157: Loving and Being Loved by the World

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