Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast

A friend once pointed out to us that conversations sometimes - often even - 'die in the middle' without anyone paying any attention to it happening. And sometimes conversations are robbed of their aliveness by our very wish that they go well, and our trying to fall back on a method in order to bring that about. So that has us wondering together who we each have to be in order that our conversations are genuine, intense, urgent, truthful and alive - in whatever context... It's the central question that animates the existence of this 'Turning Towards Life' project and practice.

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:

Are We There Or Not?

One of the main symptoms of a bad conversation is this: one of the participants is on autopilot.

Imagine you're on a date. Feeling insecure, you've brought along a set of index cards. You know: "7pm Inquire re childhood memories", "7.15pm Praise her outfit"... We really want the date to go well. But every time we glance down at our index cards, this is felt by our date as disengagement. And she's right: we're leaving her out of the process. Our anxiety has made us crave a method, when what the situation demanded was some moment-to-moment responsiveness to what was actually happening (to the true energy of the conversation) ... We prepare those cards and bring them along and keep awkwardly consulting them when we should be looking deeply into our date's eyes, because we don't believe that, devoid of a plan, we have enough to offer ...

Some conversations feel evasive, ill-considered, agenda-laced, selfish; others feel intense, urgent, generous, truthful. What's the difference? Well, I'd say it's presence. Are we there or not? Is the person across the table there (to us), or not?

George Saunders
Afterword #3 on 'The Darling', from 'A Swim In the Pond In the Rain', p161-162

Photo by Sunguk Kim on Unsplash

Somewhere along the way we easily lose contact with the mystery and wonder of a life we're thrown into, a life that comes to us infused with presence and possibility. Perhaps because there are no directions, and perhaps because we're thrown into life without our say-so, and perhaps because there are always pressing practical issues of survival and care to attend to, it's easy for us to find ourselves far from contact with the simple mystery that is around us and between us. So how might we hold both wonder and practicality together with one another? And what inner freedoms might we draw upon to support us in this?

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:

Ordinary 

Her sturdy branches 
were the towering mountains 
to dance on. 
Her deep roots, 
the rolling rivers to frolic in. 
Every inch of her was infused with the wonder of the world.

Ten years later,
I am ten years older. 
I walk past the ordinary tree on an ordinary day. 

Her trunk was a place of comfort, 
just the place to eat my 
oatcakes.
In autumn her fallen leaves were 
warm blankets
for the fairies. 
In spring her golden buds
were the perfect shape 
of a fish for my fire.  

Ten years later,
I am ten years older. 
I walk past the ordinary tree on an ordinary day. 

I would look up through 
her web of leaves
at the cold sky. 
I would sit resting against her trunk, 
feeling her rootedness 
Into the underground world. 

Ten years later,
I am ten years older. 
I walk past the ordinary tree on an ordinary day. 

On one of my last afternoons with her,
she slipped something into my pocket.
When I asked what it was
she answered 
“You will know one day, when 
you are aware and awake” 
I didn't understand
those words so 
I sat,
I forgot. 
I trusted.

Ten years later,
I am ten years older. 
I walk past the ordinary tree on an ordinary day.

As I grew older 
And started to wake, 
I forgot what it felt like to feel so content
alone with her.
I forgot what it felt like to dance on her mountains, 
or frolic in her rivers. 
My focus started to shift, 
my life felt 
full and heavy, 
my mind was only ever thinking 
ahead of what was. 
My body felt full of weighted dread. 

Ten years later,
I am ten years older. 
I walk past the ordinary tree on an ordinary day.

One day, long after I had stopped
my visits to the tree, 
I reached into my pocket
to find what she had given me
all that time ago.
Now some may only have seen an 
oatcake, 
but I saw so much more, 
I saw the dreams I use to have, 
I saw the blissful joy. 

Ten years later,
I am ten years older. 
I walk past the ordinary tree on an ordinary day.

I saw her mountains, 
smelt the rivers,
I saw the fairies passing by. 
An explosion of life filled my heart 
as tears filled my eyes. 
As I looked at the oatcake
resting softly in my hand,
I wondered to myself 
how I ever lost this joy. 

Ten years later,
I am ten years older. 
I walk past the ordinary tree on an ordinary day.

I wanted to keep it forever and ever 
and never let it go, 
maybe if I gripped it tight enough, 
it would surrender and stay with me. 
In that moment I heard her voice, 
faint, 
Carrying the warmth
of a soft summer breeze, 
“it is always in your reach, 
my love,
 it will always be there waiting, 
but letting go is part of life, 
let this be your 
awakening” 

Ten years later,
I am ten years older. 
I walk past the ordinary tree on an ordinary day.

Bo Holden
October 2022

Photo by Gilly Stewart on Unsplash

There are so many ways we've learned to 'perform' - in work, as parents and friends and loved ones. And for any of us who do anything to help others - coaching or therapy or other helping roles - it's tempting to try to perform as the 'skilful helper' too. But what is most often called for is not any kind of 'performing' but a way of being present with one another, with all of our creativity, wisdom, knowledge and skilfulness right to hand and not 'in-between'. This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we make this possible for one another, 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:

Let Nothing Be In Between

The essence of working with another person is to be present as a living being. And that is lucky, because if we had to be smart, or good, or mature, or wise, then we would probably be in trouble. But, what matters is not that. What matters is to be a human being with another human being, to recognize the other person as another being in there... and that you have to wait for that “person,” that being in there, to be in contact with you. That seems to me to be the most important thing.

So, when I sit down with someone, I take my troubles and feelings and I put them over here, on one side, close, because I might need them. I might want to go in there and see something. And I take all the things that I have learnt... and I put them over here, on my other side, close. Then I am just here, with my eyes, and there is this other being. If they happen to look into my eyes, they will see that I am just a shaky being. I have to tolerate that. They may not look. But if they do, they will see that. They will see the slightly shy, slightly withdrawing, insecure existence that I am, I have learnt that that is O.K. I do not need to be emotionally secure and firmly present. I just need to be present. There are no qualifications for the kind of person I must be. What is wanted for the big therapy process, the big development process is a person who will be present. And so I have gradually become convinced that even I can be that...

So this is my way of saying that: Do not let focusing, or reflecting, or anything else get in between. Do not use it as an in-between... There is a sense that we are armed, you see... We have all this stuff and so it is easy for us to sit there with stuff in between. Do not let it be in between; put it out of the way. You can have at least as much courage as the client has. If not, I would be ashamed of myself, with all the stuff that I have, if I still cannot really look when this person can. So I want to be there in that same way.

Eugene T Gendlin

Photo by Alp Duran on Unsplash

Can we embrace both the acceptable and unacceptable parts of ourselves? Can we act and let go of trying to control the result? Can we hold onto both sides of each of life's great polarities, and in doing so grow in wisdom and in the possibility to contribute? And what might it take, if we did want to become like this, to faithfully practice our way in to cultivating our own goodness and capacity and supporting others around us to do the same? 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:

Chapter 10 – According to Our Nature
Tao Te Ching, interpretation by William Martin

Can we embrace both the acceptable
and unacceptable parts of ourselves?
Can we breathe as easily as innocent babies?
Can we see the world clearly
and without judgment?
Can we act with loving-kindness
yet remain unknown and unsung?
Can we watch all things come and go,
yet remain undisturbed?
Can we accept our countless thoughts and opinions,
yet not take them seriously?
If we can do this we are acting
according to the virtue that is naturally ours;
nourishing all things, but possessing nothing;
enjoying all things, but clinging to nothing;
working diligently,
but claiming credit for nothing;
growing in wisdom, but controlling nothing.

from freedomsimplicityandjoy.wordpress.com


Photo by Omar Lopez on Unsplash

We're beginning our 6th year of Turning Towards Life today, and in recognition of this we're having a conversation about 'Soulful Repetition' - those practices we can take up in life that return us to ourselves, and to one another, and to meaning and belonging. How do we take up new practices that can help us remember who we are, where we belong, and what is sacred... and which respond to the depth and love in us in a wider world that keeps telling us that 'self-improvement' and individualism are the most valued prizes? 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:

Soul Repetition

Repetition is a form of sustained attention, returning us repeatedly to a place, a person, or a practice, that engenders depth and familiarity. It is in the very essence of repetition that we come to know something more intimately, whether a partner, a friend, or our own interior worlds. Any movement toward depth requires repeated contact. Gary Snyder, Zen poet and nature philosopher, wrote that “Getting intimate with nature and our own wild natures is a matter of going face to face many times.” … Repetition is a form of courtship.

… Under the fevered pitch of individualism and the heroic ego, the original practices that wove the individual and the community together, have been largely forgotten. Consequently, the ritual of life is reduced into the routine of existence. That is repetition without soul. That is the drone of addiction. That is repetition that deadens.

… We live in an ongoing tension between forgetting and remembering. Nearly all enduring cultures developed practices designed to help us remember three central things: who we are, where we belong, and what is sacred. Prayer, meditation, and ritual, are, at root, designed to help us stay awake. These practices serve to sustain the ground of remembrance, which is, in turn, a form of permanence.

… Soulful repetition is not boring or bland. It is musical, rhythmic, and enduring. We require touchstones of return to stay connected to what matters to soul and culture. Ultimately, repetition is a gesture of affection, of fidelity. We return again and again to tend what it is we love and by so doing, we keep it alive and vital.

Francis Weller
https://www.francisweller.net/writings.html


Photo by Thor Alvis on Unsplash

At the end of our first 5 years of 'Turning Towards Life' we ask - how do we do the difficult work of reconciliation, of making peace with ourselves and with those with whom we share this one life, without abandoning ourselves or one another? How do we make peace together in a world where there are rarely easy answers, and where the right path is often shrouded in complexity? And can we commit ourselves to peace-making in the most ordinary ways as an endless path to walk, rather than as a 'thing' to be obtained? 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:

Making Peace

Peace making doesn’t mean passivity
It is the act of interrupting injustice without mirroring injustice
The act of disarming evil without destroying the evildoer
The act of finding a third way that is neither fight nor flight
but the careful, arduous pursuit of reconciliation and justice.
It is about a revolution of love that is big enough to set both the oppressed and the oppressors free.

From: 
‘Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals’ - a book by Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove & Enuma Okoro.

Photo Credit:  Lizzie Winn (photo from a wall near my house!)

How do we hold together two truths - that there is so much to be deeply concerned about, and that we have within us many gifts with which we can respond - without collapsing into pessimism or naive optimism?

And how do we find something in our lives and in one another that puts us in contact with those very gifts so that - even if the outcome is far from certain, or even far from what we want - we can still respond?

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:

Hope is not Prediction

“F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function,” but the summations of the state of the world often assume that it must be all one way or the other, and since it is not all good it must all suck royally. Fitzgerald’s forgotten next sentence is, “One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.”

You wonder what made Vaclav Havel hopeful in 1985 or 1986, when Czechoslovia was still a Soviet satellite and he was still a jailbird playwright. He said then, “The kind of hope I often think about (especially in situations that are particularly hopeless, such as prison) I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don’t; it is a dimension of the soul; it’s not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prediction. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.”

The despair that keeps coming up is a temporary inability to work for these things that are good, a loss of belief that the task is meaningful. That loss comes from many quarters, from exhaustion, from a sadness born out of empathy, but also from expectations and analyses that are themselves problems.”

Rebecca Solnit, from ‘Hope In The Dark’


Photo by martin bennie on Unsplash

Being together in a way that makes ourselves available to one another is what we're made for, and is among the most simple and most difficult things we'll ever do. So how do we create the safety and openness in our own way of being that allows us to be deeply connected to and available for others? What does it take to create the kind of relationship with our own bodies that can be a ground of safety for all the parts of us that get afraid and want to run? How can our 'yes' to staying in contact be a real yes, and our 'no' be a real no too, so that when we're with one another we're really with one another? And how can we make encountering one another's depth as ordinary as sitting together with a cup of tea?

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:

The Body in Relationship

You sit before me, 
Body open,
Your eyes meet mine. 
My deepest wish, 
To make contact, 
To come to intimately know you.
And as I reach for you, 
I see that I must reach for me first, 
That without me, I can’t truly be with you. 
First, it has to start here, 
Contact with this body I have, 
Teeming with senses, feeling and wisdom. 
And as I make contact here, 
Suddenly I’m confident, settled
Ready to be with you. 
And stay here, 
Because my body is home, 
And I can welcome you. 
And when we do this for each other, 
We dance between the houses, 
Living in community. 
Always welcome, 
At each others’ table, 
We share tea and life. 
And all the depths, 
And shallows, 
Are made normal just like our tea. 

Lizzie Winn


Photo by Lizzie Winn

Could we live inside definitions of 'success' and 'intelligence' that are wildly more life-giving, generous, and generative than the ones we've been handed? And what if we found a way to cultivate ourselves so that we become the ones who stand - in our lives, in our ways of observing life, and in our practices - who choose to cultivate virtues that have us, and the people around us, step into the fullness of our lives?

In this conversation, in the week of the death of Queen Elizabeth II, we find ourselves reflecting on what it is to step into our own self-sovereignty and to bring ourselves as gifts to one another.

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:

Beauty, Obligation, Wildness

The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as we have defined it.

What can educators do to foster real intelligence? We can attempt to teach the things that one might imagine the earth would teach us: silence, humility, holiness, connectedness, courtesy, beauty, celebration, giving, restoration, obligation, and wildness.

David W. Orr

Photo by James Wainscoat on Unsplash

It can be hard to return to ourselves and one another when we find ourselves caught 'in a thing' that's not life-giving - a tightness, stubbornness, grumpiness, an anger or rage or sourness or grudge, or indeed any way we're holding on to a feeling or idea long beyond its usefulness or appropriateness. The return is often hard because returning means facing ourselves and all the parts of us that might shame us as we come back. And it's often hard because returning can mean facing others with their expectations and longings, and perhaps their judgement too.

So how can we learn to be the ones that graciously and generously welcome ourselves and welcome others in those moments when we become unstuck from something that's been gripping us?

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:

Soft again 
I am determined not to let these bold, feathery  trees,
With their Fancy Display of greens 
And wind blowing gently through their branches, 
Pull me back from all the swirling thoughts in my head. 
And this sunshine will not thaw the brittleness of my heart in this moment. 
I am determined not to let its warmth slip  through my defences and into my bones. 
I’m in a grumpy, ungenerous, grey-coloured mood and I’m going to stay that way. 
The relentless push and liveliness of the river flowing past me will not gently pick up my worries and carry them downstream. 
I am determined, you see, to hold onto my position. To maintain this stuckness. To keep myself rooted right here. 
The clouds drifting above my head, combined with the blue of the wide sky will not, I repeat, will not take any of my breath away. 
I am going to sit here, in this nearly-comfortable camping chair - and hold on tight. I am not going to be moved or softened. 
I have every right to work with all my might against these bright forces that are trying to melt me, to reach me, to remind me and bring me home. 
Like the rock that stands still at the bend of the river, I will not be moved. 
But - oh dear - now my children are jumping off a rock into the silky water of the river. They are full of courage and delight and they are letting out whoops of Yes towards the water below them as they push themselves forwards through the air. 
And my plan begins to crumble. 
With every whoop, my determination is less rock like and more like the small branch that is being swept away downstream and around the next corner, beyond which I cannot see. 
They’ve won again, all of them conspiring against me. The trees, the water, the clouds, the sun, and now the babies I gave birth to, who sit at the centre of my life as brilliant and undimmable lights. 
I breathe in the river air deeply (is there any air as fresh I wonder?) and start all over again for the millionth time and turn my face towards the sun. 
I am made soft again.

Hollie Holden
www.instagram.com/hollieholdenlove

Photo by Lizzie Winn