180: The Self is a Gift That Can Be Given

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