'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

114: Naming the Light and the Dark