Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast

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 Trommer ahundredfallingveils.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