“People can be wonderful”, is where we begin this week’s conversation. How do we bring that forward, in the midst of all that can be so difficult, so that we can step-by-step make a world in which we meet one another with conversation, compassion, kindness, and welcome? And where do we need to start inside ourselves and with the ones closest to us in order to first glimpse and then act on this possibility?

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

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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.

Highlights of our conversation:

00:00 Introduction and Reflections
03:13 The Power of Words and the Always Already Present Possibility of Human Goodness
06:08 Orienting to Ourselves and Others with Kindness
08:00 Maya Stein’s Poem, ‘Believe’
12:01 The Struggle with Self-Judgement
14:52 Our Messiness and Incompleteness
18:05 Creating Safety Together
20:56 Realness
24:11 The Gifts and Curses of our Standards and Expectations
27:04 The Path of Repair and Connection
30:13 Practicing Kindness and Engaging With One Another
32:54 Effecting Repair

Here’s our source for this week:

Believe

Maybe the camera crew is at someone else’s house,
a spotlight haloing over another’s fleshy story.
Maybe the mailman is delivering the good news
to your neighbor, or a different city entirely,
and you come home to a rash of catalogues,
the second notice for a doctor’s bill, a plea
from the do-gooders for whatever you can spare.
Maybe you haven’t cleaned your kitchen floor in weeks,
forgotten to nourish the front garden, spilled too much
coffee in your car, weaving through traffic.
Maybe you are 10 pounds heavier than last year.
Maybe your skin is betraying your age.
Maybe winter is ravaging your heart.
Maybe you are afraid, or lonely, or furious, or wanting out
of every commitment you entered with such vigor and trust.
Maybe you’ve bitten your nails down to the quick,
chosen your meals badly, ignored the advice of those
who know you best. Maybe you are stubborn as a toddler.
Maybe you are clumsy or foolish or hasty or reckless.
Maybe you haven’t read all the books you’re supposed to.
Maybe your handwriting is still illegible after all these years.
Maybe you spent too much on a pair of shoes you didn’t need.
Maybe you left the window open and the rain ruined the cake.
Maybe you’ve destroyed everything you’ve ever wanted to save.
Still.
If anything, believe in your own strange loveliness.
How your body, even as it stumbles, angles for light.
The way you hold a dandelion with such yearning and tenderness,
the whole world stops spinning.

Maya Stein
mayastein.com

Photo by Anton Darius on Unsplash