This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  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, Amazon Music and Spotify.

Here's our source for this week:

is what it clearly said

on the handle of the magnifying glass

my father received on his fifth birthday.

He took it as a warning; the birthday gift

would only work its magic ten times

and no more, becoming, after that,

just a small round window with no miracle,

toy giant’s monocle, a circle of simple glass.

And so he went about his days with curious thrift,

weighing how much he needed to see any part

of the world up close, observing as best he could

with his own eyes first, thinking, Do I need to see

He lost count of how many miracles he’d left,

and for weeks after half-expected the magic of the glass

to simply stop. And I have asked him to tell me

of the thrilling moment he realized, or was told,

“ten times” in this context simply meant tenfold

and not ten instances, but he cannot remember.

Likewise the joy that must have come with such

a limitless epiphany. But what he does recall

and says most he misses still is the way the magic

made him see the world the rest of the time,

not through the glass, but all the time

he thought that magic would not last.

Photo by Stephen Kraakmo on Unsplash