Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast

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Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast episodes

November 28, 2021 217: Shameless
It's hard to be of genuine service to others from the part of us that worries about being liked. But there is something deeper in all of us that is not at all concerned about favour and is at once fiercely committed, gentle, loving and true enough to serve in an authentic, generous way.

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might cultivate the shameless leadership that's called for right now. It's 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.

Here's our source for this week:

Shameless

To be in favour or disgrace
is to live in fear.
To take the body seriously
is to admit one can suffer.

What does that mean,
to be in favour or disgrace
is to live in fear?
Favour debases:
we fear to lose it,
fear to win it.
So to be in favour or disgrace
is to live in fear.

What does that mean,
to take the body seriously
is to admit one can suffer?
I suffer because I’m a body;
if I weren’t a body,
how could I suffer?

So people who set their bodily good
before the public good could be entrusted with the commonwealth,
and people who treated the body politic
as gently as their own body
would be worthy to govern the commonwealth.

Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching, Ch13, Translated by Ursula Le Guin
Photo by Victória Kubiaki on Unsplash
31 min
November 21, 2021 216: The Grace of Hidden Beauty
What if beauty isn't something we add to the world, but an already-existing quality of everyone and everything that we can uncover through the way we learn to look, feel, sense and hear? What world would present itself to us if we practiced skilfully looking for beauty everywhere, including in those places (ourselves, others, our collective endeavours, the situation we find ourselves in) where we've already concluded that beauty, and all its attendant possibilities, is absent?

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might look anew, and in doing so breathe life back into places where we've allowed it to wither. It's 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.

Here's our source for this week:

We have often heard that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This is usually taken to mean that the sense of beauty is utterly subjective; there is no accounting for taste because each person's taste is different. The statement has another, more subtle meaning: if our style of looking becomes beautiful, then beauty will become visible and shine forth for us. We will be surprised to discover beauty in unexpected places where the ungraceful eye would never linger. The graced eye can glimpse beauty anywhere, for beauty does not reserve itself for special elite moments or instances; it does not wait for perfection but is present already secretly in everything. When we beautify our gaze, the grace of hidden beauty becomes our joy and our sanctuary.
John O'Donohue
Excerpt from the books, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (US) / Divine Beauty (Europe)

Photo by Harry Quan on Unsplash

37 min
November 14, 2021 215: Turn Mishaps Into the Path
We add difficulty to our difficulty if we imagine, as we often do, that difficulty should not happen, that it must be our fault to be living a life that is far from perfect, and that we have to blame one another when the world turns out to be full of problems. Mostly, we've been taught to respond to difficulty in this way by a culture that tells us that everything can be fixed and that if it's not fixed, already, someone must be doing something wrong. The resulting despair turns us away from qualities we could bring to the difficulties around us - from the personal to the global: compassion, creativity, gratitude, openness, dedication, patience.

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might learn to treat difficulties as an inevitable part of the path and, in doing so, learn new ways to respond that include and honour ourselves as we are, and the world as it could be. It's 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.

Here's our source for this week:
Turn All Mishaps Into the Path
We are, after all, not talking about miracles, we are not talking about affirmations or wishful thinking. We are talking about training the mind. If you were to meditate daily, bringing up this slogan, Turn all mishaps into the path, in your sitting, writing it down, repeating it many times a day, reflecting on it, reading the words of this book many times and thinking about them, then you could see that a change of heart and mind could take place in just the way I am describing. It simply makes sense. The mind and heart react according to their well-worn habits. Whatever habit of mind you have now comes from your actions and thoughts of the past (however unexamined or unintentional they may have been). Whatever habits of mind you will have in future depend on what you do or don’t do from now on. The way you spontaneously react in times of trouble is not fixed. Your mind, your heart, can be trained. Once you have a single experience of reacting differently, you will be encouraged. Next time it is more likely that you will take yourself in hand. Each time becomes easier than the last. And little by little you establish a new habit. When something difficult happens, you will train yourself to stop saying, “Damn! Why did this have to happen!” and begin saying, “Yes, of course, this is how it is, let me turn toward it, let me practice with it, let me go beyond entanglement to gratitude.” Because you will have realized that because you are alive and not dead, because you have a human body and not some other kind of a body, because the world is a physical world and not an ethereal world, and because all of us together as people are the way we are, bad things are going to happen. It’s the most natural, the most normal, the most inevitable thing in the world. It is not a mistake, and it isn’t anyone’s fault. And we can make use of it to drive our gratitude and our compassion deeper.

— from 'Training in Compassion' by Norman Fischer

Photo by Trevor McKinnon on Unsplash
35 min
November 07, 2021 214: You Know When It's Time To Go
If we look patiently, we'll sometimes see that underneath the 'presenting surface' of our lives is something within us working away persistently, lovingly, courageously. That something - a kind of essential goodness - has often begun working with what we care most about even before we've consciously begun ourselves. What would it be to see and trust that essential goodness within us and within one another, and to give it a name - as David Whyte does in the luminous poem that's our source for this week's conversation?

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about seeing the goodness in ourselves and 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. 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.

Here's our source for this week:

YOU KNOW WHEN ITS TIME TO GO

Even in the midstof thinkingyou’llnever be ready
even when you feel you have neverdeservedthat freedomto go
even underthe comforting illusionthat you never had a single speckof faithin what you want
you have already packed,your silentreluctance away,
lifted your ear to the morning birdsong
and before anyone can wake
you are alreadyout the door,
down the roadround the cornerand on your way.
…
Excerpt from‘You Know When It’s Time to Go’from ‘STILL POSSIBLE’ Poetry by David Whyte

Photo by Andriyko Podilnyk on Unsplash
36 min
October 31, 2021 213: Knowing Now You'll Never Be a Clown
'Imagination is everything', we were once taught by a teacher of ours. And so in this episode we take up the imaginative possibilities of play and laughter, wondering together what possibilities can come from holding the 'darkness and vulnerability in the heart of everything' alongside the joyful, expansive possibilities of play. Along the way we laugh a lot, imagine what it would be to welcome the joy of others, and consider how 'authenticity' always involves some measure of playfully cultivating what's been so far marginalised or not included.

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about living in the big 'and' of life rather than splitting life into opposites, 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.

Here's our source for this week:

Knowing Now You’ll Never Be a Clown

But if you were, and if your grinwere painted red as a Coke can, a fireengine, red as the Tabasco sauceyou spilled on your mother’s carpet, andif it lifted itself from the inside of one huge earto the other, and if your nose were a pingpong ball almost begging for a swipe, and ifyour feet slept within white shoes, three feet longand flapping, would you be able then to talkto everything you really want to talk to: thechickadees who come closer than your nieces,that piece of paper blown across your lawn,the rain, each nudge of green in your garden?And when you put on your coat, that U.N.of colors and scraps, that coat that wouldmake Joseph feel he had folded himselfinto the pages of GQ, the one with the shouldersrolling up to your cheeks, with buttons the sizeof pancakes, and a hem like the border ofCzechoslovakia, would you want to walkinto church, quietly take your place withthe choir and just as the minister finishesthe benediction, honk your horn? Andwhen you put on your polka dotted tie, wideas a summer afternoon, would youwant to pin the squirting yellow daisyon your lapel, sit in the business meeting,and after the ayes have it, squeezethe rubber bulb in your pocket? Thenagain, maybe you would just stay home,listen to jazz, the blues, or some swing,open each of your cupboards and talkabout Tuesday or the way the light fallsacross the counters, invite Lou Jacobs,Emmett Kelly, Felix Adler, Otto Griebling,hell, the whole clown alley, rent a calliope,a center ring, one elephant, and get out the pies.

–Jack Ridl

Photo by Rex Pickar on Unsplash
35 min
October 24, 2021 212: Always Be Vulnerable to All That You Are
When we learn to include more and more of ourselves, we also become more able to include more and more of one another. Being able to do this - to welcome that in us that's fearful, ashamed or lonely, as well as what's joyful, grateful and love-filled - is greatly helped by finding the bigger-something that we are... the something of us that's wide and deep, curious and compassionate and which is, essentially, welcome. And that's something we can also help one another with.

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how 'inclusivity' starts with us and between 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.

Here's our source for this week:

VULNERABLE

Always be vulnerableTo your pain, your fear, your loneliness,To your pleasure too, and your joy,To all that travels through you.Don’t close the doorsTo these pilgrims from a far-off land,But welcome them all ---One a wild, restless spiritSecretly longing to be tamed, Another a lover on a long, sweet night,Who only wants to melt in your embrace.For this is how you grow ---By including everything.Always, always be vulnerable To all that you are.

From “Poems of Love and Awakening” by John Welwood

Photo by Erika Fletcher on Unsplash
36 min
October 17, 2021 211: Never One Thing
Whenever we come to ‘conclusions’ about ourselves or one another we run the risk of missing our marvellous multiplicity - the way we can be both gentle and wild, curious and assertive, narrow and wide, afraid and courageous. There’s an inclusiveness and dignity that comes quite naturally when we see one another’s complexity, and we see it in ourselves, and when we learn to trust our own capacity to turn towards, to be with, to welcome that very complexity as we live alongside one another, love one another, work together on projects and commitments that matter to us.

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might learn to include more of ourselves and others and, in doing so, undo the fear and certainty about one another that keeps us far apart, 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 from the singer/songwriter May Erlewine.

Never One Thing

I'm the underbelly, I am the claw
Never one thing no, not one thing at all
I'm a street fighter, I'm a prayer for peace
I'm a holy roller, I'm a honey bee

I am the truth, I am a lie
I am the ground, I am the sky
I am the silence, I am the call
Never one thing no, not one thing at all

I am hope, I am defeat
I am broken, I am complete
I am the grace, I am the fall
Never one thing no, not one thing at all

I am the beggar, I am the queen
I am the end, I am the means
I am the hammer, I am the wall
Never one thing no, not one thing at all

I am a victor, I am the loss
I am a profit, I am the cost
I am the salve, I am the sting
Never, no never, no never one thing

I am a mother, I am the child
I am the meek, I am the wild
I am the witch, I am the saint
I am alive, never one thing

I am the lion, I am the swan
I am the bull, I am the fawn
I am a woman, I am the ring
I am my own, never one thing

I'm the underbelly, I am the claw
Never one thing no, not one thing at all
I'm a street fighter, I'm a prayer for peace
I'm a holy roller, I'm a honey bee

May Erlewine

Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash
33 min
October 10, 2021 210: Remembering Our Infinite Value
What would be if we could each help one another remember the ways in which we matter, the ways in which are are unarguably of value, the ways in which our mere presence is a gift? Perhaps it would help us find some respite from the strong cultural pressures to think of ourselves as incomplete, or faulty, or missing something. Perhaps it would help us give up equating our value with our looks, our circumstances, our difficulty. And maybe it would give us the courage to respond to the world when our response is most called for.

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might give one another the gift of a profound kindness - remembering our goodness - 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.

Here's our source for this week:

As You Have Done for Me

If you were here
I would put my hand
on your heart
and hold it there
until our breaths
became a single tide,
hold it there until
I could feel the moment
when you remember
your infinite value.
It’s so easy to forget
we are treasure.
So easy to lose track
of our own immeasurable worth.
The chest rusts shut.
We think we are empty.
Amazing how easily
we are fooled into believing
we’re paupers.
Sometimes it takes another
to remind us
we have always been
not only the treasure
but also the key.
Though the hinges
are a metaphor,
the treasure is not.
We were made to open,
to share our priceless gift,
to press our hands
to each other’s hearts
until we all remember.

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
ahundredfallingveils.com

Photo by Dan Farrell on Unsplash
33 min
October 03, 2021 209: The Discomfort of What Matters
It’s easy to judge and berate ourselves for getting distracted, especially when we find ourselves on social media rather than attending to the things that matter most to us - the projects, conversations, commitments that we know are most meaningful in our lives. But when we see that our distraction is a result of something very tender - our attempts to not feel grief at how little control we have of how things turn out, and at the realisation that everything, even what matters mosts, ends - then perhaps we can understand ourselves in a way that kindles our courage and compassion.

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might find a kinder way to hold the fearful tender parts of ourselves and help them to step in when they would rather we checked our email, 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.

Here's our source for this week:

The Discomfort of What Matters

Why, exactly, are we rendered so uncomfortable by concentrating on the things that matter to us - the things we thought we wanted to do with our lives - that we'd rather flee into distractions, which, by definition, are what we don't want to be doing with our lives? ... Whenever we succumb to distraction, we're attempting to flee a painful encounter with our finitude - with the human predicament of having limited time, and more especially, in the case of distraction, limited control over that time, which makes it impossible to feel certain about how things will turn out...

When you try to focus on something you deem important, you're forced to face your limits, an experience that feels especially uncomfortable precisely because the task at hand is one you value so much... You're obliged to give up your godlike fantasies and to experience your lack of power over things you care about...

What we think of as 'distractions' ... are just the places we go to seek relief from the discomfort of confronting limitation... 'Checking your phone beneath the dinner table' is what you do because it's hard to focus on the conversation - because listening takes effort and patience and a spirit of surrender, and because what you hear might upset you, so checking your phone is naturally more pleasant.

The most effective way to sap distraction of its power is to stop expecting things to be otherwise, to accept that this is simply what it feels like for finite humans to commit ourselves to the kinds of demanding and valuable tasks that force us to confront our limited control over how our lives unfold... There is a very down-to-earth kind of liberation in grasping that there are certain truths about being a limited human from which you'll never be liberated. You don't get to dictate the course of events. And the paradoxical reward for accepting reality's constraints is that they no longer feel so constraining.

Oliver Burkeman, from 'Four Thousand Weeks'

Photo by Dimitri Tyan on Unsplash
34 min
September 26, 2021 208: I Come to You With No Need to Be Fixed
We're conditioned to think of ourselves and other people as in need of fixing, and it makes it so difficult for us to open to one another's beauty and mystery. So what if we could cultivate eyes and hearts of wonder at the luminescent half-moon of one another's presence, and receive one another as rivers do as they give their power and beauty to one another?

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might walk a path of loving mutual inclusion, 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.

Here's our source for this week:

Love

Though I am undeniably broken,
I come to you with no need to be fixed.
I come to you the way one river
Meets another river - not joining
Out of thirst, but because
there is so much power
And beauty in giving oneself
To another, in moving
Through the world together.
I come to you the way the half moon
Comes into the yard - I could be more
Whole, but in the meantime,
I will bring you everything
I have.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
ahundredfallingveils.com

Photo by nousnou iwasaki on Unsplash
33 min

About Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast

From the publisher's feed

Join Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise from Thirdspace for weekly conversations that ask how we might bring ourselves to life with as much courage and wisdom as we can. We start each episode with inspiring sources and then dive deep together into the questions and possibilities they open up. Find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, YouTube and FaceBook, at www.turningtowards.life and at www.wearethirdspace.org