Episodes

  • 368: One Word Spoken Slowly by the Stars

    368: One Word Spoken Slowly by the Stars
    Oct 27 2024
    We might see ourselves, as Ursula Le Guin writes, ‘one syllable of a word spoken slowly by the stars’. In this episode we wonder together what is maked possible when we reclaim and retell sacred narratives about being human, as an alternative to the mechanistic views of existence as meaning-free and humans as accidents in a cold unfeeling universe. How might these narratives help us step into a life in which we open to what is around us, and the life-giving qualities in one another?

    Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

    Join Our Weekly Mailing:     www.turningtowards.life/subscribe
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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.

    Here’s our source for this week:

    One Word Spoken Slowly by the Stars

    “Aye,” Ged answered. “Light is a power. A great power, by which we exist, but which exists beyond our needs, in itself. Sunlight and starlight are time, and time is light. In the sunlight, in the days and years, life is. In a dark place life may call upon the light, naming it.” …

    There was a little pause; and Yarrow asked, “Tell me just this, if it is not a secret: what other great powers are there besides the light?”

    “It is no secret. All power is one in source and end, I think. Years and distances, stars and candles, water and wind and wizardry, the craft in a man’s hand and the wisdom in a tree’s root: they all arise together. My name, and yours, and the true name of the sun, or a spring of water, or an unborn child, all are syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars. There is no other power. No other name.”

    Staying his knife on the carved wood, Murre asked, “What of death?” [Yarrow] listened, her shining black head bent down.

    “For a word to be spoken,” Ged answered slowly, “there must be silence. Before, and after.”

    Ursula K Le Guin, The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition (p. 157). Orion

    Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash
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    36 mins
  • 367: The Gift of Our Attention

    367: The Gift of Our Attention
    Oct 20 2024
    Our attention is one of the most valuable gifts we can give to another. As radically social beings, we feel strongly when attention is genuinely brought our way with sufficient care and genuineness, and we long for it. And in the same way we are dignified and deepened when we bring our sincere attention to the world around us, to our experience, and to others. And so if attention is such a valuable gift and contribution to each of us, how is it that it can be so hard to bring it genuinely to those around us - those we love, those we respect, those we want to get to know, those we interact with in the midst of our day to day lives? And what might be do to cultivate the kind of mutually dignifying attention that will benefit everyone?

    Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

    Join Our Weekly Mailing:     www.turningtowards.life/subscribe
    Support Us:     www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

    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 Gift of Our Attention

    There is one thing, I believe, that all of us want, no matter how old we are, no matter whatever differences are between us; the one thing we cherish from another human being is attention. Love…is not certain. Some people will love us, and some people will not. But the one thing that anyone can give to any other person is simple attention. It is not as involved as in love. This attention may last 20 minutes or many hours. If you live with somebody it is repeated. "You are worthy of my attention." That, I think, is the greatest gift we can give each other.

    Magda Gerber

    Photo by Vincent van Zalinge on Unsplash
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    34 mins
  • 366: What Grief Wants

    366: What Grief Wants
    Oct 13 2024
    Some words about grief, and about grief's intelligence, and what it might be here to teach us both when it arrives in full force and when we 'catch a glimpse of it' in the moments with those we most cherish and love.

    How might grief - and its inevitability - open us to receive the life we are in the midst of right now, and how might it move us to take care of what and who we care about the most?

    Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

    Join Our Weekly Mailing:     www.turningtowards.life/subscribe
    Support Us:     www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

    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:

    What Grief Wants

    I only want one thing.
    I want you to pay attention.

    I want you to look in her eyes, now,
    While there is time, while there is
    Still breath, while the magnolias unfold
    Into flower, quietly, in the garden.

    I want you to feel, all the way through,
    What it is like as she looks back at you,
    While she still can, while you are here to
    Receive, to be seen.

    I will be ready to hold you, flood you,
    Carry you, when all the gazing is done.

    I want you to receive your life,
    While there is life to receive.
    We will wail together about its loss
    In good time.

    But now is not the time for that.
    It is not the time for turning away,
    For trying to avoid anything,
    For trying not to feel.

    There will be a time when you have
    No choice but to be turned away.
    But that time is not now.

    I want you to feel what it is like to
    Release your desperate grasp around
    What you could never hold onto anyway.
    To delight in the living flow with its
    Everyday beginning and its always endings.

    I want you to feel the shining aliveness of
    Everything you will lose
    While it is still here.

    Justin Wise
    justinwise.co.uk

    Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
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    34 mins
  • 365: What the Journey is For

    365: What the Journey is For
    Oct 6 2024
    Today we mark the completion of seven years of Turning Towards Life with a conversation about how we might find a way to participate in our lives, whatever life brings us. In many ways, this has been the recurring theme of our last seven years - how to be active participants in a life which will always be a mystery and in which so much is beyond our control.

    We talk about the gifts of being active observers of our lives, which takes a concerted kind of practice and attention, and what it is to respond actively and intentionally to what we observe. And how that can give us opportunities both to respond to life as it is to learn and deepen as we go.

    Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

    Join Our Weekly Mailing:     www.turningtowards.life/subscribe
    Support Us:     www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

    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:

    What the Journey is For

    What if the descent,
    Over and over again,
    Into the dark
    And back out into the light
    Is the forging of us rather than
    The breaking of us?

    What if there’s nothing wrong with us in the deepest sense of that truth?

    What if we are not broken
    Even when we find ourselves
    Back in the same territory,
    Back in painful patterns,
    Back in the underworld again?

    What if we are simply meant to give ourselves over to a process
    That isn’t meaningless at all
    But a bright, spiralling, gravitational pull
    Ever-deeper towards
    Our own
    Sheer
    Gorgeous
    Becoming?

    Hollie Holden
    www.facebook.com/hollieholdenlove

    Photo by Iswanto Arif on Unsplash
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    38 mins
  • 364: Learning to See What We See But Do Not Know That We See

    364: Learning to See What We See But Do Not Know That We See
    Sep 29 2024
    As we unfold into life one of the risks is that we become more rigid rather than more fluid, more automatic rather than taking up our freedom. And one place we might look for, and work with, our rigidity and freedom is in seeing the judgments and assumptions we make about other people.

    When other people become fixed, predictable or boring to us, it may be that we are not looking with the requisite depth; or that we have rigidified our understanding of them rather than regarding them as the great and unfathomable mysteries that they are.

    Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

    Join Our Weekly Mailing:     www.turningtowards.life/subscribe
    Support Us:     www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

    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:

    Learning to See What We See But Do Not Know That We See

    Our awareness of ourselves and our environment is woefully deficient. In particular there is a tendency to see what things have in common rather than what makes them unique, the source of a dispiriting sense of sameness …

    Our categorising tendency likes to put people in pigeon holes then notices only the behaviour that fits in with our simplistic classification and finishes by dismissing people as superficial, limited, predictable and boring. The equivalent in relationships is to see only the irritating aspects of the partner and then to turn this into a final, dismissive definition. It is common even to want others to behave badly in predictable ways in order to confirm our own good judgment and enjoy superiority and righteousness.

    A crucial function of the arts is to prevent, or break down, dismissive labelling and reveal the singular instead of the similar, the peculiar instead of the familiar, and the inscrutable instead of the understood. I have often been guilty of impatient dismissiveness but recently, under the influences of literature, process thinking, and the gentle remonstrations of my wife, I have come to find even people I have known for a lifetime increasingly strange. And, strangely enough, the fact that they elude me has brought them closer; my inability to understand them makes them more understandable.

    Michael Foley, from ‘Life Lessons From Bergson’

    Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash
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    32 mins
  • 363: Some People Will Ask

    363: Some People Will Ask
    Sep 22 2024
    On the profound, life-saving and deeply dignifying possibilities that come from sharing our personal stories and experiences. The cultural narratives that often discourage openness, contrasted with the healing power of vulnerability and the importance of creating welcome for one another to speak and be listened to.

    Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

    Join Our Weekly Mailing:     www.turningtowards.life/subscribe
    Support Us:     www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

    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:

    Some People Will Ask
    Excerpt from You Could Make This Place Beautiful

    “Why are you telling these stories? Why air your dirty laundry?”

    Someone will ask this, or if they don’t ask, they’ll think it. Maybe you’re thinking it now. How do I answer?

    I could say what happened to me is mine. I could say that suffering equals pain plus resistance, and I’m no longer resisting, no longer hold it in, letting it fester. And why would you expect me, or anyone, to grit my teeth and quietly carry my story? I could say there is a cost to carrying your truth but not telling it. I could say women have been doing this for decades and look where it’s landed us. I could say I’ve gone and lost my narrative, and lost not only my understanding of the future but also my understanding of the past, and this is how I’m trying to find it – Who’s calling this laundry dirty, anyway? It’s just lived-in.

    Maggie Smith

    Photo by Elizabeth Gottwald on Unsplash
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    25 mins
  • 362: The Wildness in Our Hearts

    362: The Wildness in Our Hearts
    Sep 17 2024
    On the tensions between our inner worlds and the external identities we often adopt to fit in. How societal expectations and personal fears can lead us to suppress what’s most true about us, and the importance of reconnecting with the "wild energies" within our souls.

    This week we explore how creative practices, changes in routine, and mindful engagement with everyday tasks can help us wake up to our innate aliveness. We reflect on the balance between necessary social conventions and the gifts of discovering our own unique expression, and propose that we each find a way to honour "wonder of their own presence" and bring our unique life force into service to the world around us.

    Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

    Join Our Weekly Mailing:     www.turningtowards.life/subscribe
    Support Us:     www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

    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 Wildness In Our Hearts

    Every human person is inevitably involved with two worlds: the world they carry within them and the world that is out there. All thinking, all writing, all action, all creation and all destruction is about that bridge between the two worlds...

    Each one of us is the custodian of an inner world that we carry around with us. Now, other people can glimpse it from [its outer expressions]. But no one but you knows what your inner world is actually like, and no one can force you to reveal it until you actually tell them about it. That’s the whole mystery of writing and language and expression — that when you do say it, what others hear and what you intend and know are often totally different kinds of things.

    One of the sad things today is that so many people are frightened by the wonder of their own presence. They are dying to tie themselves into a system, a role, or to an image, or to a predetermined identity that other people have actually settled on for them. This identity may be totally at variance with the wild energies that are rising inside in their souls. Many of us get very afraid and we eventually compromise. We settle for something that is safe, rather than engaging the danger and the wildness that is in our own hearts.

    from an interview with John O'Donohue

    Photo by Linda Xu on Unsplash
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    33 mins
  • 361: This Relationship is Ours

    361: This Relationship is Ours
    Sep 8 2024
    We ‘privatise’ so much about our lives that is actually shared, as if we were separate entities - like objects that bump into one another only occasionally. But it’s an impoverished story that robs us of so much contact, depth and support.

    It might be much more accurate to say that instead of being like objects we are more like whirlpools in a river - constantly evolving processes that shape one another. If we saw ourselves and our relationships that way, perhaps we’d begin to wonder afresh about the power of cultural norms that encourage separateness, and the potential benefits of more open and contactful conversation about ourselves and our relationships with those around us.

    Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

    Join Our Weekly Mailing:     www.turningtowards.life/subscribe
    Support Us:     www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

    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:

    This Relationship is Ours

    One of the principles of the Dagara concept of a relationship is that it’s not private. When we talk about “our relationship” in the village, the word our is not limited to two. And this is why we find it pretty hard to live in a relationship in a modern culture that is lacking true community. In the absence of community, two people are forced to say, “This relationship is ours,” when in fact, a community should be claiming ownership.

    Subonfu Somé
    from ‘The Spirit of Intimacy’

    Photo by YUXUAN WANG on Unsplash
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    34 mins