Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast

It can seem so difficult to connect to one another and listen to one another, but when we soften and open and quieten down it's not beyond us to know others and their worlds with enormous depth and sensitivity. As Lizzie says in this episode, we're made for connection, because we were never really as separate as we feel to begin with.  This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about our shared heritage as participants in a vast unfolding process that brought all of us into being, 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: Here we might observe that the basic mood of the future might well be one of confidence in the continuing revelation that takes place in and through the earth. If the dynamics of the universe from the beginning shaped the course of the heavens, lighted the sun, and formed the earth, if this same dynamism brought forth the continents and seas and atmosphere, if it awakened life in the primordial cell and then brought into being the unnumbered variety of living beings, and finally brought us into being and guided us safely through the turbulent centuries, there is reason to believe that this same guiding process is precisely what has awakened in us our present understanding of ourselves and our relation to this stupendous process. Sensitized to such guidance from the very structure and functioning of the universe, we can have confidence in the future that awaits the human venture. Thomas Berry, “The New Story,” in The Dream of the Earth, 137 Photo by Beat Schuler on Unsplash

We return this week to our exploration of relational power and ask what would happen if we gave up using our power to control people (and in doing so our attempts to get what we want) and instead used our power to liberate the creativity and contribution of others? And how would this shape our parenting, our leadership, and our friendships? This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about ways in which we might turn whatever power we are given from 'control' into love, 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 Relational Power of Parenting I have seen people who loved children enough to realize that mere unilateral obedience is the least of virtues, valuable for preventing children from running out in front of trucks but with little use for understanding or nurturing children’s hopes, dreams, and creative abilities. Merely demanding obedience gives adults little power to teach children to think for themselves, to make their own decisions, develop their own values or creativity, or grow in mutually loving relationships with their parents and others. Parenting that exercises relational power is hard work. It takes a lot of patience, self-control, emotional strength, and a willingness to bear much of the price for the children’s mistakes. But the reward for relational parenting is a greater joy at children’s accomplishments, and a deeper, more mutual love as children develop their own relational power. From Process Relational Philosophy by Robert C Mesle  Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

It's easy to use whatever power we have in the world as a way to make ourselves feel safe and in control. But what if we used our power not to reinforce being in a position of 'power-over-others' but instead to cultivate the conditions in which mutuality, emergence, and reciprocity between us could be born - in our organisations, with our life-partners and romantic partners, in friendships, as parents?  This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about ways in which we might turn whatever power we are given from 'control' into love, 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. Relational Power as Love Faced with inevitable inequalities, people with relational power will choose to bear a larger burden so that the weaker have a chance to develop their own relational power. Unlike unilateral power, relational power is not competitive in the sense of being mutually exclusive. Relational power is like love: The more we love each other, the more both of us can grow in love. To achieve this state will require that we take turns carrying the burden of love when one of us is less loving, but, in the long run, your goal is to increase my love, my relational power, and for me to increase yours. As Loomer explains, “In the life of relational power, the unfairness means that those of larger size must undergo greater suffering and bear a greater burden in sustaining those relationships that hopefully may heal the brokenness of the seamless web of interdependence in which we all live.” People who live in relational power discover values to which they would otherwise have been blind. By listening with active openness, they help other people to articulate their own values more clearly and so to bring a richer vision of value into the relationship. “Under the relational conception of power, what is truly for the good of anyone or all of the relational partners is not a preconceived good. The true good is not a function of controlling or dominating influence. The true good is emergent from deeply mutual relationships.” From Process Relational Philosophy by Robert C Mesle Photo by Dan Stark on Unsplash

It can be so hard, and so painful, to apologise sometimes. But what would happen if we saw that rupture and repair were an inevitable part of every relationship? If we knew that it is the very act of repair that knits us together into something more real, more durable, more connected? This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about a loving, mutually respectful, dignified path we can follow when we're in difficulty with 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. How to Apologise by Ellen Bass Cook a large fish—choose one with many bones, a skeleton you will need skill to expose, maybe the flying silver carp that’s invaded the Great Lakes, tumbling the others into oblivion. If you don’t live near a lake, you’ll have to travel. Walking is best and shows you mean it, but you could take a train and let yourself be soothed by the rocking on the rails. It’s permitted to receive solace for whatever you did or didn’t do, pitiful, beautiful human. When my mother was in the hospital, my daughter and I had to clear out the home she wouldn’t return to. Then she recovered and asked, incredulous, /How could you have thrown out all my shoes/? So you’ll need a boat. You could rent or buy, but, for the sake of repairing the world, build your own. Thin strips of Western red cedar are perfect, but don’t cut a tree. There’ll be a demolished barn or downed trunk if you venture further. And someone will have a mill. And someone will loan you tools. The perfume of sawdust and the curls that fall from your plane will sweeten the hours. Each night we dream thirty-six billion dreams. In one night we could dream back everything lost. So grill the pale flesh. Unharness yourself from your weary stories. Then carry the oily, succulent fish to the one you hurt. There is much to fear as a creature caught in time, but this is safe. You need no defense. This is just another way to know you are alive. Photo by Steve Mushero on Unsplash

What would we do if we found different questions to ask, bigger ones, than the habitual questions we're asking of life without even knowing we're asking?    This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about what we might do if we stopped contracting away from life, if we undid our own everyday self-diminishment, if we trusted that we had gifts to bring and that we, and others, could be blessed by the giving, 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, chosen for us by Lizzie. Questions to Ask When Waking by Bernadette Miller What would you do if you really knew that life was wanting to sing through you? What would you say if your words could convey prayers that the world was waiting to pray? What would you be if your being could free some piece of the world’s un-whispered beauty? What would you stop to bless and caress if you believed that blessing could address our painful illusions of brokenness? What would you harvest from heartache and pain if you understood loss as a way to regain the never-forsaken terrain of belonging? What would you love if your love could ignite a sea full of stars on the darkest night? Photo by Jared Erondu at Unsplash

The predominant narrative in our wider culture is that human beings were made for conflict, for dominating one another, for 'getting ahead' of one another. But that's only one story. What if human beings were made for meeting one another, for welcome, for mutual wonder and mutual seeing, for cooperation, for the intertwining of our many gifts? For giving, even when we ourselves have not received and are hurting. For seeing without being seen first. For holding without being held before.    This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about what it might take to really welcome 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, chosen for us by Justin. When we meet by Emma Ashru Jones When we meet I don’t just want to meet your perfectly polished self; The productive, capable, holding-it-all-together extraordinaire. I want to meet you. I want to meet your middle-of-the-night fears and the whispers of your longings. I want to meet your heart and to hear what she has to say. I want to meet your wildest desires and the dreams so tender they dare not be declared. I want to greet your despair at the door and welcome her in from the cold And offer your confusion a cushion to lean back into. I want to welcome your body that has carried you this far, To give her a place to rest and be recognised - wise one that she is. I want to listen to the part of you that is beyond language And to give your imagination a paintbrush and let her play. I want you to meet your whole self anew, And to see the truth: That you never needed to be fixed. That your life was never a problem to be solved, But a moment to be met. Emma Ashru Jones www.emmaashrujones.com Photo by Bruno Nascimento on Unsplash

Turning Towards Life 'Live' - an online event for everyone - is coming on Sunday 18th April 2021 2pm-5pm UK. Join us! Details are here https://bit.ly/2NYkeNC How finite everything is, including the time we will get to spend with any of our great loves. And how much we want to turn away from this, avoiding feeling too much of our love in an attempt to try and avoid the inevitable grief that will come with our losses. But to feel it all is one of the great gifts given to us as human beings. So how can we find a way to stay open, ready, and receptive in the midst of it all?    This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about what it might take to show up for our lives in all their beauty and all their losses, 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, written by Lizzie. Vulnerable Connection and Death are not fair as things that go side by side.  The more I love the more there is to lose.  Of course I just want to not love, then there’s nothing to lose.  But then I look at your cheeks, and your lips and the creases behind your knees.  And there’s nothing else to do but sink my face into your neck and snuggle.  To the point where you’re annoyed with me.  To love and to need, and to know that it’s all in the context of temporary.  To feel and to laugh and to know it’s all going to end far too soon.  It’s too much for my all too human and clingy heart.  It will surely break. Be smashed to smithereens. Maybe it needs to break each and every day in preparation for the grand break? The one that will come when ‘the time’ is ‘that time’. I fearfully withdraw and within minutes I’m back there again,  Asking to be loved, offering my love and planning how we can be together.  Salivating at the ordinary moments of loading the dishwasher while you talk to me.  Feeling my pulse race at the next time we can hug full body to body.  Even letting our knees touch, rubbing cheeks, knocking glasses. Messing each other’s hair up in celebration. I know I could stay in that withdrawn, safe, small space too.  And protect myself against this tsunami of grief that’s sadness.  This avalanche of love.  There’s too much at stake. Our hearts are too bare.  Our skin is too receptive. To be able to stay there, open, ready, receptive.  And yet, we’re here, in these bodies.  The body holds us to this deal. What else is there to do but love and be broken open by life, by love, by connectedness? I’m done for.  So are you.  We all are.  There’s no way out.  From love.  Lizzie Winn March 2021 Photo by Andrew Shelley on Unsplash

We're not machines, but we often treat ourselves as if we are. Many of us in our lives become 'busyness machines' or 'target-hitting machines'. But we feel, too, how small this is as a way to live a life. This week we are guided by Parker Palmer's luminous writing into a bigger question - 'What is it to be faithful to something bigger than ourselves?' It's a life-giving alternative that calls us into community, courage, and dedication to repairing and improving even what we know can't be repaired and improved in our lifetimes. 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, chosen by Justin. Standing and Acting in the Tragic Gap “By the tragic gap I mean the gap between the hard realities around us and what we know is possible — not because we wish it were so, but because we’ve seen it with our own eyes.” —Parker J. Palmer If we are to stand and act with hope in the tragic gap and do it for the long haul, we cannot settle for mere “effectiveness” as the ultimate measure of our failure or success. Yes, we want to be effective in pursuit of important goals. But when measurable, short-term outcomes become the only or primary standard for assessing our efforts, the upshot is as pathetic as it is predictable: we take on smaller and smaller tasks—the only kind that yield instantly visible results—and abandon the large, impossible but vital jobs we are here to do. We must judge ourselves by a higher standard than effectiveness, the standard called faithfulness. Are we faithful to the community on which we depend, to doing what we can in response to its pressing needs? Are we faithful to the better angels of our nature and to what they call forth from us? Are we faithful to the eternal conversation of the human race, to speaking and listening in a way that takes us closer to truth? Are we faithful to the call of courage that summons us to witness to the common good, even against great odds? When faithfulness is our standard, we are more likely to sustain our engagement with tasks that will never end: doing justice, loving mercy, and calling the beloved community into being. Parker Palmer Photo by Ashim D’Silva on Unsplash

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

The education most of us have had taught us how to know the answer, how to be right, and how to move quickly to solve problems. But, by and large, it didn't tell us much about how to be true to the one life we have, nor what kinds of practices of creativity, inquiry and attention might support us in that project.  This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might start to dignify and honour the unique possibilities of our own lives, guided by the wisdom of Marcus Aurelius, and 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 Justin. What is it in ourselves that we should prize? Not just transpiration (even plants do that). Or respiration (even beasts and wild animals breathe.) Or being struck by passing thoughts. Or jerked like a puppet by your own impulses. Or moving in herds. Or eating, and relieving yourself afterwards. Then what is to be prized? An audience clapping? No. No more than the clacking of their tongues. Which is all that public praise amounts to - a clacking of tongues. So we throw out other people's recognition. What's left for us to prize? I think it's this: to do (and not do) what we were designed for. That's the goal of all trades, all arts, and what each of them aims at: that the thing they create should do what it was designed to do. The nurseryman who cares for the vines, the horse trainer, the dog breeder - this is what they aim at. And teaching and education - what else are they trying to accomplish? So that's what we should prize. Hold onto that, and you won't be tempted to aim at anything else. And if you can't stop prizing a lot of other things? Then you'll never be free - free, independent, imperturbable. Because you'll always be envious and jealous, afraid that people might come and take it all away from you. Plotting against those who have them - those things you prize. People who need those things are bound to be a mess - and bound to take out their frustration on the gods. Whereas to respect your own mind - to prize it - will leave you satisfied with your own self, well integrated into your community and in tune with the gods as well - embracing what they allot you, and what they ordain. Marcus Aurelius (121-180), from 'Meditations' Photo by Bench Accounting on Unsplash