233: Whatever Leads to More Life

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