—and before they can discover what they really need or want. The people who never fight religion, guilt, parents, injustice, friends, marriage partners, and laws usually don’t respect their own power, importance, and freedom. They remain content with the external values of the first “lawful” container, instead of working to discover their own.
I am trying to hold us inside a very creative tension, because both law and freedom are necessary for spiritual growth.The psyche cannot live with everything changing every day, everything a matter of opinion, everything relative. There must be a sound container holding us long enough so we can move beyond survival mode. There has to be solid ground, trust, and shared security, or we cannot move outward.
Photo by Manki Kim on Unsplash
To be human is to learn... but very often our learning is made much more difficult by narratives of shame, or our demands for perfection, or our worries about not being welcomed by others in our unfinishedness. Learning is both what we are made for, and among the most difficult endeavours of our lives, particularly the learning about ourselves that requires ongoing patience, generous kindness, and rigorous attention and self-observation. But when we start to see learning as a never-finished practice, new horizons can open up for us. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about what can happen when we see our lives as an ongoing path, and learning as a craft, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source this week is brought to us by Lizzie, and written by Kae Tempest, from their book 'On Connection'
“I can’t summon connection down from the ether and expect it to land in my lap. But I can do everything in my power to create a welcoming environment for it when it does decide to show up. This is the same for self-awareness. I can’t expect deep revelations about the content of my character or my life’s trajectory, or why I tend to do X when challenged by Y - to just pop by when I’m frying onions. I have to put in a great deal of work to notice my own behaviour and even more if I am hoping to transform it. It’s a craft. The work that I do on myself may not be evident in my daily exchanges, but little by little If I continue, I hope that my actions will reflect my changing mindset and next time, I promise myself I’ll do things differently. Getting on top of my shortcomings is not immediate; it’s endless. It takes constant application. And even after years of it, I might think I have cracked it until I find myself reflected through the lens of a relationship, and I realise I am in exactly the same spot that was in years before. Repeating the same mistakes, apparently treading water the whole time.” Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash
In between our certainty that we’re too small, or too inadequate to meet life, and our fantasies (perhaps even expectations) of perfection, mastery of life, and personal power, there is a middle place. And the middle, if we’ll meet ourselves and one another there, is far from a place of mediocrity. Instead it’s a way in which we can be real with one another, truthful about our messiness and our gloriousness, and the messiness and gloriousness of life. Will you meet us there? This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation which invites a new understanding of ‘middling’ – less as an adjective, more as a verb, something we can actively do to find a dignified ‘right size’ in our lives; hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source this week is brought to us by Justin, and written by Maya Stein:
It looks like the sky is coming apart and together at the same time…
by Maya Stein https://bit.ly/3nJVKEu
And the body is holding its losses like a fist. And a fleshy hope
is opening to an unprecedented vastness. And whatever we think
we are leaving behind will keep insisting. And the things we desire
will elude us. And our efforts will pose as failure. And we will not recognize
how far we’ve come. And we will solve one problem and create another.
And we will feel broken. And we will not be broken. And the silence
will be deafening. And we will love destructively. And no one
will appear to be listening. And there will be too many doors
to choose from. And we will keep saying, “I don’t know how to do this.”
And we will be more capable than we ever imagined.
Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash
When something difficult or unwelcome happens, there are many reasons for us to contract away from our lives in an attempt to control what we're feeling. It's a kind of self-protection, yes, but can also be a kind of violence to ourselves. And it often cuts us off from what could most support us, open us, and hold us. So how about learning to connect to the memory of our vastness, and our intimacy with all of life, when we are triggered to retreat? This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about remembering the ways in which we already belong to life, and what might come from that; hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source this week is brought to us by Lizzie, and written by Jasmina Zukan:
*When the unexpected hit
Comes
Allow
Its raw violence
To force the air
Out of your lungs
From the inside out
Let it shatter
Your heart into
Million pieces
Watch it blow
Your center away
Like it was nothing
More than a dune
In a desert sand
Fall into nothingness
As you feel the ground
Being pulled under you
Be still
As a sailing boat
On a windless sea
And surrender
To The One
Who created you
The first time
To Him we belong
And to Him we return
And only He
Creates us
Again
And again
Each time more beautiful
Surrender
And witness
His work
Of making
You
Whole
Again
And flow
In His Mercy
And Love
And love*
Jasmina Zukan
Photo by Peter Fogden on Unsplash
So much of what we're afraid of is inside us... we're afraid of the feelings that will come with shame, or with grief, or if we really let ourselves feel the scale of our love or our longing or our hurt. And often our fear is, itself, a way not to feel what we imagine we won't be able to tolerate feeling. So what happens if, instead of treating all these experiences as terrors, we start to see them as, in their deepest essence, something helpless in us that really wants our love? This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about staying with one another while we discover what there is to feel, and learning not to turn away from the parts of ourselves that are trying to protect us while they, secretly, long for our love; hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source this week is brought to us by Justin, and written by Rainer Maria Rilke:
If we adjust our life to the principle which advises us that we must always attach ourselves to what is difficult, then that which now still appears to us most strange, will become our most familiar and loyal friend. How can we forget that old myth, which is to be found at the beginning of all peoples—the myth of the dragon, which at the last moment changes into a princess? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.
So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloudshadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.
-Rainer Maria Rilke - Letters to a Young Poet
Photo by Jéan Béller on Unsplash
"The opposite of life is not death", writes Caitlin Johnstone, "The opposite of life is habit." So how, we wonder in this conversation, can we invest the ordinariness of life with the reverence and awe that calls to us? How might we find that aspect of ourselves, in our vast inner landscapes, that is neither our reactivity nor our defensiveness, but is itself life looking out at life in wonder? This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the difficult and liberating possibility of choosing to live in the midst of all that we might turn away from, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source this week is brought to us by Lizzie, and written by Caitlin Johnstone.
The Alive Ones
*The opposite of life is not death.
The opposite of life is habit.
One who moves from cradle to grave
in the flip book illusion we call time
without deeply attending to this cavalcade of miracles
is one who never lived.*
*Lifeless are they who live by habit,
who walk by habit,
who sit by habit,
who see by habit,
who think by habit,
who feel by habit.*
*Lifeless are they who drift through on dead patterns
instead of giving the omnipresent Holiness its due reverence.*
*The alive ones meet each moment
like a dog greets its master at the door after work.*
*They do not think: they wonder.
They do not watch: they marvel.
They do not walk: they adventure.
They do not sit: they engage.
They do not wait: they worship.*
*Awe was never meant to be exceptional.
Awe is the only sane response to this mess.
The alive ones know this.
The alive ones live this.
The mundane does not exist for them.*
*The ordinary is a fairy tale told by the lifeless
to which the alive listen with rapt fasciation.
They take in breath with the passion of a lover in bed.
They entertain light in their retinas like a beloved guest.
They merrily lose every war with the world.*
*They dance without music in the frozen food aisle.
They go out into the rain with bare feet and empty wine glasses.
They greet every experience with exuberant curiosity,
and as death approaches it receives that same greeting.*
*And when they are gone those they leave behind
will be saddened but fulfilled,
and so very grateful,
to have known one who truly showed up here.*
Caitlin Johnstone
Photo by Robert Collins on Unsplash
How can we cultivate a real, mature kind of gratefulness that keeps opening us to both the wonder of life and the suffering and difficulty that's here? A gratefulness that doesn't seek to cover over anything at all, but instead awakens our care, skilfulness, and capacity to step into the world with the action that is called for? This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about having love be what holds our care, fear, hope, anger and defensiveness so that we can turn deeper into life rather than turning away, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source this week is brought to us by Justin, and written by Joanna Macy.
And the Spiral Begins Again
*Just to live is holy
To be is a blessing*
-- Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
We have received an inestimable gift. To be alive in this beautiful, self-organising universe - to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it - is a wonder beyond words.
Gratitude quiets the frantic mind and brings us back to source. It reconnects us with basic goodness and our personal power. It helps us to be more fully present to our world. That grounded present provides the psychic space for acknowledging the pain we carry for our world…
We begin to know the immensity of our heart-mind, and how it helps us move beyond fear… The truth of our inter-existence, made real to us by our pain for the world, helps us see with new eyes. It brings fresh understandings of who we are and how we are related to each other and the universe. We begin to comprehend our own power to change and heal. We strengthen by growing living connections with past and future generations, and our brother and sister species.
Then, ever again, we go forth into the action that calls us… Even when we don’t succeed in a given venture, we can be grateful for the chance we took and the lessons we learned. And the spiral begins again.
Joanna Macy, from ‘World as Lover, World As Self’
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
What does it take to allow ourselves to be who we are, and to allow other people to be who they are? What happens when we relate to one another from a deep respect for our own goodness, power and care, and a deep respect for the goodness, power and care of others? This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the possibility of being in relationship in a way that allows us to bring the world alive for one another, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source this week is brought to us by Lizzie, and was written by John Welwood:
Great Perfection
You bring the world alive each moment,
In the freshness of your look,
Your touch, your waking.
Recognise this, your creation, at last.
It is always arising anew,
In each moment of looking freshly,
Letting everything happen as it does,
without making something out of it.
You thought you were cold and hungry,
Wandering lost in an alien place,
But now you can see:
This world is your light show,
Everything shining and shimmering,
In the blaze of your presence.
Be glad then.
Go forth nakedly
and claim your royal seat.
John Welwood
Photo by leonie on Unsplash
We are made for belonging... we are made to be the ones who can hold onto one another with hope and love as we descend into the darkness... and we are made for discovering in ourselves and one another an indestructable goodness that holds and welcomes all our hurts, all our difficulties, all our confusion. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the practices of hopefulness and love we can bring to one another in the midst of whatever we're experiencing, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source this week is brought to us by Justin, and was written by Albert Camus, from his book 'The Stranger'
*My dear,
In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love.
In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile.
In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm.
I realised, through it all, that…
In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.
And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.*
*Truly yours,
Albert Camus*
Photo by Sergey Nikolaev on Unsplash
We all carry wounds and hurts with us into our lives, and we present them to the world in our longing to be seen and to be healed. Perhaps when our hurts are so easily 'out front' we shouldn't be surprised at how often we each get triggered into self-protective and defensive patterns which are at odds with our deeper intentions and longings. But if we could find a way to support one another in hearing not just the wounds but the steady pulse of life that flows beneath all our hurts? This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about being with one another in a way that welcomes all of us home, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source this week is brought to us by Lizzie, and is written by Carrie Newcomer:
The Shape of a Heart
There are stands of beech trees
Covering the hills around my home.
They are old companions
With bodies like sturdy elephant legs,
Smooth and grey
With so many wrinkled eyes.
Willowy when young,
Straight and stately as they age.
I laid my hands on one these trees last evening.
Flat palmed like a Baptist blessing
Putting my ear to the bark
Listening for that steady pulse.
There is a charred hole about thirty feet up,
The evidence of something long-ago
A crash of thunder
A lightning strike
A natural event
A blameless bit of bad luck
That over time has mostly grown over,
Transforming an open wound
Into an open space,
Shaped exactly like a heart.
It is a miracle she survived,
Living with and then living into
Her most devastating wound,
Which the slow process of healing,
Created something singular
Utterly striking
Head scratching wondrous
Even beautiful.
We stood there together
In a quiet kind of kinship,
Unconcerned about the ash,
Giving off the faint smell of ozone,
Listening to the rustle of leaves
Nodding as the golden light
Slipped over the ridge.
by Carrie Newcomer
Photo by Anastasia Vityukova on Unsplash
It's in the small acts that we build a life: the way we look at one another, the way we talk to one another, the way we listen. At these times when so much of what we rely upon is being called into question, what does it take for us to see that it's these small acts that also shape who we are? Can we learn to be the ones who, a step at a time, bring to the world exactly what we are longing for? Can we learn to be the ones who relate to one another with the dignity and sacredness that's the possibility for all human beings? This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about reciprocity, kindness and simple acts of mutual recognition, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source this week is brought to us by Justin, and is written by Danusha Laméris
**Small Kindnesses
By Danusha Laméris**
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”
from 'Bonfire Opera', University of Pittsburgh Press
http://www.danushalameris.com/
Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash
So many of us live in the midst of a harsh narrative of self-criticism and self-doubt, feeling all the ways we imagine we fall short of who we're meant to be in life. But every now and again we might catch a glimpse of something very beautiful in us, something essential, that reminds us that to be a living being in the midst of a living world is always in one way or another to belong, to be at home. How can we remember this life-giving truth from the midst of our forgetting? We have some ideas... with the help of an exquisite poem written by Lizzie's sister Hollie. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about receiving our lives and letting ourselves be loved, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source this week is brought to us by Lizzie, and is written by Hollie Holden:
Some days my soul taps me on the shoulder,
A lot.
And some days, I ignore her,
Over and over again.
And then she has to get serious
Because she sees how I can get.
And she knows I can't resist stopping
To look at leaves.
And so today,
She made a deal with a tree
And arranged for this one
To land right in front of my feet,
Not red, not green, not yellow, not orange,
And exquisite in her raindrop gown of Great Change.
And while I was admiring her offering,
She snuck in a whisper,
That sneaky soul of mine:
You too are that beautiful to me, you know.
Before you Get There,
While you feel stuck,
In the middle of all the feelings,
In the midst of so much change,
As you sit in the In Between space
Of red, green, yellow, orange.
You too are that beautiful to me.
Hollie Holden Photo by Simon Berger on Unsplash
*Listening deeply, lovingly and fearlessly to one another is among the most nourishing and life-giving practices we humans can take up, and yet many of us have few places in our lives where we regularly do this. Perhaps that's because laying out a 'table made of listening' for one another, one that is open enough and solid enough and safe enough, calls on us to welcome parts of ourselves and others that we often push away. It turns out that the practice of listening to one another, difficult as it may be to start with, cultivates exactly the kind of welcome of ourselves that allows us to be a welcome to others. And that this is something deeply needed in the world and in our lives right now.
This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about conversation, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source this week is brought to us by Justin, and is written by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer:
Setting
In every conversation
there is a table made of listening.
Sometimes the tables are beautiful,
solid, clean—the kind
that can support anything
you put on them.
Sometimes, they’re like
the tv dinner trays
of my childhood—
a little rickety, but they’ll do
if what’s put on them is light.
Sometimes they’re so cluttered
that whatever’s placed on their surface
is almost immediately lost.
Let tonight’s table have a small vase of flowers
and a candle perhaps, nothing else.
May it be small enough we might
see each other’s eyes, might notice
every nuance of breath. Whomever
I am most nervous to invite,
may I invite them. And though
the tea is just a metaphor,
may I offer. May they accept.
- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Photo by Alvin Engler on Unsplash
*When we allow our hearts to be completely colonised by the demands of the organisation, community, movement or family we're part of, we lose a vital gift of our own individuality - our capacity to take a stand on our lives that includes us fully, and our capacity to speak up truthfully and with integrity about what we see both within and around us. And when we find ourselves more and more able to include and incorporate the many different parts of ourselves, we're more able to turn towards the difference and the many parts of others.
This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how the path of cultivating a 'many-chambered heart' can help us with bringing our actions into harmony with our inner lives, and with using whatever power we have in the world to help others do the same, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.*
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source this week is brought to us by Lizzie, and is from Parker Palmer's extraordinarily wise and generous book 'The Courage to Teach':
*Many of us know from personal experience how it feels to live a divided life. Inwardly, we experience one imperative for our lives, but outwardly we respond to quite another. This is the human condition of course - our inner and outer worlds are never in perfect harmony. But there are extremes of dividedness that become intolerable when one can no longer live without bringing ones’s actions into harmony with one’s inner life. When that happens inside of one person, then another, and another and another in relation to a significant social issue, a movement may be conceived.
The condition to be overcome by living divided no more has a specific etiology. We inhabit institutional settings, including school and work and civic society, because they harbour opportunities that we value. But the claims those institutions make on us are sometimes at odds with our hearts - for example the demand for loyalty to the corporation, right or wrong, versus the inward imperative to speak truth. That tension can be creative up to a point. It becomes pathological when the heart becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of the organisation, when we internalise organisational logic and allow it to overwhelm the logic of our own lives.
To live divided no more is to find a new centre for one’s life, a centre external to the institution and its demands. This does not mean leaving the institution physically; one may stay at one’s post. But it does mean taking one’s spiritual leave. One finds solid ground on which to stand outside the institution - the ground of one’s own being - and from that ground is better able to resist the deformations that occur when organisational values become the landscape of one’s inner life.*
Parker Palmer - The Courage to TeachPhoto by Anthony Intraversato on Unsplash
What does it take to be good ancestors, to be people who come not from fear but from a deep love for the world and a commitment to its future? This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the tricky, necessary and life-giving possibility of committing to love of the world not as a 'feeling' but as a practice, a promise, and a commitment - and when we work to widen our understanding of what our lives are for to something bigger than our own personal safety and preferences, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source this week is brought to us by Justin, and is from Robert Macfarlane's luminous book 'Underland':
Maybe this is among the best things we can try to do, I think...: to be good ancestors. I remember a paragraph I have copied out into a notebook, from a book called 'After Nature':
"People are best able to change their ways when they find two things at once in nature: something to fear, a threat they must avoid, and also something to love, a quality ... which they can do their best to honour. Either impulse can stay the human hand, but the first stops it just short of being burnt or broken. The second keeps the hand poised, extended in greeting or in an offer of peace. This gesture is the beginning of collaboration, among people but beyond us, in building our next home."Robert Macfarlane, from 'Underland'Photo by Aaron Lee on Unsplash
When we make our relationships into projects, when we demand that the people close to us be different to how they are, when we bring only our 'fix things', 'make things happen', 'change things' energy to them, we should perhaps not be surprised that the people we are in relationship with quickly become disappointments to us. And, as we do this, we quickly become difficult to find and meet deeply ourselves. What if we were to return, often, to the possibility of returning to our flexibility, capacity to nurture and witness others, our ability to listen in an unhurried way? This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about what can happen in our relationships when we learn to inhabit the side of ourselves that lets life flow through and that is able to welcome all things whether beautiful or painful, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source this week is brought to us by Lizzie:
**Always Return
by William Martin**
It is good to know your own strength
but always return to your flexibility.
If you can cradle your beloved in your arms
in nurturing gentleness,
love will flow through you.
It is good to achieve things
but always return to anonymity.
Your beloved does not need your achievements
but needs your uncomplicated soul.
It is good to work for change,
but always return to what is.
If you accept all things whether painful or joyful,
you will always know
that you belong to each other
and to the Tao.
Return today,
to that which brings you life;
enfolding, caressing,
soothing, nurturing,
forgiving and accepting.
Photo by Richie Nolan on Unsplash
As Oliver Burkeman writes in our source for this week "So much of our suffering arises from attempting to control what is not in our control. And the main thing we try but fail to control – the seasoned worriers among us, anyway – is the future". This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about what can happen when we start to relax our attempts to have life go exactly our way, the many ways this can have us return to our lives as they are, and how all this can uncover our capacity to love, delight-in and respond-to life and those around us, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source this week is brought to us by Justin:
***The future will never provide the reassurance you seek from it.
Oliver Burkeman***
As the ancient Greek and Roman Stoics understood, much of our suffering arises from attempting to control what is not in our control. And the main thing we try but fail to control – the seasoned worriers among us, anyway – is the future. We want to /know/, from our vantage point in the present, that things will be OK later on. But we never can. (This is why it’s wrong to say we live in especially uncertain times. The future is always uncertain; it’s just that we’re currently very aware of it.)
It’s freeing to grasp that no amount of fretting will ever alter this truth. It’s still useful to make plans. But do that with the awareness that a plan is only ever a present-moment statement of intent, not a lasso thrown around the future to bring it under control. The spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti said his secret was simple: “I don’t mind what happens.” That needn’t mean not trying to make life better, for yourself or others. It just means not living each day anxiously braced to see if things work out as you hoped.
from Oliver Burkeman's excellent recent article 'The Eight Secrets to a (fairly) fulfilled life'. https://bit.ly/3iKkjid
Photo by Frank McKenna on Unsplash
A great deal of our suffering comes from our certainty that life is meant to go our way... and this certainty easily throws us into on the one hand imagining we're meant to have the powers only a deity could have and, on the other hand, feeling small and cynical and disconnected from life. But what if we could see that we're participants in something much more like a dance in which we barely know the steps, and came to be less certain about exactly how this would turn out or, even, quite what it is that we are dancing with. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about looking beyond our certainty and catching a glimpse, perhaps, of something quite astonishing beneath, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source this week is brought to us by Lizzie:
ANGELS by MARY OLIVER
*You might see an angel anytime
and anywhere. Of course you have
to open your eyes to a kind of
second level, but it’s not really
hard. The whole business of
what’s reality and what isn’t has
never been solved and probably
never will be. So I don’t care to
be too definite about anything.
I have a lot of edges called Perhaps
and almost nothing you can call
Certainty. For myself, but not
for other people. That’s a place
you just can’t get into, not
entirely anyway, other people’s
heads.
I’ll just leave you with this.
I don’t care how many angels can
dance on the head of a pin. It’s
enough to know that for some people
they exist, and that they dance.*Photo by Josh Howard on Unsplash
We're encouraged to live our lives as a way of controlling things - most particularly in the realm of acting into the world to get attention from others and to be recognised as special. This understanding leads us quickly down a painful and deeply unsatisfying path of needing to be verified at every turn. But if instead we could learn to pay attention to life, and to find a way to receive the one unique life that we are, we might find ourselves more fully inhabiting the gifts of our lives and, perhaps paradoxically, more able to be a genuine contribution to the life of others. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we can find our place in the beauty of things by the way we pay attention to life, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source this week is written by Mark Nepo.
Much of our anxiety and inner turmoil comes from living in a global culture whose values drive us from the essence of what matters. At the heart of this is the conflict between the outer definition of success and the inner value of peace.
Unfortunately, we are encouraged, even trained, to get attention when the renewing secret of life is to give attention. From performing well on tests to positioning ourselves for promotions, we are schooled to believe that that to succeed we must get attention and be recognized as special, when the threshold to all that is extraordinary in life opens only when we devote ourselves to giving attention, not getting it. Things come alive for us only when we dare to see and recognize everything as special. The longer we try to get attention instead of giving it, the deeper our unhappiness. It leads us to move through the world dreaming of greatness, needing to be verified at every turn, when feelings of oneness grace us only when verify the world around us. It makes us desperate to be loved when we sorely need the medicine of being loving. *One reason so many of us are lonely in our dream of success is that instead of looking for what is clear and true, we learn to covet what is great and powerful. One reason we live so far from peace is that instead of loving our way into the nameless joy of spirit, we think fame will soothe us. And while we are busy dreaming of being a celebrity, we stifle our need to see and give love, all of which opens us to the true health of celebration.
It leaves us with these choices: fame or peace, be a celebrity or celebrate being, work all our days to be seen or devote ourselves to seeing, build our identity on the attention we can get or find our place in the beauty of things by the attention we can give.*
(From “The book of awakening’, Mark Nepo)Photo by Bryan Hanson on Unsplash
How often we compare ourselves to impossible standards of perfection, and how often this comparison produces the kind of contraction, efforting, and pushing that distances us from ourselves and others, and that is the opposite of what we seek. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might find playful ways of loving the messiness that it is to be human and, from there, respond with the love, care and creativity that our lives call for, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source for this week is chosen by Lizzie.
Do not give me only perfect
*Do not give me only perfect
For there is beauty in what lacks,
The things that are most true
Are filled with flaws, covered in cracks,
So stumble on your sentences,
forget the words you need,
To those parading as perfection
I must say, pay them no heed.
For it is you and your surroundings,
It is you and how you feel,
You and those you love
Which are the things that are most real.
And if that means burnt toast and breakdowns
Know there is strength in salty tears,
Which says “I will not let the world
tell me there’s failure in my fears.”
So be afraid and be forgetful,
Please just be with all your heart,
And if it happens that it’s broken
Then be yourself with every part.*
Erin Hanson
Photo by Saira on Unsplash
Very often our relationship to the world is, in some way, a projection of the inner relationships between the different parts of ourselves. And, just as often, our experience of others is really a projection of some part of us. All of this can very much get in the way of our being in full and truthful contact with what's outside us. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might become more skilful at letting go of the grip our inner parts have over our experience - and in doing so how we can find a way to more fully see and appreciate the parts of ourselves and others that less often get our attention, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source for this week is written by Justin:
Parts of me, Parts of Her
It increasingly occurs to me
That my relationship to the world
Is most often a reflection
Of the relationships between parts of myself.
It helps me to remember
That I often see in other people
That of myself that I
Fear, am ashamed of, or have learned to hide away
That there are other inner relationships I can call on
The parts of me
that are settled when I’m anxious,
that love when I’m irritated,
that are courageous and able to take action
when other parts of me are paralysed with fear.
When I’m bewildered by her rage, to remember
to stay in relationship with the part of her that is love;
when I’m frustrated by his uncertainty
to remember the part of him that is clarity;
And that my certainty that she’s judging me
might well be the part of me that judges myself
that my need to rescue him
is often the part of me that itself longs to be rescued
And that until I learn to see though
my ways of pushing away and judging and projecting my interior world
I can expect to have a tricky time
loving the outer world, in which I live every day,
as fully as I could.
Justin Wise, www.justinwise.co.ukPhoto by Roselyn Tirado on Unsplash
As we grow in whatever family and wider culture we're born into, we inevitably find out that parts of us are not welcome. Most of us are pretty adept at exiling or hiding those parts away. But what if, instead of labelling them, judging them, and trying to keep them out of view, we learned to turn towards them as if they were bearers of gifts? And what if we could learn that we are indeed made up of many parts, and did what we could to welcome them all? Our 150th episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the freedom that can be gained when we stop over-identifying with particular parts, and the step by step path to recovering our own wholeness that comes when we're willing to do the uncertain messy and loving work of welcoming exiled parts home - with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source for this week is written by Lizzie:
The Dark Bathing in Warmth Brings Light
Not so easily named but felt, just outside of my vision,
Who is this elusive and powerful part of life,
Calling my name and disappearing as I turn to see?
I know now that it has to feel safe to be in the light,
So I reassure and don’t look too directly on as she inches forward to talk.
When she talks there’s hardness and meanness there,
And in my safety I can hear her without mistaking her as the whole of me (how often have I done that?).
I hold her in my hands, in my heart,
Let her cry and rage and be mean. As long as she will let me.
And all the while I try to hold this as just a part,
Just some of me, not all.
And this way I can hold, I can be with, I can witness and most gladly I can learn and let the passion and purpose flow from this part to all of me with all it has to give.
All these years she’s been banished and afraid, and now she comes to sit with us. Sits and says it like it is, and she has space.
Not all the space she sometimes wants, but space none the less.
Enough to be fully heard, learned from, embraces and treated as important and equal.
May I always see this part with my heart and remember my faith in the times of fear. She is here to love me too. She doesn’t have the power to take me over if I turn and look with loving eyes and an open and courageous heart.
She is me, I am her. And I regain so much by turning into her darkness with my light shining faithful and bright, my warmth thick and soft.
by Lizzie Winn, August 2020
Photo by Joshua Sortinoon Unsplash
How would we live our lives if we understood our mortality to be a gift - one we were given by all those who came before us, and that makes possible the lives of those who will come after us? What kindness and forgiveness might we bring to our lives if we understood that each of us - especially those with whom we are in difficulty - is a brief flash of life in a universe-sized unfolding process? Episode 149 of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might stop trying to be unaffected by our lives and instead turn to our losses and what's next with grace, creativity and compassion - with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source for this week is chosen for us by Justin.
Mortality is the gift the living give to the future
Words by Bradley Shavit Artson,
excerpted from his book 'God of Becoming and Relationship'
The wonder of life, awesome and terrible, is that it renews itself constantly by sloughing off the old and embracing the new... Just as we thrill that babies, infants, and children refuse to do things the way they have always been done, bringing a relentless energy to their lives and to ours, so too we know that what is old breaks down and gives way before the young. Life, in this cascading process of endless renewal, splashes across the millennia towards greater diversity, experience, relationship and connection.
Human beings, like all living creatures, are events.
Moment by moment we shift and change and move with time, created anew each moment. We may be dying, but we are not yet dead. In that sense, mortality is the gift the living give to the future.
Awareness that we are dying should serve to focus our attention on living. It should make what is unimportant less important. We do not have time to waste: not on people we do not enjoy being with; not on activities that are not compelling, necessary, or worthy. That time is brief. Because we are all under the same sentence, it ought to be easier easier to forgive each other. The one who has wronged us is not some all-powerful divinity who will outlast the ages, but, like each of us, a brief and ephemeral flash of life in a sea of roiling sameness. We ought to know that our identities are not simply that of solitary individual beings. We are part of something larger than ourselves... [We are always] in relationship, a component of that living organism called humanity, which itself is a component of the biosphere as a whole.
Everything is a manifestation of becoming-in-relationship
Photo by Isaac Quesada on Unsplash
What if sadness isn't something to be avoided, but an opening, a doorway that we can step into? What if sadness could wake us up to what we most care about? And what if it could bring us into the orbit of others in a way that deepens our lives? Episode 148 of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might treat our inevitable grief as a call, a question, a possibility - and about how we might do that with the support of others - with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source for this week is chosen for us by Lizzie:
THE GIFT OF SADNESS
Sometimes sadness arrives as a messenger, to remind you of all the changes you still need to make in your life. Of all the risks you need to take but have been too afraid to. It creeps through you this sadness, offering up its painful gifts, whispering Truths that you do not wish to see or hear. Thank you very much.
But sooner or later sadness will demand your full attention, making it too painful for you to try and stay asleep. It's so generous like that. Until finally one day you have no choice but to take a deep breath, get up from your knees and begin.
To start facing the lies you’ve been telling and hiding behind. And feeling the heartbreaks and hurts you’ve been running from. To begin making new painful yet necessary choices for change in your life. Those that will make the difference between you existing or living. ‘
‘Now’ whispers sadness...’wake up, the time is NOW’.
So you take that first wobbly step into the unknown. And then from there, you take the next one.
*Sometimes deep sadness is the universe calling your name.
Listen.*
Words by Donna LancasterPhoto by Catherine on Unsplash
Most of us were never taught to admit we don't know - and as a result we hold onto our positions and beliefs no matter what. Others of us learned early on that the most important thing we could do was get along with others, and so we routinely give up what we see or care about in order to avoid disagreement. At the heart of both positions is a kind of distrust - distrust that we can still take up our place in the world even if we're changed by our encounter with other people, or even if we have an opinion that matters to us. And at the heart of both is our fear that, if we let ourselves be fully in the conversation, we will no longer belong. Episode 147 of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about learning how to belong with one another even when we see things differently, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source for this week is chosen for us by Justin.
Willing to be Disturbed
We weren't trained to admit we don't know. Most of us were taught to sound certain and confident, to state our opinion as if it were true. We haven't been rewarded for being confused. Or for asking more questions rather than giving quick answers. We've also spent many years listening to others mainly to determine if we agree with them or not...
It's impossible for any two people to ever see things exactly the same... [And] to be curious about how someone else interprets things we have to be willing to admit we're not capable of figuring things out alone...
When so many interpretations are available, I can't understand why we would be satisfied with superficial conversations where we pretend to agree with one another.
What surprises and disturbs me [is] a very useful way to see [my] invisible beliefs. If what you say surprises me, I must have been assuming something else was true. If what you say disturbs me, I must believe something contrary to you. My shock at your position exposes my own position. When I hear myself saying "How could anyone believe something like that?" a light comes on for me to see my own beliefs.
These moments are great gifts.
Margaret Wheatley - from 'Turning To One Another'
Photo by Artem Sapegin on Unsplash
Life keeps calling us to uncover and act on all the parts of ourselves we've so far left out, but much of the time we resist the call. Too painful perhaps, too unfamiliar. Sometimes, though, we find ourselves stepping right into exactly that unfamiliarity and making discoveries about ourselves the open up a whole world... and sometimes we find ourselves being that for others. Both require us to give up on how we've known ourselves so far; to give up 'playing the game of identity' that has become familiar to us. A conversation about learning how to step more fully into life, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source for this week is chosen for us by Lizzie, and is by Marion Woodman:
Most of us are dragged
towards wholeness.
We do not understand the breakdown of what has gone before.
We do not understand.
We cling to the familiar,
Refuse to make necessary sacrifices,
Refuse to give up habitual lives,
Resist our growth.
We do not understand rebirth,
Do not accept the initiation rites.
Most of us are dragged
Towards wholeness.
by Marion Woodman
Photo by Philippe D. on Unsplash
Somewhere along the line, many of us learn that voicing our needs directly - asking people for what we want - is to invite ridicule, shame or otherwise ask to be hurt. Our learning to undo that - to find out what we really long for, and to give voice to it - is a necessary, difficult and life-giving path to taking up our full size and place in the world. And it's also absolutely necessary for a life of dignified, mutual relationships with others. A conversation about discovering and speaking our truest longings to others - with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source for this week is chosen for us by Justin, and is from Mark Nepo's 'The Book of Awakening'
Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash
When we treat the pain of our lives as a mistake, we cut something off that could be deeply life giving - for ourselves, for our families, for our wider society. When we treat the pain of our society as a mistake, we cut off many avenues for healing, understanding, and for addressing the difficulties that surround us. A conversation about learning, with one another's support, to handle life's difficulties well - to 'turn, know, and honour' them so that they can become a rich source of deepening, courage and repair in our lives - with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source for this week is chosen for us by Justin.
from A Poem for My Daughter
by Teddy Macker
It seems we have made pain
some kind of mistake,
like having it
is somehow wrong.
Don’t let them fool you—
pain is a part of things.
But remember, dear Ellie,
the compost down in the field:
if the rank and dank and dark
are handled well, not merely discarded,
but turned and known and honored,
they one day come to beds of rich earth
home even to the most delicate rose.
❖
God comes to you disguised as your life.
Blessings often arrive as trouble.
In French, the word blesser means to wound
and relates to the Old English bletsian—
to sprinkle with blood.
And in Sanskrit there is a phrase,
a phrase to carry with you
wherever you go:
sarvam annam:
everything is food.
Every last thing.
Photo by Diego PH on Unsplash
What happens when we confuse ourselves with just one part of ourselves – when we think we ‘are’ a particular way we’re feeling, a thought, the exam result I got… When we think we ‘are’ our job title, or our joblessness, our bank balance… In short, when we confuse ourselves with being ‘just one thing’. And how our forgetting our own variety in this way also has us forget and not see the richness, depth and intricate variety of others. A conversation about welcoming ourselves and other people in our inner and outer complexity, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source for this week is written for us by Lizzie.
The Alchemy of Welcome
Perceive problems and they will stay,
See the gifts and find your way.
Hold on tight and it will fall,
Open your hand and receive it all.
Turn away and the issue spirals,
Face into life and the field enlivens.
Stifle anger and it takes hold,
Welcome the rage and find your bold.
Ignore the sadness and wither so small,
Accept the feelings and trust the call.
Stay on the surface and miss the meaning,
Go down deep and find love’s leaning.
Tense yourself up and lose control,
Relax into love and watch it unfold.
Spinning around and to live is a labour,
Stillness comes and you taste the flavour.
Lizzie Winn
Photo by Dimitar Belchev on Unsplash
A bonus episode describing and exploring the Thirdspace Professional Coaching Course in London, which this year is being offered as a completely on-line programme beginning September 2020.
In this special edition of 'Turning Towards Life' Lizzie and Justin talk about the Thirdspace Professional Coaching Course, offered this year as a completely on-line programme beginning September 2020 (offered in partnership with New Ventures West), a certification programme in integral development coaching which is at the heart of Thirdspace's work and a project of great joy and love for both of us.
This year we're offering the PCC as a completely on-line programme.
Over the course of our conversation you'll hear what makes this special programme unique, how it changes participants and what it makes possible, the distinction between 'developmental' and other kinds of coaching, and more about the details and structure of the programme.
You can read more about the programme on the Thirdspace website.
Life keeps on happening, and most of it happens whether we want it that way or not. Our ‘not wanting’ can easily lead us into pushing away life as it happens, and into exiling the parts of ourselves and others that we find to be unwelcome. But another way might be possible for each of us, a path we can practice that has us turning towards what happens with welcome. And this could be a way in which we find ourselves opening over the course of a life, rather than narrowing. A conversation about curiosity and welcoming all of it, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source for this week is chosen for us by Justin.
A Cedary Fragrance
Even now,
decades after,
I wash my face with cold water –
Not for discipline,
nor memory,
nor the icy, awakening slap,
but to practice
choosing
to make the unwanted wanted.
by Jane Hirshfield, from Given Sugar, Given Salt, 2001
Photo by lucas mendes on Unsplash
Just beyond ourselves, just outside all the ways we’ve taken ourselves to be, just beyond our certainty and the familiar ways we know ourselves… Just here, beyond ourselves, something is calling all the time, something which we discover in our willingness to be affected by, to be changed by, the ‘other’ in other people and in the world. A conversation about the possibilities that come when we notice and drop our defences, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source for this week is chosen by Lizzie.
Just Beyond Yourself
by David Whyte
Listen
Just beyond
yourself.
It’s where
you need
to be.
Half a step
into
self-forgetting
and the rest
restored
by what
you’ll meet.
There is a road
always beckoning.
When you see
the two sides
of it
closing together
at that far horizon
and deep in
the foundations
of your own
heart
at exactly
the same
time,
that’s how
you know
it’s the road
you
have
to follow.
That’s how
you know
it’s where
you
have
to go.
That’s how
you know
you have
to go.
That’s
how you know.
Just beyond
yourself,
it’s
where you
need to be.
Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash
All the ways we try to protect ourselves from life by hardening our hearts, how this leads us to misunderstand love in ways that strangles the aliveness that's in ourselves and in others, and what we might do to exercise proper responsibility in how we care for each other. A conversation about our power to either recognise or smother the beauty in people, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source for this week is chosen by Lizzie.
How to Kill a Living Thing
Neglect it
Criticise it to its face
Say how it kills the light
Traps all the rubbish
Bores you with its green
Continually
Harden your heart
Then
Cut it down close
To the root as possible
Forget it
For a week or a month
Return with an axe
Split it with one blow
Insert a stone
To keep the wound wide open.
—Eibhlin Nic Eochaidh
Photo by Wexor Tmg on Unsplash
It's a necessary part of our growing up that we learn to get along in the culture into which we were born. But, on the way, we easily lose touch with what is most life-giving for us, and cover up our truer desires with a crowd of wants and needs that help us to fit in, or stand out, or keep a particular kind of image going. So much becomes possible when we start to strip away the cloud of distractions from our truer longings and start to find out what our hearts are really calling for. A conversation about the vulnerable, generous, courageous work of being clear about what we most desire, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source for this week is written the poet Rumi, translated and interpreted by Daniel Landinsky in his book ‘The Purity of Desire’, and chosen this week by Justin.
No Conflict With Anything I Do
God’s face gradually fades from the infant’s sight.
If this did not happen, you would never be able to
recognise and converse with the things you do.
A soul’s blindness most always increases as the body
grows, and certain hungers set in, and one’s attention
is turned that way.
Now that you have traveled so far and have seen so
much, what is it you most prize?
What pack horse does not feel relieved when its
burden is lifted? Desires, narrowed down, can do the
same, decrease the weight you carry, and unveil the
wonder in the present.
Just a single movement, a single impetus, I now have.
This, there is no conflict with anything I do.
What kind of man would ask his breath the reason
for its actions? Less demanding, questioning, I now
am of all I see.
God’s face will gradually return to your perception. My
words will help draw back the curtain from your eyes.
Rumi
Translated by Daniel Landinsky
from The Purity of Desire
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
It's so easy to suspend our lives... to in one way or another miss out on being here because we're waiting for conditions to be right, to become a better kind of person, until we're saved. We can even suspend our lives waiting until we feel like 'nothing is missing'. But what if even the feeling of 'something missing' is what's calling us to inhabit our lives just as they are? A conversation about letting ourselves actually be in our lives with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source for this week is written by Jeff Foster, and brought to us by Lizzie.
The old chair is here, offering itself, whispering, "Come, sit down, rest, you are weary. See, I am here..."
And the carpet that you've never really looked at before, never really valued before, because you've been so busy looking for enlightenment and salvation and love in the future - see how it just… lies here… offering itself fully to you, prostrate in your presence, whispering, “Come, lie, sit, stand, I ask nothing of you, I want nothing. I am here…."
You didn't truly see the carpet because you wanted to get enlightened first. You wanted to be an enlightened person standing on the carpet! You were going to work on yourself for forty years, meditate your way to Nirvana, heal your traumas, perfect your ‘self’, transcend your ego, or wait until you were ‘ready’ before valuing the carpet, seeing the carpet, recognizing the carpet as a divine expression, and a tremendous gift.
It was all a postponement, you see. It was all a movement away from ‘what is’, from the extraordinary sacredness of the ordinary. It was a displacement into a future that could never come...
The carpet was always here. The chair was always here. Ready. Alive. Innocent. Waiting. Life was always here, offering itself, showing itself, calling you, beckoning you, to finally see it, inviting you to awaken, to come alive, to be a child of awareness. And yet, you've been so busy moving away, into a 'future', into a dream...
Just take a moment. Any moment. This moment. And behold it in loving awareness, bathe it in your light.
- Jeff Foster
Photo by Sharon Christina Rørvik on Unsplash
How about we find a way to live without permanently being annoyed that things aren't just as we'd like them? Might that not be a path to some joy? Could we give up the way we exhaust ourselves (and often others!) by our attempts to push life around, to control it, to have things just our way? A conversation about creativity, relationship, what happens when we let ourselves fall into life, and giving up trying to herd cats, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source for this week is written by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, from her book 'Naked for Tea', and brought to us by Justin.
Perhaps it would eventually erode, but...
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
That rock that we
have been pushing up
the hill—that one
that keeps rolling back down
and we keep pushing
back up—what if
we stopped? We are not
Sisyphus. This rock
is not a punishment.
It’s something we’ve chosen
to push. Who knows why.
I look at all the names
we once carved into
its sedimentary sides.
How important
I thought they were,
those names. How
I’ve clung to labels,
who’s right, who’s wrong,
how I’ve cared about
who’s pushed harder
and who’s been slack.
Now all I want
is to let the rock
roll back to where it belongs,
which is wherever it lands,
and you and I could,
imagine!, walk unencumbered,
all the way to the top and
walk and walk and never stop
except to discover what
our hands might do
if for once they were no longer
pushing.
www.wordwoman.com
Photo by Pablo Heimplatz on Unsplash
When big change comes upon us, we can at first devote a great deal of our hearts' energy to a fight with the change - which often does nothing to help us. But our hearts are equally capable of something else - a turn towards bigger questions, and to the possibility that the change might be inviting us into a deeper relationship with life. Hidden here might be 'the jewel at the heart of the stone'. A conversation about depth, intimacy with life, and the life-giving, difficult work of responding to change, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source for this week is written by Mark Nepo, and brought to us by Lizzie.
Fighting The Instrument
Often the instruments of change
are not kind or just
and the hardest openness
of all might be
to embrace the change
while not wasting your heart
fighting the instrument.
The storm is not as important
as the path it opens.
The mistreatment in one life
never as crucial as the clearing
it makes in your heart.
This is very difficult to accept.
The hammer or cruel one
is always short-lived
compared to the jewel
in the center of the stone.
Mark Nepo
Photo by Birgith Roosipuu on Unsplash
How are we coming at life at this time? Are we careful? mindless? gentle with the things we are touching? Or careless, distracted, and in a self-important hurry at all costs? A conversation about paying attention to our lives, this week inspired by Amanda Palmer’s writing, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source for this week is written by Amanda Palmer, and brought to us by Justin.
How you do anything is how you do everything
One of my favorite yoga teachers used to say: “how you do anything is how you do everything”.
I feel like everyone I know is being given a surprise final exam in how to do anything (and everything) right now. I feel simultaneously completely upended and yet strangely more at peace than I have ever felt in my life. paying attention to how I change a sheet, how I cut an apple, how I schedule my few precious minutes of work and screen time and how I give my child a bath is all a reflection of all the everythings I’ve ever done; how I started a career, how I broke up with a boyfriend, how I dealt with a miscarriage.
it’s all the same. how did I do it? was I careful? mindless? was I gentle with the things I was touching? or was I careless, distracted, and in a self-important hurry at all costs?
slowing down is the hardest thing on earth because it forces you to face the scariest thing you will ever face: you.
fare you all well…I love you all so so much.
I know what so many of you are going through, and growing through.
I am with you.
Amanda
Photo by Aarón Blanco Tejedor on Unsplash
There's a down-to-earthness about some people, an everydayness. When people are this way, there's no fear that they're putting on an act for you, that they may be different towards you when you are not there. And when each of us finds a way to be like this, we can be a profound welcome to one another. A conversation about ordinary, kind ways of being with one another, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source for this week is written by Melanie Lowndes, and brought to us by Lizzie.
Bread and Butter People
by Melanie Lowndes (edited by Lizzie for Turning Towards Life)
She is the neighbour who is always pleased to see you, who years ago with her husband and kids had many animals. Her husband once stopped you on the way home and said, “Look what I've got - she doesn't know yet…” and proudly showed you a piglet which used to run to the door in the hall with it's wriggly tail wagging when you came in.
She is the Welsh lady with the foreign surname who lives with her Indian homeopath husband and does B&B the old way, taking in guests who stay in the bedroom full of books and character and a little mess, and carefully cooks what you like for breakfast and dinner.
He is the father of your ex who in latter years had greyhound dogs and you could escape the politeness of the house each evening to walk with him - and Hannah or Rose, him listening, ever a safe and un-judgmental receptacle of your disclosures.
There is a safeness about bread and butter people, a consistency.
Yes it's also Scottish Jean, who lost her husband after caring for him for many years and was in grief, and who had a gravelly smokey Glaswegian voice that could reduce you to tears with a question.
There is a kindness about them, a down-to-earthness, an every-dayness, no glamour nor allure but something deeply nurturing; no eggshells around them. There’s no fear that they're putting on an act for you, that they may be different towards you when you are not there, no fear that what they show you is different to how they are to their core.
This is the way they are: consistent - and you understand something about consistency now - it is not about always showing up the same way - it is about consistently showing up how you are, honestly, whether that be happy or sad, calm or troubled.
I think of the times people have actually delivered. The mates that show up. The people who come back. Who care. Who check in. Who stay. Who make tea and stir in a little extra sweetness without making a fuss.
The bread and butter people in our lives.
The staple friendships.
The kind dough that kneads our self esteem.
Why we're all trying to get loved, why our covering that up gets us into all kinds of trouble, and what can happen when we start to get honest with one another about what's going on. A conversation about loving people without condition, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source for this week is a beauty from the poet Hafiz, who lived in Persia in the 14th century, translated here by Daniel Landinsky.
With That Moon Language
Hafiz
Admit something:
Everyone you see, you say to them,
“Love me.”
Of course you do not do this out loud;
Otherwise,
Someone would call the cops.
Still though, think about this,
This great pull in us
To connect.
Why not become the one
Who lives with a full moon in each eye
That is always saying,
With that sweet moon
Language,
What every other eye in this world
Is dying to
Hear.
Photo by Amanda Dalbjörn on Unsplash
What does it take to remain hopeful about life when we're entering into the dark? How can we be beacons of hope to one another as we travel through the more difficult passages of our lives? A conversation about faithfulness to one another's wholeness, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Here's our source for this week, chosen for us by Lizzie:
The Unbroken
by Rashani Réa
There is a brokenness
out of which comes the unbroken,
a shatteredness
out of which blooms the unshatterable.
There is a sorrow
beyond all grief which leads to joy
and a fragility
out of whose depths emerges strength.
There is a hollow space
too vast for words
through which we pass with each loss,
out of whose darkness
we are sanctioned into being.
There is a cry deeper than all sound
whose serrated edges cut the heart
as we break open to the place inside
which is unbreakable and whole,
while learning to sing.
Find out more about Rashani Réa at rashani.com
Photo by Luca Micheli on Unsplash
The weeks of physical distancing we're in might, if we'll take it, give us an opportunity to develop a new relationship with time. What if time isn't a commodity to be consumed? And what would happen if we allow ourselves to encounter time as depth, or as play, or as presence, or as possibility? A conversation about giving up our frantic, fearful relationship with the finiteness of our time, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Here's our source for this week, written by Rob Poynton:
How Long Will This Last?
by Rob Poynton
www.robertpoynton.com
I wonder how long this is going to last.
I imagine we all do.
Which is understandable, but absurd.
Not only do we have no idea, but being home for a few weeks (or months?) is the least of it. In some ways what is happening now will never leave us. It would be remarkable, disappointing even, if this experience didn’t change us, one way or another.
The question reveals how we habitually think and talk about time in a limited way.
As if it had no other dimension, depth or quality beyond a number of minutes, hours or days.
As if all it had were length, which is actually just a metaphor, borrowed from the world of physical space.
As if all units of time were equivalent, standardised, uniform.
They aren’t.
Time has the capacity to open up, deepen, expand or extend, even as the clock continues its regimented march.
For example, on a Reading Weekend at La Serna, tech philosopher Tom Chatfield wrote:
“Time is different here. It has been waiting for us. I remember time like this from when I was young: baggy, generous, ambling; then dashing at the pace of light and landscape”.
Pauses do that.
As we hunker down, constrained in space, perhaps we can create a different kind of freedom for ourselves by shifting our relationship with time?
Instead of behaving like dutiful consumers, with no idea beyond counting and spending the days or weeks until this is over, can we play with it, explore it, savour it, sense it, feel it, or get lost in it?
Perhaps if we pay less attention and attach less importance to duration, we might find this time has more to give us than we realised.
You can find out more about Rob and 'The Pause Project' here.
Photo by KiPhoto by Robert Anasch on Unsplash
Here in London we're coming the end of the first week of lockdown as the world responds to the coronavirus pandemic and, like millions of others across the globe, we're wondering together about what to make of this time. And there are choices about how to relate to the experience of confinement and physical distance - choices that are marked by our willingness to not add unnecessary suffering to our own and others' lives; choices that are shaped by our willingness to include both what's beautiful and what's frightening or grief-filled. A conversation about stepping with full hearts into constraint, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Here's our source for this week, written for us by Lizzie:
The New Normal.
*The warm sun on my face, the cool breeze on my ankles.
My babe asleep on my chest, her breath so gentle -
like the smallest of waves on the shore.*
*Thank you for surrendering to this, he says.
Thank you for being willing to let this be enough. For now.
We can suffer this, or we can let it become our normal.*
*So we bake a cake. And I clean the door handles.
And we have a cuppa tea. And cook dinner.
We watch the baby girl sleeping. And say thank you.*
By Lizzie Winn
Vesper’s Mummy
Vesper is 22 weeks - March 24, 2020
Photo by Kira auf der Heide on Unsplash
Here in London, it's spring, and the blossom is emerging with its brightness and beauty. At the same time, we humans are living with an unfolding worldwide epidemic that threatens lives and livelihoods. Can we learn to live in these times in a way that opens us to both grief AND joy, to both fear AND our responsibility for one another? A conversation about the necessity and power of including and turning towards everything in these big times, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Here's our source for this week, chosen for us by Justin:
Don’t Hesitate *If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the
case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.*
–Mary OliverPhoto by Larisa Birta on Unsplash
In many parts of the world, as we recorded this conversation, we're having to take up practices of physical separation from one another in order to keep each other safe. But there are ways, even when we are physically distant, that we can come into a deeper, more full contact with one another than we might usually experience, and such contact with one another's depth is also a return to ourselves. A conversation about living and relating to others and ourselves in a loving, receptive, contactful way, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Here's our source for this week, chosen for us by Lizzie:
**The Affliction
by Marie Howe**www.mariehowe.com
When I walked across a room I saw myself walking
as if I were someone else,
when I picked up a fork, when I pulled off a dress,
as if I were in a movie.
It’s what I thought you saw when you looked at me.
So when I looked at you, I didn’t see you
I saw the me I thought you saw, as if I were someone else.
I called that outside—watching. Well I didn’t call it anything
when it happened all the time.
But one morning after I stopped the pills—standing in the kitchen
for one second I was inside looking out.
Then I popped back outside. And saw myself looking.
Would it happen again? It did, a few days later.
My friend Wendy was pulling on her winter coat, standing by the kitchen door
and suddenly I was inside and I saw her.
I looked out from my own eyes
and I saw: her eyes: blue gray transparent
and inside them: Wendy herself!
Then I was outside again,
and Wendy was saying, Bye-bye, see you soon,
as if Nothing Had Happened.
She hadn’t noticed. She hadn’t known that I’d Been There
for Maybe 40 Seconds,
and that then I was Gone.
She hadn’t noticed that I Hadn’t Been There for Months,
years, the entire time she’d known me.
I needn’t have been embarrassed to have been there for those seconds;
she had not Noticed The Difference.
This happened on and off for weeks,
and then I was looking at my old friend John:
: suddenly I was in: and I saw him,
and he: (and this was almost unbearable)
he saw me see him,
and I saw him see me.
He said something like, You’re going to be ok now,
or, It’s been difficult hasn’t it,
but what he said mattered only a little.
We met—in our mutual gaze—in between
a third place I’d not yet been.
Photo by Warren Wong on Unsplash
How can we face uncertainty in a way that brings us into closer contact with our courage, openness and compassion for one another? Can we find a way, when we feel squeezed, to not withdraw into ourselves in fear? And is there a life-giving, truth-bringing way of turning towards our inescapable vulnerability? A conversation about turning towards one another for support in an uncertain time, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Here's our source for this week, chosen for us by Justin:
VULNERABILITY
is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without, vulnerability is not a choice , vulnerability is the underlying, ever present and abiding under-current of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature, the attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt to be something we are not and most especially, to close off our understanding of the grief of others. More seriously, refusing our vulnerability we refuse the help needed at every turn of our existence and immobilise the essential, tidal and conversational foundations of our identity.
To have a temporary, isolated sense of power over all events and circumstances, is one of the privileges and the prime conceits of being human and especially of being youthfully human, but a privilege that must be surrendered with that same youth, with ill health, with accident, with the loss of loved ones who do not share our untouchable powers; powers eventually and most emphatically given up, as we approach our last breath. The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance, our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, as misers and complainers, reluctant, and fearful, always at the gates of existence, but never bravely and completely attempting to enter, never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door.
David Whyte, from 'Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words'
Photo by David Watkis on Unsplash
"Perhaps," Lizzie says, "even our reactivity is a way to come home." One part of us is a reactive self, a way in which we get triggered and gripped by our certainties about ourselves and one another. Another, more essential part, is a kind of depth and openness in which we can meet the world - and have the world meet us - with more depth and openness in return. When we're gripped by our reactivity, our depth and wholeness are still present, and our learning to turn towards them can be a potent and life-giving path for meeting life more fully. And our reactivity, if we'll notice it, can be the sign that it's time to turn back towards home. A conversation about the ways in which it's never too late to turn things around, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Here's our source for this week, chosen for us by Lizzie:
The ancient sense of transformation assumes that there is something essential within us that we can turn to and learn from; that we can draw upon repeatedly and grow from continuously. Besides involving a change in consciousness, such a deep inner change also includes a process of self-healing that can occur in moments of wholeness arising from the source of the deep self and soul within us. The old reason for not giving up on someone, even if they have failed repeatedly, is because a genuine turnaround in life is possible at any time and at any age. Because such moments are timeless, when it comes to waking up and turning things around, it is never too late.
Michael Meade, from 'Awakening the Soul'
Photo by Sebastián León Prado on Unsplash
It's so easy to be in a fight with our lives, as if there's a way we can win out over our fear, or grief, or some other experience we're wishing not to have. But often trying to win out leaves us small, and exhausted, and rigid. What if we were to take up a different relationship with what's happening, in which we know our experiences not as something to get away from but a way in which life is flowing through us? And what if instead of trying to fight things off we allowed ourselves to soften and flex enough to be changed by them as they pass through? A conversation about the life-giving possibilities of surrender, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Here's our source for this week, chosen for us by Justin:
The Man Watching
I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can't bear without a friend,
I can't love without a sister
The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.
What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.
When we win it's with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestler's sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.
Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.
Rainer Maria Rilke – Translated by Robert Bly
Photo by Widdowquin on Flickr
The discipline of regular practice can look like a painful constraint but - as Lizzie says in this week's conversation - when we approach practice with intention and kindness it can bring us an extraordinary freedom from our habits, preferences, and ways of going to sleep to our lives. A conversation about the gifts of enabling constraints that we choose for ourselves, and the ways in which practice can help us bring our goodness to others, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
You can find our source for this week here.
Photo by Farsai Chaikulngamdee on Unsplash
What happens when we meet the parts of ourselves we've kept out of view, and let them dance with the parts that we're more comfortable showing other people? What happens when we're willing to welcome the parts in others we usually try to push away? And what creativity and possibility open when we give up trying to control one another so that instead we can meet one another fully? A conversation about the gifts of finding 'the other' in ourselves, and ourselves in the other, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Here's our source for this week:
**Advice
by Bill Holm**
Someone dancing inside us
has learned only a few steps:
the "Do-Your-Work" in 4/4 time,
the "What-Do-You-Expect" Waltz.
He hasn't noticed yet the woman
standing away from the lamp.
The one with black eyes
who knows the rumba
and strange steps in jumpy rhythms
from the mountains of Bulgaria.
If they dance together,
something unexpected will happen;
if they don't, the next world
will be a lot like this one.
Photo by Ardian Lumi on Unsplash
When we're in the midst of giant changes - the birth of a new child, the death of someone we love, or any other changes that life brings us - it's tempting to try and get life back to 'the way it has been'. Indeed, we often actively encourage the people around us to do exactly that. 'You'll soon be back to your old self', we say. But what if we could see that life's changes will change us however much we resist? And what if, instead of fearfully trying to hold on to the way we've known ourselves, we could actively allow ourselves to be changed by what's happening? A conversation about coming at life's openings with as much love as we can muster, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Here's our source for this week, written by Lizzie Winn:
The way I love you.
I wish that you know your beauty because of how I look at you. I wish for you to feel how you are loved because of how I hold you. I wish for you to sense how safe you are by how I cradle you to sleep.
If I could return the gift to you that you bestow on me as you smile. I would be a happy mummy.
Your whole face lights up and my body does the same. As you sleep peacefully, your trust smashes me to smithereens. Most nights as you drift off I cry because of my aching heart and how I no longer know who I am and I am glad for it. Because of you I am dissolved.
Nothing makes much sense any more. What is anything even for now you’re here? Who am I supposed to be and how do I live here now you are alive and breaking me open with each small change?
When you bring to me the worst of you, I will try and find the best of me,
Even if it bends me out of shape and turns me into someone I don’t recognise,
Even if it goes against all that’s acceptable in our normal world.
By Lizzie Winn about Vesper Winn
Photo by Joshua Reddekopp on Unsplash
It may be hard to see, but how we listen greatly shapes what it is possible for other people to say to us. Can we catch on to all the ways we’re trying to control what we experience as we listen, and as we do so drop our need to control so that we can be a profound welcome to others? A conversation about the ways in which we share ourselves with one another, and about how we can receive with openness, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
You can find our source for this week here.
Photo by Alex Holyoake on Unsplash
What if we could learn to behold one another's wholeness, rather than focussing so narrowly on the aspects of others that we fear or desire? To trust in one another's vastness and depth instead of relating to one another from defensiveness or a desire to control? It would, for sure, give us a way to know one another with a greater kindness and a greater truthfulness than we do now. Can you imagine how it would be to greet one another - partners, children, friends, colleagues - that way? A conversation about trust, welcome and truthfulness, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Here's our source for this week, which was written specially for us by our friend and colleague Neena Sims, in response to our conversation in Episode 119.
Safe and Sound
Have you noticed how you and I can be around our young ones? How we look at saplings, at puppies, at babies?
No, that’s not quite right, we don’t look, we behold
I wonder, would you please behold me that way – just for a while? Better still for a lifetime
I don’t mean the cooing or the smiling
or the way you might tickle me and tell me I’m delicious - delightful as that can be
I’m talking about the infinite ways you can bring yourself, all of yourself, to all of me
The way you know that I’m whole - safe and sound - just as I am
The way you know that I’m still growing, a forever unfinished body of hope
The way you can be with my sadness, my rages, my strokes of genius
The way you respond to my small-minded, hidden acts of malice and my colossal acts of kindness with ferocious, truthful lightness
The way you land us both safe on the side of trusting that this both is - and isn’t - my whole story
I think you do all of this out of faith – am I right?
Faith in me
Faith that, like a holy hologram, the whole is here in every part Faith in the ragged becoming that I am
But you must also do it out of faith in yourself – am I right?
Faith that you can greet whatever is here and welcome all that is yet to come Faith in the ragged becoming that you are too
Have you noticed how you and I can be around our young ones? How we look at saplings, at puppies, at babies?
No, that’s not quite right, we don’t look, we behold
And have you noticed how they behold us too?
A small, potent, goodness-seeking missile to the heart I’m not sure which comes first?
Perhaps there isn’t a first, only an in-between
You’re safe and I’m sound You’re sound and I’m safe
Something like that
Neena Sims, January 2020
Photo by Liv Bruce on Unsplash
What if we knew ourselves as made up of many parts, as opposed to being a single ‘I’? Could we find a new way to relate to the parts that are afraid, hurt, resentful or ashamed? A way that at once treated them with great respect while remembering that there are always other parts which might yet have a voice?. A conversation about the ways we exile aspects of ourselves, and the possibility of taking the wholeness of ourselves into account, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Here's our source for this week, which is written by Justin:
Facing the losses, together
There is a part of me that is tender, grieving and terrified of loss. ‘You’ll leave me’, he says, ‘all of you’ – friends, lovers, family, teachers, life itself. And he means me, too – the one of whom he is a part, the one who is his home.
He has sophisticated strategies to try to head off the losses he fears. He wants me to feel afraid, always, so that we won’t make a mis-step which causes others to leave. He’d rather I punish myself if it will get people to stay. He holds on very tight, and sometimes as a result I hold on very tight too.
He’s masterful at getting abandonment in first, finding ways for me to get resentful and abandon other people before they can abandon me. I have done this many times in his name. In a way, he feels satisfied when people do actually leave, because it shows that his world view, and his deep fear, are justified.
Over time I have come to see that my work is first the work of self-remembering. Remembering that I am vast and multifold. That as well as this part, there are many others. That there are things to feel that are different to what he is feeling.
That it is, secondly, to turn towards the inevitable losses that he so fears. Because none of his strategies will save us.
And that it is mostly the work of not running from him, not visiting upon him the very abandonment that he fears – but holding him close, cradling him, honouring him. It is my work to welcome him home. To say, “Yes, I see you. I have you. You are safe here. You cannot fall. We can face life – life as it actually is – with all the losses we cannot escape, together”.
It is in this welcome that I am freed: to love in the way I want to love, to create, speak out, be vulnerable and intimate and angry and truthful and real, and to risk the risks that are required to be fully alive, the very risks that he is too afraid for me to take.
Justin Wise, from ‘On Living and Working‘
Photo by OC Gonzalez on Unsplash
What does it take to really understand one another, especially when what separates us can seem so great? What if it takes a bold act of unselfishness - setting aside our ordinary, rigid ways of listening and being prepared to encounter the unknown while simultaneously doing all we can to make it safe for the person speaking to speak? A conversation about a wild, courageous way to listen to friends, lovers, family, colleagues and those with whom we disagree most profoundly, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Here's our source for this week:
The Art of Unselfish Understanding
Drawing on his half-century practice as a therapist, Erich Fromm offers six guidelines for mastering the art of unselfish understanding: 1. The basic rule for practicing this art is the complete concentration of the listener. 2. Nothing of importance must be on his mind, he must be optimally free from anxiety as well as from greed. 3. He must possess a freely-working imagination which is sufficiently concrete to be expressed in words. 4. He must be endowed with a capacity for empathy with another person and strong enough to feel the experience of the other as if it were his own. 5. The condition for such empathy is a crucial facet of the capacity for love. To understand another means to love him — not in the erotic sense but in the sense of reaching out to him and of overcoming the fear of losing oneself. 6. Understanding and loving are inseparable. If they are separate, it is a cerebral process and the door to essential understanding remains closed. Photo by Wiebrig Krakau on Unsplash
When we learn to relax our defensiveness, when we become less anxious to protect our borders – when we find ourselves surrendering to life – we become more loving, we regain our integrity and our dignity, and we have a much better chance of both receiving our lives and contributing to them. A conversation about the ways we separate ourselves from life and how we might return, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source for this week is here.
Photo by pixpoetry on Unsplash
Receiving our lives – actually allowing ourselves to inhabit, touch and be affected by the one life we’re in the middle of living – can be difficult for many of us. We have so many ways of spinning off into fear, or numbness, or distraction. But there are ways we can bring ourselves back into the fierce loving presence of life. A conversation about opening to what’s here, allowing ourselves to be touched deeply by life, and wild swimming, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Our source for this week is here.
Photo by Vincent van Zalinge on Unsplash
When life is dark or frightening, or when we feel stretched beyond our ordinary abilities, it's often our willingness to learn from others that can restore our capacity to respond. Other people, if we'll let them, can often give us the gift of another way of coming at life and, in particular, the gift of practices that can invite in us an entirely new orientation to the circumstances we find ourselves in. Can you imagine, for example, what it would be like to sing with people with whom we're in difficulty, before we tried to speak? A conversation about undoing our habits and finding ways of making light in the darkness together, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Here's our source for this week:
Agenda in a time of fear: Be not afraid.
When things go wrong, do right.
Set out by the half-light of the seeker.
For the well-lit problem begins to heal.
Learn tropism toward the difficult.
We have not arrived to explain, but to sing.
Young idealism ripens into an ethical life.
Prune back regret to let faith grow.
When you hit rock bottom, dig farther down.
Grief is the seed of singing, shame the seed of song.
Keep seeing what you are not saying.
Plunder your reticence.
Songbird guards a twig, its only weapon a song.
by Kim Stafford
Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash
'Light' and 'Dark' are both names, ways in which we can observe and respond to what's happening within us and around us. Our refusal to name can feel protective but in the end it isolates ourselves from one another and from life. Learning to name well can be a living bridge between us - a way of entering into conversations, understanding and action that would be unavailable to us if we turned away. Naming things is not where it ends, but where our turning towards life begins. A conversation about the names that can help us enter into relationship and into life, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.
Here's our source for this week:
“We can name the darkness as darkness and the Light as light and this helps us learn how to live and work in the Light so that the darkness does not overcome us. If we have a pie-in-the-sky, everything is beautiful attitude, we are going to be trapped by the darkness because we don’t see clearly enough to separate the wheat from the chaff. Conversely, if we can only see the darkness and forget the more foundational Light, we will be destroyed by our own negativity and fanaticism, or we will naively think we are completely apart and above the darkness. Instead, we must wait and work with hope inside of the darkness, even our own.”
Richard Rohr
Nachman of Bratslav, the precariousness of all of our lives, and the possibility that we might learn to give up amplifying our fear - indeed that we might find a way to walk through an inevitably risky life with joy. A conversation about faithfulness to our lives, practice, why joy isn't the same as happiness, and what becomes possible when we live as if we're all in this together, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.We have a choice. Will we make attempts to avoid our situation by avoiding our lives? Or could we learn, even when we feel afraid, not tofeed our fear? Could we live a life in which we intentionally practice taking a step into the fierce uncertainty of life, and then another step and another step, trusting that each step will take us, who knows where, but somewhere?
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
You can find the source text for this conversation, as well as more information about the Turning Towards Life project, on our website.
Photo by Tim Trad on Unsplash
The culture we live in encourages us to live at a distance from ourselves. Many of us consequently live a life of frantic doing, as if the next project or achievement will be what saves us. Our living far from ourselves is often fuelled by intense self-criticism. But it's never too late to find out that underneath all our activity, life itself is always waiting to welcome us and that, in allowing ourselves to be welcomed, we can find ourselves deeply held. A conversation about returning, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
You can find the source text for this conversation, as well as more information about the Turning Towards Life project, on our website.
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Our lives can easily become an anxiety-fuelled rush of activity. But when we live this way - even when our packing every moment seems filled with excitement and promise - we easily smother our own creativity, learning, and the chance to be in meaningful contact with others. So how can we learn to live our lives in a way that gives more space for life itself to come through? A conversation about fear, love and allowing ourselves to be reached by what's beyond us, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
You can find the source text for this conversation, as well as more information about the Turning Towards Life project, on our website.
Photo by Spencer Russell on Unsplash
How might we approach life's inevitable interruptions and openings - the often unexpected events that change things, perhaps without our say-so? Can we find a way that opens us and changes us, rather than coming at life's inevitability with fear and resentment? A conversation about finding a way to keep faith with our changing lives, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
You can find the source text for this week on the Turning Towards Life website.
Photo by Kenny Luo on Unsplash
How might we learn to relax our annoyance, to treat what irritates us as if it were the weather rather than something personal, and in so doing take our defensive reactivity down a step? A conversation about blame, kindness, and finding a way to be contactful with our experience, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.So much of our annoyance and irritation comes from our certainty that what's happening is happening 'to me'. As is if we walk around the world super-sensitive to the way everything is aimed in our direction. But when we look more closely at the anatomy of our annoyance, sometimes we start to see that what's annoying us is often not 'what's happening' but our own relationship to it, and that there's a way we judge ourselves and others that adds to our difficulties.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
You can find the source text for this week on the Turning Towards Life website.
Photo by Erik Odiin on Unsplash
We need to draw the people we love nearer, smell their hair, enjoy them, drink them in. We need to let our hearts burst open with all the love. And experience the simplicity and sacredness of things. Even if we can only do it for one moment a day. It's the hard way but it's the only way. A conversation about vulnerability, and how love, fear and grief are inevitable partners, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
The source that starts our conversation off this week is 'What we're really scared of: the love, beauty and sacredness of it all' by Hollie Holden. You can find it, all our other episodes on the Turning Towards Life website.
Sometimes we try to be too big, imagining we should have super-human powers of control over the inevitable difficulties that face us. Other times we make ourselves too small, as if we have no choice at all. How might we turn back towards our lives by right-sizing ourselves? A conversation about breath, feeling life course through us, and facing the world with grace, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here’s Episode 107 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
The source that starts our conversation off this week is 'The Cure For It All' by Julia Fehrenbacher. You can find it, all our other episodes, and more information about Julia's work on the Turning Towards Life website.
Photo by Alex Bertha on Unsplash
What would it take for us to allow ourselves the freedom to move in new ways, speak in new ways, love in new ways? And can we spot the subtle and not-so-subtle ways we and others are engaged in keeping one another moving along narrow grooves founded on the expectations that come with having a particular kind of body, a particular kind of history, and a particular kind of cultural background? A conversation about freedom, gender, and the difficult and beautiful work of welcoming our own development, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here’s Episode 106 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
The source that starts our conversation off this week is Claudia Masin's poem 'Tomboy', which you can find on the Turning Towards Life website.
We human beings change all the time - it's inevitable. But somehow we've got into demanding that our friends, family and partners are fixed - that they 'complete us'. What would happen if we started to live with the truth of our ever-changing natures? At the start of the 3rd year of Turning Towards Life, a conversation about walking a path together and being in nourishing relationship, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here’s Episode 105 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
It's the start of the third year of this project, and in this conversation we return together to the topic of human relationship. Our big mistake, Justin says, is our insistence on treating ourselves as objects. When we do this, we are left with little room but to demand that we be a certain way, and the ones we love be a certain way - a way that we will inevitably fall short of. And, as Lizzie says, that's the source of much unnecessary suffering, because humans change all the time. When we start to see that our demands that those we love 'complete us' are impossible to fulfil, we can start to love as a way of accompanying one another on an unknown path rather than a way to get to a final destination.
The source that starts our conversation off this week is written by Neil Gaiman, and you can find it on the Turning Towards Life website.
Photo by Rémi Walle on Unsplash
The more we try to control, the less we can receive from life. But there is a path by which we might, gradually, remember ourselves more fully and find ourselves reached by life, with all its gifts and all its challenges. At the end of the 2nd year of Turning Towards Life, a conversation about being porous to life, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here’s Episode 104 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
It's the end the second year of this project, and in this conversation we consider together what it is to remember - not the kind of remembering we do when we recall 'what happened', but the kind of remembering where we 'put ourselves back together', gathering up the parts of ourselves we have ignored or left out, so that we can face life with renewed courage, compassion and openness.
As Lizzie says, "the more we control, the less we receive from life. Our frightened selves keep us separate as a form of protection and yet it is to our detriment, as loneliness and sadness follow." And so we wonder together about how we can turn towards a reciprocity and openness to life that's different from saying 'I'm beaten' and equally different from our demands that life goes just the way we demand it.
You can find our source for this week on the Turning Towards Life website.
Photo by Drew Tilk on Unsplash
Can we catch on to the ways we contract from life so as not to feel its consequences? And can we learn to open, instead, so that the possibilities of our loving – other people, a calling, life itself – can come through, with all their pain and all their joy? A conversation about the radical opening that love can be, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here’s Episode 103 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Our source this week is an extraordinary poem by Kahlil Gibran. It's the starting point for a conversation in which we consider the inevitable way that love brings us into contact with our vulnerability and rawness, and also with our capacity to contribute. We consider the many ways in which we try to make ourselves powerful, and invincible, by withdrawing ourselves from the possibility of loving (and hence from life), and the huge cost we and others can pay for such attempts at self-protection. And we wonder together about simple moves we might make to open more fully to the life that is here, and with it the consequence that we find ourselves open to, and changed by, the love that comes through us.
You can find our source for this week on the Turning Towards Life website, here.
What's beyond our endless efforting, striving and comparing, and the often-merciless inner voice that keeps all of that going? And what might happen if we begin to relax our certainty that it's the way we have to be? A conversation about opening to our lives, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Here’s Episode 102 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Our source this week is from our friend and colleague Neena Sims. You can find it here.
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What happens when we slow down enough to make contact with the wisdom, care and depth that arises from the silent background of our lives? And how do we stop running from life so that we can do this? A conversation about patience, creativity, and the gifts of relationship, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here’s Episode 101 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Our source this week is by the poet Wendell Berry, and you can find it here.
Photo by Clement Souchet on Unsplash
When anger is used as a way to be right, to exert power over others, or as violence, it can be an enormously destructive force. But how might we find the gifts of wisdom in anger, and its extraordinary capacity to change things for the better? A conversation about contactfulness, care, emotional vulnerability and learning to be true with one another, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here’s Episode 100 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Our source this week is from Nikita Gill’s book ‘Fierce Fairytales’. You can find it here.
Photo by Mehrdad Haghighi on Unsplash
Our capacity to say a real, genuine, heartfelt ‘yes’ depends upon our ability to also say ‘no’ when it’s called for. But so often we act out of integrity with ourselves to try to save ourselves from feeling the guilt that so often comes with ‘no’. But what if we saw guilt as something to welcome rather than avoid? A conversation about finding a way to be true in our relationships with others, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here’s Episode 99 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Our source this week is by Jeff Foster. You can find it here on the Turning Towards Life website.
Photo by Isaiah Rustad on Unsplash
Is it possible to love life even when it doesn't go our way? And to love others for the sake of loving, not because of what we'll get in return? A conversation about coming at life in a recklessly unconditional, life-giving way, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here’s Episode 98 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
It’s most ordinary for us to long for things to be different from how they are, and our longing can be a great source of human ingenuity and creativity. But we also so easily fall into despair and cynicism when things don’t turn out the way we want them, or when we see the fragility and vulnerability of our lives. Our question this week is exactly this – can we find a way to honour and live with our longing without it becoming a demand that life go exactly our way? And can we find a way to love life itself even in the gap between what we demand and what happens?
Our source this week is written by the artist Nick Cave, and comes from this exquisite website ‘The Red Hand Files‘. You can find the source on the Turning Towards Life website here.
What if love isn’t a feeling but the dedicated, liberating, sometimes painful work of learning to tell each other the truth? A conversation about being courageous, turning towards one another, and honouring the complexities of being a human being, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here’s Episode 97 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify
For a while it seems obvious to many of us that it’s self-protection that’s the guarantee of an easy life. But before long we find that our wish to protect ourselves – particularly from those we are closest to – leads to a life in which we’re distant from everyone and everything. So the alternative is to learn to tell the truth about ourselves, and to develop our capacity to listen while others tell the truth about themselves. It’s a process that is never done, calling on ever-deeper refinement, sensitivity, and courage. And the reward is that we get to inhabit our lives and establish contactfulness with others.
Join us for a conversation about walking the hard, honourable and loving path together, which begins with a source from Adrienne Rich that you can find here: https://wp.me/p4Tynu-jV
What would happen if we lightened up with one another just enough to see the tender, vulnerable human being behind the bluster? A conversation about treating one another with kindness and truthfulness and letting go of our certainty about each others' intentions, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here’s Episode 96 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify
When we forget that other people are - just like us - often suffering, confused, longing and vulnerable, we can easily hold them to impossible standards. And when we do this, all kinds of conflicts, differences, and irritations gain a rigidity that makes them hard for us to deal with. What would happen if we softened our stance enough to see the human behind the bluster? And, in doing so, revealed our own messy humanity too?
Join us for a conversation about looking below the surface in our everyday interactions, which begins with a source from Alain de Botton's book 'The Course of Love', which you can find here: https://wp.me/p4Tynu-jN
Photo by Max Goncharov on Unsplash
What if we dropped our self-imposed demands for perfection (in ourselves particularly) and instead saw that the one gift we really have to bring is our own aliveness and creativity? And what would happen if we really allowed ourselves to feel, taste and act on what calls us? A conversation about letting go, taking on, fiercely resisting the forces of perfectionism, and bringing ourselves fully to this one life, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Here’s Episode 95 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify
It's so easy for us to bury our aliveness under a suffocating layer of self-criticism and perfectionism, and it can be hard for us to work with because so many of us live in a narrative that to be a human is to be 'efficient' rather than 'alive'. But what if we caught on to how short time is, and how quickly life goes, and the possibility that the one gift we really have to bring is our own aliveness and creativity? And what would happen if we really allowed ourselves to feel, taste and act on what calls us?
Join us for a conversation about letting go, taking on, fiercely resisting the forces of perfectionism, and bringing ourselves fully to this one life, which springs out of a wonderful piece by Anne Lamott which you can find here.
Photo by Jonah Pettrich on Unsplash
What would happen if we understood that we're all making it up, and that nobody really knows what's going on? A conversation about facing the messy realities of human life, and about learning we're not alone, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here’s Episode 94 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify
We easily make two big mistakes in making sense of our lives, mistakes which add to whatever difficulties we already find ourselves in. The first is to imagine that everyone else 'has it to together' while it is only I who is muddling through a messy, unpredictable, and deeply mysterious existence. The second is related to the first. It's when we secretly hope that we'll be saved from the mess and confusions - by a magical happening, a saviour, winning the lottery etc. Both of these mistakes have us turn from our lives and from each other. But what if we were to find out that this is just the way that life is? And what if we were to welcome, then, the inevitable and surprising transformations that come upon us in the course of a human life, without trying to make them go away?
Join us for a conversation about winging it, owning up to what it is to be human, and finding out we're not alone, which begins with Leza Lowitz's beautiful poem 'Waiting', which you can find here.
What happens when we stop relating to ourselves and others as things? A conversation about trees, depth, and openness to one another with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here’s Episode 93 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify
We easily forget how wide, deep and mysterious it is to be a human being, and in doing so we misunderstand ourselves as things. And when we relate to ourselves this way – as objects – we run the risk of reducing everything and everyone to an object in our own image. It’s this way of ‘flattening’ ourselves and life that can most easily be undone when we open ourselves to the way of being of the non-human world – an invitation beautifully made in this episode by Howard Nemerov’s poem ‘Trees’.
Join us for a conversation about openness, relating differently to fear, connecting deeply with the world and other people, and understanding how it’s our relationships that make each of us who we are.
You can find the poem here.
Our lives are made more difficult than they might be by our insistence that things should be a certain way that we’ve imagined or seen in the lives of others. What would happen if we compassionately let go of the idea that there is ‘a path’ for each of us to follow, and committed instead to taking one step into the wild unknown at a time? A conversation about time, gratitude, practice and turning into the flow of our lives with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here’s Episode 92 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify
One of the ways in which we so easily add needlessly to the difficulties life brings us is our engagement in comparison – with the lives of others, and with the life we imagine we should have or should have had. There’s no way round it: the life we have is, exactly, this very life, and the question we might most powerfully and kindly ask is ‘which way now, from this moment, now?’
Making the path by walking it is a topic beautifully taken up by Lynn Ungar in her poem ‘The Path’, which reminds us that there is no way life is meant to be, only what we make by living. And it’s this truth that forms the basis of our conversation in this episode.
You can see the source for this episode here.
Photo by Simon Rae on Unsplash
What would happen to our parenting (and all our relating to others) if we gave up our commitment to perfection and instead treated ourselves, and the people around us, as always 'works in progress'? A conversation about care, kindness, taking a stand, and walking the path of practice with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here’s Episode 91 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify
It's probably true that none of us can expect perfect parenting, and none of us can be perfect parents. The reason is simple - we are all of us incomplete, and none of us perfectly able to see fully, and respond to fully, the depth and breadth of the uniqueness of small people who come into our care.
And it's exactly in giving up our ideas of perfection - our expectation that we know exactly what to do, and that we should be able to be in control of everything - that we have the biggest chance of parenting with the care, humility and creativity that raising children requires of us: when we can take a stand for commitments we care about, and at the same time be honest about our mistakes and incompleteness; when we can act in stewardship without imagining ourselves to be demi-gods with super-human powers; when we can be vulnerable enough to feel without 'acting out' of our feelings; when we can model apology and acts of repair when we find ourselves taking an unhelpful path.
These qualities that can help us parent more skilfully and forgivingly are the same qualities that can support us in all our human relating, which is why we have called this episode 'A Manifest for Parenting One Another'.
You can find our source on our website here.
What if love isn't a feeling, but an action or a path we can walk? A conversation about actively choosing who and how we love, giving up trying to control things, and the miraculous properties of cups of tea with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Here’s Episode 90 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify Our source this week is a from Rebecca Solnit's new book 'Cinderella Liberator'. It launches us into conversation about the difference between feeling love and loving. We explore how practicing love without demanding that we feel a particular way, or get something particular in return, opens up a whole world. Along the way we explore what it might be like to actively choose how and who we love, the life-giving possibilities of making a cup of tea, loving people from afar on the London Underground, and the terrible consequences of imagining that love can be found by trying to climb to the top of the ladder of beauty.
You can find our source for this week here: https://wp.me/p4Tynu-j1
Men, and women, and the stories about how we're 'meant' to be human that constrain us. A conversation about relationships, power and being on a path with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Here’s Episode 89 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify
Our source this week is a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, about men, and family, and being on a path, and about the consequences of going to sleep in our lives. The particular form of 'sleep' we talk about is the one that's kept going by our stories about what men must be, and how the choices men make about how to be men ripple out through our families, workplaces and community. We consider the kinds of narratives that both women and men might create that have a chance of freeing us from the particular difficulties many of us face in our relationships with one another. And we wonder together what kinds of conversations become possible as both women and men turn, together, towards the tenderness, vulnerability and strength that are at the heart of being human.
You can find our source for this week, and all the previous sources, here.
What is it to learn to look at ourselves the way 'one looks at distant things'? And what happens when we relax our certainty that we have to have it all figured out before we can contribute? A conversation about love, invitation and purpose with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Here’s Episode 88 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify
One of the biggest causes of our difficulties is the way we take the drama of what we're experiencing to be the central truth of the world - when it seems that life revolves around 'me', when we imagine that we have to be 'sorted out' before life can begin, or when we think we have to know everything about what we're up to in life before we can participate fully. But there are other ways to be in our lives, and one of them is to find out what it is that's calling us, in each moment, deeper into things. In this episode we explore what happens when we attend to this, when we soften our gaze enough to see that we are not the centre of things but 'one thing among many'.
You can find the source text for this episode here, along with more details about the Turning Towards Life project.
Photo by Nine Köpfer on Unsplash
Can we catch on to the ways in which we defend ourselves from life? And, when we see our part in making life smaller than it might be, can we discover how to stay in contact with what happens in life, to learn from it, and to find a fuller kind of presence in the midst of everything? A conversation about learning to stay open with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Here’s Episode 87 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify
There’s a way in which we can easily take ourselves as too small to meet the world. Overwhelmed by what we do not understand, and can’t control, we find ourselves living in a way that’s defended, and rigid, and much smaller than the life we long for. We we find ourselves living this way, we don’t often see that we are participants – both in shielding ourselves from life and in the possibility that we could open to life. And when we open, when we make ourselves available to our experiences and to one another, life can come flooding in.
You can find the source text for this episode here, along with more details about the Turning Towards Life project.
What's the cost of trying to 'get over' grief, sorrow and pain? Is there another way? Can we perhaps find a way to welcome in ourselves what we'd otherwise try to push away, and in doing so learn to welcome other people more fully too? A conversation about encountering and including difference in our lives with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Here’s Episode 86 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify
In this conversation we explore together what happens when we try to make certain kinds of experience (grief, sorrow, fear, pain) unwelcome in our lives, and in doing so, try to 'get over' them instead of including them. We talk about the limits of our power in controlling the world - both the outer world of events and the inner world of experiences - and about the cost to us of pushing away that which, given time, patience and kindness, could act to open us ever more deeply to the world. And we see how much it's possible for human beings to help one another with this - how when we act as a welcome to what's 'other' in ourselves we can also help be a welcome to other people. In times when there are many forces trying to push us apart from ourselves and one another, we consider this to be a necessary, dignified and healing stand to take in the world.
You can find the source text for this episode here, along with more details about the Turning Towards Life project.
A bonus episode describing and exploring the Thirdspace Professional Coaching Course which next begins in July 2019 in London. A conversation with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
In this special edition of 'Turning Towards Life' Lizzie and Justin talk about the Thirdspace Professional Coaching Course (offered in partnership with New Ventures West), a certification programme in integral development coaching which is at the heart of Thirdspace's work and a project of great joy and love for both of us.
Over the course of our conversation you'll hear what makes this special programme unique, how it changes participants and what it makes possible, the distinction between 'developmental' and other kinds of coaching, and more about the details and structure of the programme.
You can read more about the course (the 'PCC') at www.wearethirdspace.org
Underneath everything, beneath our striving and reaching and fear, life is finding a way through us. What happens when we pay attention to it, when we let life take us by the hand? A conversation about letting life matter with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here’s Episode 85 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living.
Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
In this conversation we explore the simple beauty of life that's present even when we're most afraid. We consider together what it is that most dignifies and deepens human life - the possibility that we might start to pay attention, and that we might let life, and our care, matter. Our inspiration for this conversation comes from a poem by Roger Keyes about the Japanese artist Hokusai.
You can find the source text for this episode here, along with more details about the Turning Towards Life project.
We are so often afraid of our own aliveness that we'll cover it up with an image, a role, or an identity that's been handed to us by others. But what possibilities for encounter with life and with one another are born when we cross the thin divide between 'image' and 'realness'? A conversation about not turning away with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here’s Episode 84 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living.
Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
In this conversation we explore the call of our own wildness, that of ourselves that we so often cover up for the sake of fitting in with an image or identity we've been handed by our culture.
We talk about the difference between being honest about our own experience rather than being attached to our own version of 'truth', and how honesty and openness can bring us into compassionate and direct encounter with the aliveness and wonder of other people. And we explore how it's possible to turn just about anything in our lives into a way of keeping far from ourselves, including the very project of being real. It's a conversation about encountering life, and about returning home.
You can find the source text for this episode here, along with more details about the Turning Towards Life project.
Photo by Ahmad Odeh on Unsplash
What’s the cost of our constant comparison with others, with a life we think we’re meant to be living, or with our past or future selves? There’s a good reason why comparison has been called ‘the thief of joy’. So what happens when we find a way, instead, of bringing ourselves whole-heartedly as we are, to the life we’re already living? A conversation about not turning away with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here’s Episode 83 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living.
Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
In this conversation we explore together the pitfalls of comparing ourselves to an image – whether that’s an image of fame and success given to us by our wider culture, or a idea of how we ‘should’ be (kind, smart, witty, selfless) that we distort ourselves in living up to. We consider together how distant from ourselves we can become from living in this way, explore the suffering it can produce, and wonder about the possibilities of turning towards our own particular gifts and qualities and inhabiting them with a whole heart.
You can find the source text for this episode here, along with more details about the Turning Towards Life project.
Photo by James Padolsey on Unsplash
Even in the darkest of situations can we find a way to be joyful? Is there a kind of gratitude which isn't a turning away from the gravity of things? Might just this joy and gratitude be what's called for if we're to face our situation with sufficient energy, creativity and ethical care? A conversation about not turning away with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here's Episode 82 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living.
Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We're also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
In this conversation we talk together about how it might be possible to face the darkness and difficulties of the world without collapsing into a frozen fearfulness, without cutting ourselves off from others through panic and rage, and without denial. We consider the ways in which the culture many of us have grown up in teaches us always to be dissatisfied, to live our lives as if we'll only be able to show up when we have exactly the circumstances we think are due to us, and how this keeps us distant from the possibility of contributing to improving things. We talk together about how joy can connect us and those around us to the qualities and creativity the world needs so much, and how it might be possible to be joyful even in the midst of the deepest darkness.
As ever we are grateful for the wisdom and depth of those whose writing is at the heart of this project, and particularly this week for this poem by W S Merwin, who died last month at the age of 91. You can read more about him and his work in this article in The Atlantic.And you can find the source for this week's episode here.
In every moment we have a choice about how to meet the circumstances of our lives, and the cumulative effect of our choices adds up to a path we walk through life. What happens when we pay attention enough that we can know ourselves as choosing? And which path will we choose - fear or faithfulness, scattered or present? A conversation with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
In this conversation we explore the ways in which our moment-to-moment interpretation shapes the way we bring ourselves to our lives. We consider together what it is to 'walk a path' in life, rather than responding impulsively, and how some of the implicit assumptions of contemporary culture can easily keep us diminishing ourselves and our own aliveness, and in the process diminishing that in others too.
What becomes possible, we wonder, when we see that it's our attempts to control life that get us into so much difficulty? And what happens when we come at life with an intention to participate, fully, with as much kindness and presence as we can find?
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation here and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
It's so gratifying to be right, but often it's our very rightness that strangles the life out of our relationships and out of our own existence. What can we do to soften our rightness and allow both doubt and love, so that something new can come in? A conversation with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
In this conversation we consider together how easy and gratifying it can be to feel right, even right about our own uncertainty, and how easily 'rightness' strangles the life out of things, especially out of our relationships with others. We explore what it is to turn over the soil of our convictions, and to soften ourselves so that something more life-giving can enter in, all the while without this having to have us abandon ourselves or others. And we wonder together how it might be that we can meet ourselves and others more fully in a hopeful way that doesn't give up on the possibility of goodness and doesn't turn away from the dark.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation here and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
Photo by sergio souza on Unsplash
What can we do, when we get wounded, to stay in a relationship with others that’s dignified and respectful of everyone's humanity? It’s a question pertinent both to our personal relationships and to our troubled, fractious conversations about the big issues of our times. A conversation with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
In this conversation we explore together how we might navigate a course between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ when we're wounded, without it having to entail that we give up on ourselves or others. We discover together that much of what’s often called for is a kind of acceptance of life’s inevitable messiness, that there are limits to our attempts to have the world go just the way we want it, that forgiveness nearly always involves a kind of grieving, and that through all of this there is nevertheless a profound kind of hope and healing that’s possible between us.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation here and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
Photo by Hoang M Nguyen on Unsplash
In this special edition of 'Turning Towards Life' Lizzie and Justin talk about the Thirdspace Professional Coaching Course (offered in partnership with New Ventures West), a certification programme in integral development coaching which is at the heart of Thirdspace's work and a project of great joy and love for both of us.
Over the course of our conversation you'll hear what makes this special programme unique, how it changes participants and what it makes possible, the distinction between 'developmental' and other kinds of coaching, and more about the details and structure of the programme.
You can read more about the course (the 'PCC') at www.thirdspacecoaching.com
The mystery of time and death. We explore two different ways that we turn away from the reality of time – either by tuning out from the fleeting nature of things and the urgency of our response, or by eating up time in a panicked flurry of frantic activity. Somewhere between the two, we discover, is a way in which we can meet time more directly, more lovingly, and in a more responsive way – and in a way that helps us both decide what matters and invest our activities with mattering.
Along the way we talk about the changes that time brings, in our bodies and the bodies of others; the mystery of where time ‘goes’ when it has ‘gone’, and we bring to mind those we have known and have loved who are no longer with us and find out that they are still present, in time, even though they are no longer here. And it occurs to us that this is the nature not only of people but of all moments that continually arise, disappear, and yet travel with us.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-gj and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
How should we respond to our confusing, complex times? Is there a way that we can find ourselves deep in the midst of the sacred ordinariness of life, ready to contribute and participate without being so convinced of our smallness, separateness or fear? A conversation with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This week we return to a poem by Rumi that calls to these confusing and complex times. We explore together what can happen as we soften ourselves so that life, in its bigger sense, can reach us. What are the possibilities, we wonder, in seeing that we each take to be ‘me’ or ‘us’ or ‘life’ is always something of a misunderstanding? And if we open to a more expansive story that frees us, at least somewhat, from our grasping and our aloneness?
Perhaps, we find, there’s a way that we can find ourselves deep in the midst of the sacred ordinariness of life, ready to contribute and participate without being so convinced of our smallness, separateness or fear. We recorded this conversation the midst of week of great political uncertainty here in the UK as a way of finding and remembering, together, how much more than this is always present, even though we so easily forget.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-fK and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
Photo by freddie marriage on Unsplash
How our welcoming ourselves makes it possible for us to welcome others more fully, without having to control them or judge them. And what comes from welcoming even our own shame. A conversation with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
In this conversation we talk about the belonging in life that is supported by finding out that all the parts of us that we usually push away, and all the experiences too, also belong. We explore together how difficult it can be to welcome ourselves with curiosity and wonder, and how our welcome – when we find it – makes it possible for us to welcome others more fully, without having to control them or judge them. We discuss the possibilities that come from welcoming even our shame, how it turns out that none of us is really so different from one another, what it might be to know ourselves as an expression of life as well as our more everyday sense of being a separate self, and how we might practice all of this in an everyday, day-to-day way.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-fe and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash
What happens when we meet ‘what is’ with an open heart, and when we drop our demands that life somehow bend itself exactly to our will? A conversation with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
What might it be to enter into the vast mystery of life with an attitude of welcome? What happens, we wonder, when we meet ‘what is’ with an open heart, and when we drop our demands that life somehow bend itself exactly to our will? We consider the ways in which life is an ongoing invitation to improvise, and how we might relate to the circumstances that come our way as an opportunity to participate rather than as a justification for our resentment or flight.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-fH and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
Photo by Pawel Tadejko on Unsplash
What happens when we see and loosen the loyalties we may have carried since childhood but which no longer serve us? A conversation about adult development, freedom and finding out what's ours to do, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
In this conversation we talk about adult development, about the loyalties to particular ways of doing things that we enter into during childhood, and about what it is to find ourselves free – to a greater or lesser extent – to pursue what is increasingly ‘ours’ to do in the world. Along the way we grapple with the many kinds of orthodoxy that shape us throughout life – family, religious, societal – and explore together how we might turn our loyalties to them into a bigger kind of loyalty which takes in life itself. We end with a consideration of the support and community that can help us find a life that feels true and real and which can joyfully welcome the parts of us that our loyalties – up until now – have had us turn away from.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-gj and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
Photo by Bambi Corro on Unsplash
How can we see through the stories we have about life that have us either be too small (and which have us give up) or too big (when we demand that the world goes just our way)? What it is to see that most of life doesn't unfold in a 'cause and effect' way? And how to 'live as if you liked yourself' - finding our goodness in the midst of everything that happens.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation here: https://wp.me/p4Tynu-f6 and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
Photo by Fikri Rasyid on Unsplash
How might we live in life's mystery without being swallowed by fear, or losing touch with ourselves? A conversation about living with depth with Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.
In this conversation we consider how to have our lives be informed by the depth and imagination of our sleeping dreams, and what it is to find a way to be a gift back to the life that is a gift to us. Our source this week is by the poet David Whyte.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-eY and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
Photo by Danielle MacInnes on Unsplash
How avoiding fear can shrink our lives. A conversation about living in an ever larger world, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
In this conversation we consider what it takes to live in an ever larger world of both meaning and contribution, and how that nearly always calls on us to move towards what we’re most afraid of. As we go we talk about the ways in which fear draws us away from our capacity to respond to what’s actually happening now, the kindness to ourselves that’s required to work with all of this, the perils of living in a narrative of ‘self-improvement’, how it is that our fears are also a kind of loyalty to something that matters or mattered, and the ‘leaving home’ that’s required to find a new and more spacious home in which we can live.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-eG and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
Photo by Henrique Ferreira on Unsplash
Self-deception, our attempts to stay in control of everything, and the trouble that comes from all of it.
Our source this week is an extract from a piece published on Justin's blog, justinwise.co.uk. We use it to launch into a conversation about self-deception, trying to stay in control of circumstances and experiences (and the cost of both), the trouble that comes from our attempts to manage our own image, the wisdom and delights of the enneagram as a way of understanding personality patterns, and the gifts of laughing joyfully at ourselves and our complexity. As you'll see, we have a lot of fun in this conversation as we tackle some big topics about being human.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-es and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
Photo by The Creative Exchange on Unsplash
The difficult and live-giving work of both loving and grieving. A conversation about courage and tenderness with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
In this conversation we consider together how easily our fear of loss can stop us from loving fully, how love and grief are but two sides of the same coin, and how we might step into both with a clear heart, courage and tenderness. And along the way we find much to be joyful about, and to laugh about.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-ev and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
The urgency of belonging to the world. A conversation about the feeling safe even when the world is risky, with Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.
This conversation is inspired by a poem by Mary Oliver, who died this week. Lizzie and Justin talk about the power of ongoing practices to shape the world; the many ways in which we're taught that we're in some way separate from things, and what we might do about that; what it is to feel safe, even when life is risky; and the gifts that we make to others when we find it in ourselves to write, or teach, or speak - in one way or another to make art.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-e9 and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
Photo by Dawid Zawiła on Unsplash
How we box ourselves into an identity - a conversation about shame, self-criticism and freedom with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
One of the weirdest and yet most understandable features of being a human being is how we'll box ourselves in to an identity - a particular way of being in the world that allows this but doesn't allow that; a way that we lay out familiar territory for ourselves, fiercely bounded by shame and self-criticism, that easily stops us from bringing ourselves fully to life and from experiencing all that life is bringing us in each moment.
This is our topic for this week, inspired by Anthony Wilson's poem 'When the Holy Spirit Danced With Me in My Kitchen'.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the poem, a link to Anthony's Work, and more information on this conversation here https://wp.me/p4Tynu-dU and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
Photo by Ali Kanibelli on Unsplash
A conversation on listening, and hearing, silence and true connection. With Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-ec and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
Photo by Jenny Marvin on Unsplash
What is it to learn in a way that allows us to be more truthful, compassionate and alive? A conversation about community with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This week we talk about learning. Not the kind of learning that fills us with facts, but the kind of learning that allows us to open ourselves to more spacious interpretations of our lives, and which helps us to take new kinds of action and enter into relationships that are more truthful, compassionate and alive.
Along the way we talk about what it is to have a kind of 'critical reflection' about our own lives, about the gift that human beings can be to one another when we share our stories and when we can hold our stories 'lightly' enough to neither abandon them too quickly nor be rigid about them. And we consider how doing this together - in community wherever we can find it - is necessary for cultivating the courage, hopefulness and care that the world calls for.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-dM and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
Photo by Ali Kanibelli on Unsplash
This week we talk about poem Lizzie's sister Hollie wrote which has gone viral in the past year. We believe it’s so popular because of how harshly we treat our bodies in our minds and hearts, and Hollie's call for us to treat our bodies call with a simple, powerful loving-kindness.
During our conversation we talk about what it is to know ourselves in a gentle way, to appreciate the miracle of an embodied life, and steps we might take to be less caught up in the punishing narrative of shame, self-improvement and comparison that fuels our understanding of our bodies at this point in history.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-dw and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
Photo by Tanja Heffner on Unsplash
Stepping in when life seems a mystery. A conversation about time, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This week we talk about how we might understand the mystery of being human. So often both of us find ourselves in a place of real confusion, and it's tempting while there to treat the confusion as something wrong - either with life or with ourselves. We know this is true of many other people too. But there are bigger narratives to step into when life seems a mystery, or when things are breaking down around us and within us. One powerful and stretching source of different perspectives is the 13th century Zen teacher Dogen. Our source for this week begin's with Dogen's suggestion that we are all a kind of 'time', and follows with some questions and interpretation by our friend and colleague James Flaherty.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-dD and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
Love, and grief, and defendedness, and the huge life-giving letting go (and welcome) that's required for us to love and be loved in return. Along the way we talk about doing the dishes, having grand plans, and the place in the middle that can hold them both.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-dd and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
Photo by Honey Fangs on Unsplash
How can we respond to fear without being 'had' by it? A conversation about courage and the act of remembering ourselves, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This week our conversation covers the unavoidability of fear, how contagious it is, and the choices we must each make about whether to be uncritically 'had' by it, or whether to reach past it to bring forward other qualities that can help us to respond. Along the way we talk about the gifts we human beings can be to one another in the act of remembering - showing the others around us qualities they may have forgotten and turning, together, towards doing what's called for rather than freezing, numbing ourselves, or turning away.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-dq and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
Photo by Marina Vitale on Unsplash
The possibility of happiness - living with our wonderful, messy humanity. A conversation about acceptance, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This week we talk about how the suffering that comes from comparison (with others, with imagined future selves), and we examine together ways in which it might be possible to live with an alternative orientation of acceptance of our wonderful, messy humanity. Along the way we have a laugh together about this crazy being-a-person we all find ourselves in the middle of, and we consider the role of others in helping each of us find a way to be in life that's less punishing and more dignified.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-d3 and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
Photo by MI PHAM on Unsplash
This week: how vulnerable and lost we human beings can feel, and how our attempts to distract ourselves from this and to appear 'ok' only tend to make things worse for us and those around us. We consider the life-giving possibilities of sharing our fears and confusions with others, what it is to trust that we're always part of something way bigger than ourselves, and the freedom that comes from knowing that being alive is always to be bringing something new into the world - even when we can't feel it and don't know what it is.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-cU and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
Photo by Šárka Jonášová on Unsplash
Standing up, speaking out, and putting ourselves on the line. A conversation about hope with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This week we ask what it takes to take action in the world – to actually stand up, speak out, and put ourselves at risk. We explore together how shaky it can feel to do this, and how necessary in a world that deeply needs each of our gifts to be brought and contribution to be made. We wonder together what kind of faith in life, and what kind of sense of belonging with others, can help us to step out beyond the bounds of our own comfort and familiarity, and do our part to set things right.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-c9 and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash
A conversation about mid-life transitions and transformation with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This week we explore together those giant transitions in life where we get remade from the outside in and from the inside out, if we’ll only let ourselves. We talk about some of the ways we resist being changed – out of fear and shame – and how life conspires in myriad ways to keep teaching us what we need to learn. And we consider the vital role of elders and community in helping one another to let go and step more fully into the lives that are calling us, and in finding the courage and making the unique contribution each of us is here to make.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-cf and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
Photo by Andrew Ridley on Unsplash
Listening as if we're wrong, even when we think we're right. A conversation about speaking and hearing truth, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This week we take up truth telling, which turns out to be a deep and rich subject. In our conversation we explore what it is to work against our own habits and preferences – always the move that makes development possible – and what it is to listen, deeply, even when we don’t want to. And we talk together about the life-giving possibilities of listening as if we’re wrong, even when we think we’re right.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-bY and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
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Parenting ourselves, one another, and our children. A conversation about guiding one another into the world, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This week we take up parenting as a question, inspired by a poem from William Martin. Our definition of parenting is broad here as we ask each other what it takes to guide anyone into the world – our children, other people’s children, our families, colleagues, friends and even our own parents. In the midst of our conversation we consider what it is to actively choose what it is of ourselves we want to transmit to one another – rather than asking what behaviour we want to get from others. And we wonder together about how to drop the ‘image management’ it’s so easy to get into when our super-egos (or ‘inner critics’) run the show.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-bT and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
Photo by Juliane Liebermann on Unsplash
Climate-change, despair, and the hopeful move of owning up to the limits of our power. A conversation about life's impermanence with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This week, in a week of further news about the mess we’re in with climate change and the urgency and despair all of that can generate, we begin with the poem ‘The Dakini Speaks’ by Joyce Wellwood. We talk together about the various ‘deals’ with life that we take up – ways of being that we imagine will protect us – and how living in the midst of such deals can distance ourselves from our lives and from our contribution. We consider together the bracing possibility that owning up to the limits of our control, growing up into a more mature appraisal of life’s losses and impermanence, can free us into a deeper kind of hope – one that’s not contingent on how things turn out. And we explore together the necessary kind of wildness in ourselves that this all calls for.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-bL and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
Photo by Dominik Scythe on Unsplash
Finding a way fo drop our defences in the face of feedback from others. A conversation and dignity in relationships with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
In this episode we take up the enormous possibilities that come when we can find a way to drop our defences in the face of feedback from other people, and whatever gift may be hidden within while maintaining our own dignity and the dignity of the other while we do.
Along the way we laugh together at how messy we can be as human beings, the cost of walking around in life with our defences up all the time, and the kindness we have to show to ourselves if we are going to allow ourselves to open to the wonders that can be learned from other people.
The source which is our leaping-off point is written specially for us by Lizzie.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-bH and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
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Openness, shame and the nothingness with often find when we make contact with ourselves. A conversation about openness, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Our conversation opens with a piece written by Lizzie which launches us into a conversation about openness, shame, and the nothingness we often find when we make contact with ourselves. We consider that such ‘nothingness’ is another way of talking about the ground of all being from which we come and to which we return, and the life-giving and healing possibilities that come when we’re open about the aspect of ourselves with others. Along the way we talk about the importance of being met and seen, with simple welcome, by others, the gifts of community, and how the lives so many of us live keep us away from such straightforward and life-giving possibilities.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-bt and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
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Truthfulness with ourselves. A conversation about honesty and welcome, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
In this episode we take up the topic of truthfulness with ourselves. We talk about how our efforts to turn away from what’s true about our experience can be a kind of violence to ourselves. And how easily that becomes a way we suppress the truth of others’ experience.
Along the way we consider how the life-giving and dignity-bestowing act of honesty with ourselves can open up the possibility of a deep welcome to others and to life itself.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-bz and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
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Tantrums - and what we do when life falls short of our expectations. A conversation about intimacy with the truth of our lives, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Our source for this week is from Alan Lew’s ‘This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared‘. In our conversation we talk about tantrums, what we do when life falls short of our expectations, the simplicity and difficulty of returning to intimacy with the truth of our lives, and how we can only really do this in the company of others.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-bk and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
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The beauty and possibility of our incompleteness. A conversation about the mistake we make when we try to be perfect. With Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Our conversation opens with an exploration of the blue of the sky and of the sea, from Rebecca Solnit’s ‘Field Guide to Getting Lost’. We consider together how it’s the very incompleteness of a human being that gives us our particular kind of beauty and possibility, and the mistake we make when we try too hard to compare ourselves to others or to some perfect ideal of how and who to be. Along the way we talk about self-acceptance, making and sharing art, the importance of community, coaching as a way of bringing art to one another and the gift that human beings can be to one another when the conditions are made right by all of us.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-ba and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
Photo by Maximillian Conacher on Unsplash
Loving what we're in the midst of. A conversation about bringing lightness to our endeavours, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise from Thirdspace.
In this conversation we consider together how the act of loving what we’re in the midst of, and who is around us, can be the first step to a more expansive and inclusive orientation to life. And that this itself has the possibility of relieving difficulty and bringing a necessary lightness to our endeavours. Along the way we consider the gifts of frustration and disappointment, explore how love is not so much a feeling but an intentional practice, and explore the merits of washing dishes and crochet as a path – like any practice – to the kind of intimacy with life that we need in order to face our biggest challenges with grace, courage, creativity and patience.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-aT and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
Photo by Nick Casale on Unsplash
Reclaiming our aliveness and the grip of our addictions. A conversation about paying attention to our lives and the felt-sensation of our bodies. With Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Our conversation opens with an excerpt from Christine Caldwell’s book ‘Getting Our Bodies Back‘. We consider together how the culture most of us live in actually encourages us to take up addictive behaviour as a way of distancing ourselves from our experience (and we include in our definition of addiction here anything that we do compulsively, habitually, at odds with what is life-giving for us and which puts us to sleep), at the same time as evoking deep feelings of shame and hollowness.
As we go we discuss how the first step in our reclaiming our aliveness, and our capacity to nourish ourselves, is the art of paying attention to our lives, and the felt-sensation of our bodies. And, as often, we return to the power of relationship – places and people with whom we can be open about ourselves – as the path to recovering our capacity to properly nourish ourselves and one another.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-b2 and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
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Developing a faith in life that can sustain us through the inevitable difficulties we face. A conversation with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This conversation begins with Norman Fischer’s Zen-inspired translation of an ancient Hebrew poem, most commonly known in our culture as ‘Psalm 16’. Norman has done amazing work on bringing out the simplicity and beauty of words, revealing the deep possibilities of these poems so often obscured by flowery and complex translations, and in this poem he points into a topic we’ve been exploring for some weeks on Turning Towards Life – the ways in which we might develop the kind of faith in life that can sustain us through the inevitable difficulties we face without us turning away.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-aP and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
Photo by Suhyeon Choi on Unsplash
The perils of seeing ourselves as separate. A conversation inspired by a Rumi poem, with Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.
In this conversation we consider together the perils of seeing ourselves as separate – from one another and from life – and how our mistaken sense of separateness leads so easily to fear and isolation from the deep sources of relationship, love and courage that are available to us all. Along the way we consider what it is to be in a long-term relationship or marriage, we talk about words for the ‘source of everything’ that can constrain or liberate our aliveness, we explore the politics of division that’s arising in so many places in the world, we chat about the joys of wild swimming, and we remind ourselves of what becomes possible when we look into the eyes of another – even one very different from ourselves – and remember the shared beauty that’s there and that gives rise to each of us.
Our source for this week is by 13th century poet Rumi.
Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation at https://wp.me/p4Tynu-aI and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life
In this episode Lizzie and Justin talk about what’s beyond ‘what goes wrong’. We discuss how we might see, when we’re in the midst of difficulty, that’s it’s really part of us that’s caught up in the difficulty. And, even though we often know ourselves most readily as this part (which gives our lives familiarity, a role to play, something to to), to be human is also to be a kind of depth that’s beyond the immediacy of our experience, however troubling or delightful that experience is to us.
Along the way we encounter the possibility that one path to more fully inhabiting our lives comes from being with others who can know and welcome our depth and, in turn, learning the gift of recognising the depth in others as we find it in ourselves.
Photo by Tom van Hoogstraten on Unsplash
Here’s episode 20 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life
In this episode Lizzie and Justin talk about being afraid – how it paralyses us and turns us away from ourselves and others, and what comes from owning up to being scared and knowing others as afraid also. The source is from our friend Joy Reichart’s Blog Beginnerdom, and is called “Because I was Scared“.
Photo Credit: danhamilt1 Flickr via Compfight cc
Here’s episode 21 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life
In this episode Lizzie and Justin talk about the radical possibility of welcoming ourselves, and others, just as we are.
To those of us with a more action-oriented stance or a commitment to improving things, welcoming in this way can look like an act of irresponsibility. After all, doesn’t making things better in some way entail rejecting how things are?
We explore this tension together, look at how our surrounding culture of keeping up and comparison with others turns us away from ourselves, and consider the possibility of both welcoming and working to repair the world. And in the midst of things Lizzie’s niece joins us for a surprise visit.
Here’s episode 17 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life
In this episode Lizzie and Justin talk together about stuckness - what it is, how our efforts to deny it or overcome it can end up being unhelpful, and the deep quality of welcome that's required for stuckness to flower into whatever it is that it is an opening for. The source for our conversation is a piece written by Lizzie.
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Here’s episode 18 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life
In this episode Lizzie and Justin talk together about being lost – a phenomenon that touches most of our lives at some point or another, even when we pretend it’s not so. The source for our conversation is a beautiful poem by David Wagoner.
Photo by Valeriy Andrushko on Unsplash
Here’s episode 19 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life
In this episode, Lizzie and Justin talk about Rainer Maria Rilke's poem 'The Swan'. In particular we take up the question of faith in ourselves - what does it take to trust in the particular shape in which we're made, even though it brings us difficulties? And gifts what can come when we're prepared to trust that what we're for might be quite different from what we've been doing, or from what we've imagined?
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Here’s episode 16 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life
In this episode, Lizzie and Justin talk about 'The Right Time to Hope', a piece written by Justin for his blog and reproduced below. Along the way we talk about the importance of playful experimentation in finding a wider space to stand in, about the problems with 'self-improvement' and the comparison and self-criticism it evokes, and about what it is, like a swan entering the water, to find a way of being in the world that expresses ourselves in our fullness.
Photo Credit: - mika - via Compfight cc
Here’s episode 14 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life
In this conversation we began with this piece from the Long Now Foundation, about what the living can learn from the dying. We consider the importance of welcoming everything, even what we can’t change – and that while not everything can be changed, nothing can be changed that is not first faced by us.
Photo by Les Anderson on Unsplash
Here’s episode 12 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life
‘The Cradling’, begins with a beautiful and powerful meditation from the work of Joanna Macy reproduced below. We ask ourselves what possibilities there are when we remember the extraordinary and unlikely evolutionary background from which all human beings come, and when we remember also that everyone – even those people we judge most or are most afraid of – arises from exactly the same background and shares with each of us the same biology. Would we respond so easily with the impulse to hurt, or distance ourselves, or turn away? And if we did not, what then?
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Here’s episode 10 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life
It’s so easy to feel our separateness from everything.
For a start, we always experience ourselves at the centre of our lives, right where our body is, while people and things come and go around us. We can easily conclude that we are the only solid something in the world, while everything else is transient.
And few of us live in the midst of community. We have practices that shape how we work, how we take care of ourselves, how we attend to our lives that emphasise how alone we are, and how self-reliant we must be in order to survive. It’s rare to find ourselves bound up in the midst of communities of depth, support and care that remind us in each moment how held we can be.
And then there’s the whole way our systems of knowing and learning are constructed, deeply influenced by the Cartesian view that we are essentially minds, separate from the world. And our economic system, which deems us useless unless we can prove our productivity.
It’s no wonder we can feel so alone, so afraid, so distant from everything. It’s no wonder it’s so hard for us to feel the way in which each of us matters, in which the world and we depend each upon the other.
But we do matter. And the world does depend upon each of us. And when we’re able to remember this, we have a much better chance of doing what we’re here to do.
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Here’s episode 11 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life
In Oh Beautiful Sky we begin with a poem written by Lizzie’s husband Matthew for his daughter. Our conversation turned into the topic of power – how we try to have power over others and over the world, and the difficulty this brings. And how cultivating awe and connection with something bigger than ourselves – the sky, nature – can remind us of a much truer power we have, power-with, in which we turn towards others and bring ourselves in a way that brings out the possibility of mutual commitment. And what different world of organisations, family, community and politics we’d cultivate if power-with was our central commitment in the world?
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Here’s episode 13 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life
In this episode, Lizzie and Justin talk about 'How to Know When You're Wounded', a piece written by Lizzie about how our inevitable hurts can have us turn away from life, in an attempt to manage our own experience, or can be - as the poet Rumi puts it - 'the place where the light comes through'. When we're able to identify how we hurt we're much more likely to be able to bring ourselves to the world with presence, courage and wisdom. We talk about all these topics and more.
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Here’s episode 15 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life
This week Justin & Lizzie began with the poem “Sunflowers’ by Mary Oliver. Among other topics we talk about the long and necessary work of turning our lives into a celebration and of undoing our sense of aloneness, if we’re going to find a way to contribute what’s ours to contribute.
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Here’s episode 9 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life
This week we begin with Jennifer Wellwood’s poem “Unconditional“. We talk together about how difficult it can be to really accept our experience, how easy to run from it, and the consequences. Along the way we consider why it is that human beings so often prefer to be right than to stay in relationship, and how that’s related to our wish to defend ourselves. And we introduce the idea of an argument ‘for the sake of heaven’… which is when we disagree in a way that keeps a bigger context in view and allows us to let go of our own rigid positions.
Photo by Ravi Pinisetti on Unsplash
Turning Towards Life is a project of ThirdSpace, presented weekly by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn. Each conversation is presented live on FaceBook on a Sunday morning.
This week we take up a conversation about realness and the openness to others that it requires, and what it is to allow ourselves the vulnerability that realness inevitably entails.
You can find all the sources and details of our FaceBook group at turningtowards.life
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Here’s episode 8 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life
This week the source for our conversation was Francis Weller’s book “The Wild Edge of Sorrow”. We begin with two poems – Denise Levertov’s “To Speak of Sorrow” and Robert Bly’s “What is Sorrow For?”. We talk about the connection between feeling our sorrow, shared rituals and spaces for grieving, and aliveness. Along the way we touch on how restraining sorrow keeps the myth that we are separate going, and how our collective numbing to the losses of our own lives and the world is a way we keep perpetuating the more destructive aspects of our current culture. We end with the hopeful thought that finding ways to grieve together is a way to help us turn more fully and courageously towards life and all that is called for from us.
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Here’s episode 6 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life
In this episode we talk about being male and female, how society pushes us towards gendered roles and orientations to the world, and what gets left out when we gravitate to either one of the poles of emotion or intellect without the other. Our source is Eve Ensler’s poem ‘I am an Emotional Creature’.
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Here's ‘The Hidden Cost of Hiding', Episode 3 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by thirdspace coaching in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can join in the growing online community around this work here: http://turningtowards.life
This week we take up the topic of hiding – and in particular ways in which our working lives can be an opportunity for us to hold back from the world and keep ourselves safe, or they can be a place in which we can step forward and bring ourselves with all the vulnerability, risk and possibility that entails.
The source text for our talk, which you can read before watching, is here.
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Here’s episode 7 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life
The source for this week’s conversation was Joanna Macy’s “Personal Guidelines for the Great Turning”. We talk about what can support us in responding courageously and truthfully in the midst of the enormous changes – political, social, environmental – which may only just be beginning and which could change everything. Along the way we touch on the life-giving necessity of beauty, how to know ourselves in a way that can give us the courage we need to step forward, and how important it is to realise that none of us is alone.
Photo by Jared Sluyter on Unsplash
Here’s episode 4 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life
This week the source for our conversation is John Neméth’s song ‘Fuel for Your Fire’. We talk about how the inevitable difficulties of life can be drawn upon to support our courage, action and contribution – how difficulties can be part of the path.
Photo by Ihor Malytskyi on Unsplash
Here’s episode 5 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life
Our source this week is Mary Oliver’s powerful poem Wild Geese. We talk about the constraining effects of inner criticism and the limits of our over-effort to be good or strong or loving or clever. And along the way we stumble into some realisations about what’s possible when we learn to trust something other than our own self-judgement, and reach out to others for help.
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The first conversation in the thirdspace Turning Towards Life project with Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn went live on Sunday October 1st. Lizzie and Justin took up the questions and possibilities posed in a blog post ‘Numbered‘, which Justin wrote in 2015 in response to the imminent death of a dear friend and teacher.
Our wide-ranging conversation covers living truthfully with the knowledge that life is finite, bringing ourselves wholeheartedly and courageously, and what it is to not turn away.
You can find all the sources and video versions of every episode at turningtowards.life
Photo by Simon Matzinger on Unsplash