Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast

It's a necessary part of our growing up that we learn to get along in the culture into which we were born. But, on the way, we easily lose touch with what is most life-giving for us, and cover up our truer desires with a crowd of wants and needs that help us to fit in, or stand out, or keep a particular kind of image going. So much becomes possible when we start to strip away the cloud of distractions from our truer longings and start to find out what our hearts are really calling for. A conversation about the vulnerable, generous, courageous work of being clear about what we most desire, 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. Our source for this week is written the poet Rumi, translated and interpreted by Daniel Landinsky in his book ‘The Purity of Desire’, and chosen this week by Justin. No Conflict With Anything I Do God’s face gradually fades from the infant’s sight. If this did not happen, you would never be able to recognise and converse with the things you do. A soul’s blindness most always increases as the body grows, and certain hungers set in, and one’s attention is turned that way. Now that you have traveled so far and have seen so much, what is it you most prize? What pack horse does not feel relieved when its burden is lifted? Desires, narrowed down, can do the same, decrease the weight you carry, and unveil the wonder in the present. Just a single movement, a single impetus, I now have. This, there is no conflict with anything I do. What kind of man would ask his breath the reason for its actions? Less demanding, questioning, I now am of all I see. God’s face will gradually return to your perception. My words will help draw back the curtain from your eyes. Rumi Translated by Daniel Landinsky from The Purity of Desire Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

It's so easy to suspend our lives... to in one way or another miss out on being here because we're waiting for conditions to be right, to become a better kind of person, until we're saved. We can even suspend our lives waiting until we feel like 'nothing is missing'. But what if even the feeling of 'something missing' is what's calling us to inhabit our lives just as they are? A conversation about letting ourselves actually be in our lives 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. Our source for this week is written by Jeff Foster, and brought to us by Lizzie. The old chair is here, offering itself, whispering, "Come, sit down, rest, you are weary. See, I am here..." And the carpet that you've never really looked at before, never really valued before, because you've been so busy looking for enlightenment and salvation and love in the future - see how it just… lies here… offering itself fully to you, prostrate in your presence, whispering, “Come, lie, sit, stand, I ask nothing of you, I want nothing. I am here…." You didn't truly see the carpet because you wanted to get enlightened first. You wanted to be an enlightened person standing on the carpet! You were going to work on yourself for forty years, meditate your way to Nirvana, heal your traumas, perfect your ‘self’, transcend your ego, or wait until you were ‘ready’ before valuing the carpet, seeing the carpet, recognizing the carpet as a divine expression, and a tremendous gift. It was all a postponement, you see. It was all a movement away from ‘what is’, from the extraordinary sacredness of the ordinary. It was a displacement into a future that could never come... The carpet was always here. The chair was always here. Ready. Alive. Innocent. Waiting. Life was always here, offering itself, showing itself, calling you, beckoning you, to finally see it, inviting you to awaken, to come alive, to be a child of awareness. And yet, you've been so busy moving away, into a 'future', into a dream... Just take a moment. Any moment. This moment. And behold it in loving awareness, bathe it in your light. - Jeff Foster Photo by Sharon Christina Rørvik on Unsplash

How about we find a way to live without permanently being annoyed that things aren't just as we'd like them? Might that not be a path to some joy? Could we give up the way we exhaust ourselves (and often others!) by our attempts to push life around, to control it, to have things just our way? A conversation about creativity, relationship, what happens when we let ourselves fall into life, and giving up trying to herd cats, 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. Our source for this week is written by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, from her book 'Naked for Tea', and brought to us by Justin. Perhaps it would eventually erode, but... Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer That rock that we have been pushing up the hill—that one that keeps rolling back down and we keep pushing back up—what if we stopped? We are not Sisyphus. This rock is not a punishment. It’s something we’ve chosen to push. Who knows why. I look at all the names we once carved into its sedimentary sides. How important I thought they were, those names. How I’ve clung to labels, who’s right, who’s wrong, how I’ve cared about who’s pushed harder and who’s been slack. Now all I want is to let the rock roll back to where it belongs, which is wherever it lands, and you and I could, imagine!, walk unencumbered, all the way to the top and walk and walk and never stop except to discover what our hands might do if for once they were no longer pushing. www.wordwoman.com Photo by Pablo Heimplatz on Unsplash

When big change comes upon us, we can at first devote a great deal of our hearts' energy to a fight with the change - which often does nothing to help us. But our hearts are equally capable of something else - a turn towards bigger questions, and to the possibility that the change might be inviting us into a deeper relationship with life. Hidden here might be 'the jewel at the heart of the stone'. A conversation about depth, intimacy with life, and the life-giving, difficult work of responding to change, 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. Our source for this week is written by Mark Nepo, and brought to us by Lizzie. Fighting The Instrument Often the instruments of change are not kind or just and the hardest openness of all might be to embrace the change while not wasting your heart fighting the instrument. The storm is not as important as the path it opens. The mistreatment in one life never as crucial as the clearing it makes in your heart. This is very difficult to accept. The hammer or cruel one is always short-lived compared to the jewel in the center of the stone. Mark Nepo Photo by Birgith Roosipuu on Unsplash

How are we coming at life at this time? Are we careful? mindless? gentle with the things we are touching? Or careless, distracted, and in a self-important hurry at all costs? A conversation about paying attention to our lives, this week inspired by Amanda Palmer’s writing, 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. Our source for this week is written by Amanda Palmer, and brought to us by Justin. How you do anything is how you do everything One of my favorite yoga teachers used to say: “how you do anything is how you do everything”. I feel like everyone I know is being given a surprise final exam in how to do anything (and everything) right now. I feel simultaneously completely upended and yet strangely more at peace than I have ever felt in my life. paying attention to how I change a sheet, how I cut an apple, how I schedule my few precious minutes of work and screen time and how I give my child a bath is all a reflection of all the everythings I’ve ever done; how I started a career, how I broke up with a boyfriend, how I dealt with a miscarriage. it’s all the same. how did I do it? was I careful? mindless? was I gentle with the things I was touching? or was I careless, distracted, and in a self-important hurry at all costs? slowing down is the hardest thing on earth because it forces you to face the scariest thing you will ever face: you. fare you all well…I love you all so so much. I know what so many of you are going through, and growing through. I am with you. Amanda Photo by Aarón Blanco Tejedor on Unsplash

There's a down-to-earthness about some people, an everydayness. When people are this way, there's no fear that they're putting on an act for you, that they may be different towards you when you are not there. And when each of us finds a way to be like this, we can be a profound welcome to one another. A conversation about ordinary, kind ways of being with one another, 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. Our source for this week is written by Melanie Lowndes, and brought to us by Lizzie. Bread and Butter People by Melanie Lowndes (edited by Lizzie for Turning Towards Life) She is the neighbour who is always pleased to see you, who years ago with her husband and kids had many animals. Her husband once stopped you on the way home and said, “Look what I've got - she doesn't know yet…” and proudly showed you a piglet which used to run to the door in the hall with it's wriggly tail wagging when you came in. She is the Welsh lady with the foreign surname who lives with her Indian homeopath husband and does B&B the old way, taking in guests who stay in the bedroom full of books and character and a little mess, and carefully cooks what you like for breakfast and dinner. He is the father of your ex who in latter years had greyhound dogs and you could escape the politeness of the house each evening to walk with him - and Hannah or Rose, him listening, ever a safe and un-judgmental receptacle of your disclosures. There is a safeness about bread and butter people, a consistency. Yes it's also Scottish Jean, who lost her husband after caring for him for many years and was in grief, and who had a gravelly smokey Glaswegian voice that could reduce you to tears with a question. There is a kindness about them, a down-to-earthness, an every-dayness, no glamour nor allure but something deeply nurturing; no eggshells around them. There’s no fear that they're putting on an act for you, that they may be different towards you when you are not there, no fear that what they show you is different to how they are to their core. This is the way they are: consistent - and you understand something about consistency now - it is not about always showing up the same way - it is about consistently showing up how you are, honestly, whether that be happy or sad, calm or troubled. I think of the times people have actually delivered. The mates that show up. The people who come back. Who care. Who check in. Who stay. Who make tea and stir in a little extra sweetness without making a fuss. The bread and butter people in our lives. The staple friendships. The kind dough that kneads our self esteem.

Why we're all trying to get loved, why our covering that up gets us into all kinds of trouble, and what can happen when we start to get honest with one another about what's going on. A conversation about loving people without condition, 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. Our source for this week is a beauty from the poet Hafiz, who lived in Persia in the 14th century, translated here by Daniel Landinsky. With That Moon Language Hafiz Admit something: Everyone you see, you say to them, “Love me.” Of course you do not do this out loud; Otherwise, Someone would call the cops. Still though, think about this, This great pull in us To connect. Why not become the one Who lives with a full moon in each eye That is always saying, With that sweet moon Language, What every other eye in this world Is dying to Hear. Photo by Amanda Dalbjörn on Unsplash

What does it take to remain hopeful about life when we're entering into the dark? How can we be beacons of hope to one another as we travel through the more difficult passages of our lives? A conversation about faithfulness to one another's wholeness, 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, chosen for us by Lizzie: The Unbroken by Rashani Réa There is a brokenness out of which comes the unbroken, a shatteredness out of which blooms the unshatterable. There is a sorrow beyond all grief which leads to joy and a fragility out of whose depths emerges strength. There is a hollow space too vast for words through which we pass with each loss, out of whose darkness we are sanctioned into being. There is a cry deeper than all sound whose serrated edges cut the heart as we break open to the place inside which is unbreakable and whole, while learning to sing. Find out more about Rashani Réa at rashani.com Photo by Luca Micheli on Unsplash

The weeks of physical distancing we're in might, if we'll take it, give us an opportunity to develop a new relationship with time. What if time isn't a commodity to be consumed? And what would happen if we allow ourselves to encounter time as depth, or as play, or as presence, or as possibility? A conversation about giving up our frantic, fearful relationship with the finiteness of our time, 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, written by Rob Poynton: How Long Will This Last? by Rob Poynton www.robertpoynton.com I wonder how long this is going to last. I imagine we all do. Which is understandable, but absurd. Not only do we have no idea, but being home for a few weeks (or months?) is the least of it. In some ways what is happening now will never leave us. It would be remarkable, disappointing even, if this experience didn’t change us, one way or another. The question reveals how we habitually think and talk about time in a limited way. As if it had no other dimension, depth or quality beyond a number of minutes, hours or days. As if all it had were length, which is actually just a metaphor, borrowed from the world of physical space. As if all units of time were equivalent, standardised, uniform. They aren’t. Time has the capacity to open up, deepen, expand or extend, even as the clock continues its regimented march. For example, on a Reading Weekend at La Serna, tech philosopher Tom Chatfield wrote: “Time is different here. It has been waiting for us. I remember time like this from when I was young: baggy, generous, ambling; then dashing at the pace of light and landscape”. Pauses do that. As we hunker down, constrained in space, perhaps we can create a different kind of freedom for ourselves by shifting our relationship with time? Instead of behaving like dutiful consumers, with no idea beyond counting and spending the days or weeks until this is over, can we play with it, explore it, savour it, sense it, feel it, or get lost in it? Perhaps if we pay less attention and attach less importance to duration, we might find this time has more to give us than we realised. You can find out more about Rob and 'The Pause Project' here. Photo by KiPhoto by Robert Anasch on Unsplash

Here in London we're coming the end of the first week of lockdown as the world responds to the coronavirus pandemic and, like millions of others across the globe, we're wondering together about what to make of this time. And there are choices about how to relate to the experience of confinement and physical distance - choices that are marked by our willingness to not add unnecessary suffering to our own and others' lives; choices that are shaped by our willingness to include both what's beautiful and what's frightening or grief-filled. A conversation about stepping with full hearts into constraint, 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, written for us by Lizzie: The New Normal. The warm sun on my face, the cool breeze on my ankles. My babe asleep on my chest, her breath so gentle - like the smallest of waves on the shore. Thank you for surrendering to this, he says. Thank you for being willing to let this be enough. For now. We can suffer this, or we can let it become our normal. So we bake a cake. And I clean the door handles. And we have a cuppa tea. And cook dinner. We watch the baby girl sleeping. And say thank you. By Lizzie Winn Vesper’s Mummy Vesper is 22 weeks - March 24, 2020 Photo by Kira auf der Heide on Unsplash