Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast

What does it take to not just say 'yes' to our lives and to one another, but to bring our beauty, dignity, creativity and imagination in response? It's a different path to take from 'turning away', and equally different from 'passive acceptance'. Being a human affords us this possibility - that when we encounter fear, shame, wonder, injustice, confusion, or hope, we have the chance to muster a response that brings something new into the world. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about what it is to hold what we would rather not hold, and to answer it with beauty, 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, and is written by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. Saying Yes And could I, like this picture frame hold any image I was given? I think of the news last night—how I would rather not hold what I saw there. I think of what I learned just yesterday about myself and notice how I would rather push the image away. But could I be like this picture frame that will hold anything and in so doing honor its importance? Honor everything, no matter how mundane, no matter how frightening, as something worth knowing, something essential to what it means to be alive, a soup can, perhaps, a petunia, or a scream. How easily the frame says yes to the world, takes it in, anything, with no judgement, and offers it whatever beauty it has. Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer Photo by pine watt on Unsplash

When we discover that we're not really separate from one another - that in a very ordinary way we are always deeply shaping and affecting one another - we also open to new ways that we might be of help to one another and care for one another. And we can also find that we can be profound teachers to one another - that we learn to see, feel, and hear in new ways by the very act of being present to each other. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the gifts of reciprocity, 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. Learning to See To learn to see, then, is not simply to trigger a pre-established circuitry but to acquire a new use of one’s own body; it is to enrich and recast the body image. Put differently and more dramatically, to learn to see—or to hear or speak or feel—is to become a new self, a self that includes (as the previous self did not) perceiving, speaking, or feeling. This new self emerges at the instigation of other selves already possessing the requisite dimensions of human existence. Just as there are no teachers without students, no husbands without wives, no parents without children, so there are no human selves without human others. For the same reasons, there is no unchanging, independent self. Self and other are nondual. It is as true to say that relationship creates both self and other as to say that self and other enter into and create a relationship. Milton Scarborough Photo by Edi Libedinsky on Unsplash

The possibilities of saying a 'bright shining no' where previously we've been in the habit of saying 'yes'. Or a 'bright shining yes' where we've been in the habit of saying 'no'. And on the possibility of newness, creativity and discovery when we greet other people's new ways with wonder and welcome. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about letting our genuineness into the world, and doing the same for the people around 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. Our source this week is written by Hollie Holden and chosen for us by Lizzie. This Morning I Said No This morning I said No when I meant No,  In honour – and because of - of all the times  I have said Yes instead.  Did it feel empowering? No, it did not.  It felt frightening, Like risking it all.  It felt like finally saying the thing That will make you not love me.  And it felt lonely and cold And I tried to suck it back in, Rewind the tape player, Kill the sound of the word With a knife.  Or paint over it with pastel colours And make you a cup of tea –  Distract you from  What I just showed you When no other word would come.  But she stayed there, Defiant, Finally freed from the  Prison made of  Pretty, acceptable, Please-love-me Yeses. And I do not know what she will do next, This bright, emboldened No.  She seems to like it here,  Out in the wild.  So I am clearing out a room Full of things I thought I needed,  So that she can stay. by Hollie Holden Photo by Pete Nuij on Unsplash

When we're faced with difference or conflict it's often easiest to turn away, to give up on ourselves and our own values, or to try to force others to agree with us. But what if we were to learn to trust the creative possibilities that arise precisely because we are different to one another? What if we found a way to enter together into the promise that our encounter with the difference of others - and the difference that lives inside us - can be a path that opens us to something we long for, something we need? This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about taking steps on the path to being opened and affected by 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. 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 written by Justin. Where Conflict Goes Whenever we bring our commitments, longing, plans and requests to others there’s the possibility of some kind of conflict. We could avoid this only if world were made up of billions of clones, designed to sweetly anticipate and accommodate our every need and wish. But because people are different from us in uncountable ways, we’re always called on to listen, to make ourselves vulnerable, to hear what we’re not expecting to hear and to feel what we’re not expecting to feel, if we’re going to navigate our difference with dignity and for the good of everyone. Too often, perhaps because it feels safer, we try to find our way around conflict without doing any of this. We imagine we can force our way through (wishing for those clones, again) and in this way spare ourselves from encountering any real resistance, and from having to be changed by the encounter. Or we accommodate, keeping our own wishes, desires and requests quiet, silently and resentfully bending ourselves to fit in. Both of these positions diminish everyone involved. Both appear to keep us safe by keeping us out of contact with one another. And both, I know, are approaches I’ve fallen into countless times. I’m reminded, though, that avoiding the heat of difference between us doesn’t make the conflict go away. It only changes its form – into silence, or resentment, or insincerity; or shifts its location – from the public realm to our inner lives, where our avoidance of outer conflict leaves us in ongoing conflict with ourselves. Photo by Alora Griffiths on Unsplash

Asking for what we need is difficult for so many of us, because by genuinely asking we open ourselves up to the possibility that another person might respond in a way we're not expecting. Said another way, making genuine requests shows us that we're not - actually - in control of how other people show up in our lives. But at the same time, it's our capacity to request that opens up worlds - of dignity, mutual relationship, and the possibility that we might actually get met in a way that's much more solid, real and trustworthy than we've experienced so far. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the power and vulnerability of being someone who asks, and who can hear the answer; 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. 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 written by Lizzie. Making Requests Ask for what I need.  Requesting help. How vulnerable.  My heart sits in another’s hands. They can say no. Or turn away.  They can say yes too. I’m afraid of rejection.  Of having needs. Do I even know what I need ? Life taught me pretty well,  That independence is king. It’s the way to do life. But is it ? What if depending on others is life ? An allowing them to depend on me too ? And so asking, responding, opening. Turning inward and finding what’s mine. And then asking. Being in conversation. How brave I need to be. And how honouring of myself I need to be.  Requests open up relationship.  And then we have to swim, In what gets made. And it may open the world. But things may also have to end.  And all that needs to be OK to make the request in the first place. What a rip to head into relating this way. And am I willing to take this risk.  and say yes to life. Lizzie Winn Photo by Neil Thomas on Unsplash

A conversation about the essential goodness of people, how it gets misdirected by our misunderstanding ourselves, and the gifts of people who see our goodness, support our stopping our usual defensive ways, and who gladly welcome our remaking… and the possibility of being that way for 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. 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 a passage adapted (with a little license to support our reading it out of context) from George Saunders‘ amazing new book ‘A Swim in the Pond in the Rain‘. A little context may be needed – the author is writing here about a story by Leo Tolstoy ‘Master and Man’, which describes the last day in the life of a man named Vasili, who has deeply misunderstood his life and directed his energies in self-centred ways that greatly limit him. We have made a few small changes here to make the source make more sense out of its context in the chapter ‘And Yet They Drove On’. All the Way Ourselves Again Transformation, when it happens, happens not through the total remaking of a person or the replacement of our habitual energy with some pure new energy but by a redirection of our (same old) energy. What a relief this model of transformation is. What else do we have but what we were born with and have always, thus far, been served (and imprisoned) by? Say you’re a world-class worrier. If that worry energy gets directed at extreme personal hygiene, you’re “neurotic.” If it gets directed at climate change, you’re an “intense visionary activist.” We don’t have to become an entirely new person to do better; our view just has to be readjusted, our natural energy turned in the right direction. We don’t have to swear off our powers or repent of who we are or what we like to do or are good at doing. Those are our horses; we just have to hitch them to the right, uh, sled. What kept Vasili so small all his life? (What is keeping us so small now?) He wasn’t small, actually… He was infinite. He had access to as much great love as any of our beloved spiritual heroes… What was it that finally jolted him out of it? Well, it was truth. He saw that his idea of himself was untrue. His idea that he was himself was untrue. All of those years, he was only part of himself. He had made that part, was always making it and defending it, with his thoughts and his pride and his desire to win, which continually separated him, Vasili, from everything else. As that entity, Vasili, faded away, what was left behind discerned the fallacy and joined (rejoined) the great non-Vasili of it all. If we could reverse the process… what we would see would be a mind gradually reasserting a series of lies: “You are separate” and “You are central” and “You are correct” and “Go forth and prove that you are better, that you are the best.”And then he would be all the way himself again. Adapted from ‘A Swim in the Pond in the Rain‘ by George Saunders, 2021 Photo by Justin Wise at No 1 Highgate Swimming Pond

Perhaps one of the most difficult steps in each of our development, in our becoming more ourselves, is the push-back we get from the people around us - often the people who are closest-in to our lives. We find ourselves caught between the life that is longing to unfold into the world, and the parts of us that want to keep us safe from shame and disapproval. And at the same time, even as we long to bring ourselves in new ways, we find ourselves holding other people back in the name of staying safe - or at least staying familiar. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might undo this constricting way of relating to one another, so that we can act as a welcome to  gifts that might not otherwise be brought into the world, 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. 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, written by Lizzie: Who do I become in disappointing ? I don’t do what’s expected. They try and shame me back. To my habitual self. When I’m trying to be me. But I want to keep the door open. To living MY life. Not the one they envisage for me. As I disappoint others. Maybe even my Mum. I find a kind of emptiness that’s mine to explore. A blank canvas that’s inviting me to life. My precious life. The life that’s calling to me. And which I know is my path. I sit in stillness to find my ballast. My centre propels the noise to the side. For now. Now when I look at life itself. I open to the gifts being bestowed. And dedicate myself to listening. And the others might get to live something else. That wouldn’t come if I keep dancing the dance. And what if by dancing the dance I am stealing. Stealing an experience away that’s needed. And which might, with courage, bring untold blessings. Photo by Thomas Griesbeck on Unsplash

"Boundaries seem to be the only way that human beings can find a place to stand, a place to begin, a place from which to move out" writes Richard Rohr, and at the same time we need to be able to fight and engage with boundaries before we discover what we really need or want. So what does it take to be one who makes 'enabling constraints' for ourselves so that the full possibility of our lives can be focussed enough to come into the world? And what does it take to be one who extends trust, ground and freedom to others as they make their own boundaries and declarations? This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about our capacity to limit ourselves as a path to freedom, and to allow others to do the same, 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. 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, from Richard Rohr: Necessary Boundaries, Enabling Constraints Law, tradition, and boundaries—what I call /Order/—seem to be necessary both to reveal and to limit our basic egocentricity. Such containers make at least some community, family, and marriage possible. Boundaries seem to be the only way that human beings can find a place to stand, a place to begin, a place from which to move out. Even those who think they don’t have any boundaries usually do. We discover them when we trespass against them.  The human soul flourishes on solid ground, especially in the first years of life. Human beings seem to need to fight and engage with something before they can take it seriously—and before they can discover what they really need or want. The people who never fight religion, guilt, parents, injustice, friends, marriage partners, and laws usually don’t respect their own power, importance, and freedom. They remain content with the external values of the first “lawful” container, instead of working to discover their own. I am trying to hold us inside a very creative tension, because both law and freedom are necessary for spiritual growth.The psyche cannot live with everything changing every day, everything a matter of opinion, everything relative. There must be a sound container holding us long enough so we can move beyond survival mode. There has to be solid ground, trust, and shared security, or we cannot move outward. Photo by Manki Kim on Unsplash

To be human is to learn... but very often our learning is made much more difficult by  narratives of shame, or our demands for perfection, or our worries about not being welcomed by others in our unfinishedness. Learning is both what we are made for, and among the most difficult endeavours of our lives, particularly the learning about ourselves that requires ongoing patience, generous kindness, and rigorous attention and self-observation. But when we start to see learning as a never-finished practice, new horizons can open up for us. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about what can happen when we see our lives as an ongoing path, and learning as a craft, 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. 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 Lizzie, and written by Kae Tempest, from their book 'On Connection' “I can’t summon connection down from the ether and expect it to land in my lap. But I can do everything in my power to create a welcoming environment for it when it does decide to show up.  This is the same for self-awareness.  I can’t expect deep revelations about the content of my character or my life’s trajectory, or why I tend to do X when challenged by Y - to just pop by when I’m frying onions.  I have to put in a great deal of work to notice my own behaviour and even more if I am hoping to transform it.  It’s a craft.  The work that I do on myself may not be evident in my daily exchanges, but little by little If I continue, I hope that my actions will reflect my changing mindset and next time, I promise myself I’ll do things differently.   Getting on top of my shortcomings is not immediate; it’s endless.  It takes constant application.  And even after years of it, I might think I have cracked it until I find myself reflected through the lens of a relationship, and I realise I am in exactly the same spot that  was in years before.  Repeating the same mistakes, apparently treading water the whole time.”  Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash

In between our certainty that we’re too small, or too inadequate to meet life, and our fantasies (perhaps even expectations) of perfection, mastery of life, and personal power, there is a middle place. And the middle, if we’ll meet ourselves and one another there, is far from a place of mediocrity. Instead it’s a way in which we can be real with one another, truthful about our messiness and our gloriousness, and the messiness and gloriousness of life. Will you meet us there? This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation which invites a new understanding of ‘middling’ – less as an adjective, more as a verb, something we can actively do to find a dignified ‘right size’ in our lives; 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. 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 written by Maya Stein: It looks like the sky is coming apart and together at the same time… by Maya Stein https://bit.ly/3nJVKEu And the body is holding its losses like a fist. And a fleshy hope is opening to an unprecedented vastness. And whatever we think we are leaving behind will keep insisting. And the things we desire will elude us. And our efforts will pose as failure. And we will not recognize how far we’ve come. And we will solve one problem and create another. And we will feel broken. And we will not be broken. And the silence will be deafening. And we will love destructively. And no one will appear to be listening. And there will be too many doors to choose from. And we will keep saying, “I don’t know how to do this.” And we will be more capable than we ever imagined. Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash