 We live in a time when truth gets pulled apart by the move towards ‘I am right, you are wrong’ and the parallel move to make all truths equal and indistinguishable from one another. And in coming at truth this way, we easily pull ourselves and one another apart.  But what if finding out ‘what’s true’ is a process, not a thing? A process of loving, disciplined attention, in which walk a path together, taking one another’s judgements into account, bringing our best reason, imagination, intuition to bear, in which we experiment together?  This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the lives we might build it we treated the search for truths to live by as a loving, attentive path of responsibility and openness. 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: What is Truth? Truth is an encounter: it needs to be 'felt in the blood and felt along the heart', in Wordsworth's famous phrase... We have become accustomed, in our Western way, to see all exchange of ideas as a kind of battle-ground in which there will be conquest and defeat. In the East, ancient truths have not commonly been thought such that they can convince (the word comes from the Latin 'vincere', to conquer) through argument, but rather that they become appreciated (the word comes from Latin 'pretium', value) through a patient, disciplined opening up of the self to experience. Jan Zwicky puts it like this: 'Truth is the asymptotic limit* of sensitive attempts to be responsible to our actual experience of the world ... 'sensitive attempts to be responsible' means truth is the result of attention. (As opposed to inspection). Of looking informed by love. Of really looking.' ... Though truth is always my personal judgement, it is not just possible, but necessary, that my judgment should take into account yours and many others. It is far from random, but is, rather, informed by experiment, perception, reason, intuition and imagination. Ian McGilchrist, from 'The Matter With Things' pp396-397 *[*in mathematics, an asymptotic limit is a value that you get closer and closer to, but never quite reach] Photo by Mads Schmidt Rasmussen on Unsplash 

Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast

219: What Is Truth?

 The wonderful Robert Bly died just a short time ago, leaving behind him countless invitations to each of us to step into our lives more fully. Our conversation this week honours his work by taking up his poem 'He Wanted to Live His Life Over'.  This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the nature of time, what it might be to allow our lives to be enriched by all that has come before, and what it is to say 'yes' to life, no matter what. 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: He Wanted to Live His Life Over What? You want to life your life over again? "Well, I suppose, yes ... That time in Grand Rapids ... My life - as I lived it - was a series of shynesses." Being bolder - what good would that do? "I'd open my door again. I've felt abashed, You see. Now I'd go out and say, 'All right, I'll go with you to Alaska.' Just opening the door From inside would have altered me – a little. I'm too shy ..." And so, a bolder life Is what you want? "We could begin now.  Just walk with me – down to the river.  I'll pretend this boat is my life ... I'll climb in." Photo by Hari Nandakumar on Unsplash 

218: Climbing Into Your Own Life

 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 

217: Shameless

 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 

216: The Grace of Hidden Beauty

 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 

215: Turn Mishaps Into the Path

 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 midst of thinking you’ll never be ready even when  you feel  you have never deserved that freedom to go even under the comforting  illusion that  you  never had  a single speck of faith in what  you want you have  already packed, your silent reluctance away, lifted your ear  to the morning  birdsong and before  anyone  can wake you are  already out the door, down the road round the corner and 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 

214: You Know When It's Time To Go

 '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 grin were painted red as a Coke can, a fire engine, red as the Tabasco sauce you spilled on your mother’s carpet, and if it lifted itself from the inside of one huge ear to the other, and if your nose were a ping pong ball almost begging for a swipe, and if your feet slept within white shoes, three feet long and flapping, would you be able then to talk to everything you really want to talk to: the chickadees 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 would make Joseph feel he had folded himself into the pages of GQ, the one with the shoulders rolling up to your cheeks, with buttons the size of pancakes, and a hem like the border of Czechoslovakia, would you want to walk into church, quietly take your place with the choir and just as the minister finishes the benediction, honk your horn?  And when you put on your polka dotted tie, wide as a summer afternoon, would you want to pin the squirting yellow daisy on your lapel, sit in the business meeting, and after the ayes have it, squeeze the rubber bulb in your pocket?  Then again, maybe you would just stay home, listen to jazz, the blues, or some swing, open each of your cupboards and talk about Tuesday or the way the light falls across 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 

213: Knowing Now You'll Never Be a Clown

 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 vulnerable To your pain, your fear, your loneliness, To your pleasure too, and your joy, To all that travels through you. Don’t close the doors To these pilgrims from a far-off land, But welcome them all --- One a wild, restless spirit Secretly 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 

212: Always Be Vulnerable to All That You Are

 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 

211: Never One Thing

 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 

210: Remembering Our Infinite Value

 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 

209: The Discomfort of What Matters

 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 

208: I Come to You With No Need to Be Fixed

 Sometimes we catch a glimpse of ourselves that shows us that we are not as small as we think, and we start to see the shining beauty and brilliance that we are. Knowing ourselves this way can open us up to a deeper appreciation of the beauty of others, and offers us a vibrant, compassionate path towards the generosity and creativity that is available to every one of us.  This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about about opening to what we really are, 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 proximity of death, the ultimate failure, seems to open us this way. In his novel the idiot, Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote a thinly veiled account of the time the tsar played a terrible joke on Dostoyevsky and his circle of revolutionary intellectual friends. The czar had them all arrested. And then one morning they were awakened at dawn and told they were to be executed. As Dostoyevsky rode to the execution with his friends in an open wagon, a strange sensation began to overcome him. He felt a spacious, oceanic sense of time. He felt as if the limits of time had opened wide. In a few minutes he would die, but he felt as if he had all the time in the world to do what he needed to do. What he needed to do, he now realised, was to say goodbye to his comrades for the final time. He did this in a full and leisurely way, the great love he bore for his companions welling up to the bursting point. And then he decided to spend his last moments on earth looking around at the world for the last time. As he did so, he found himself gazing at the tin roof of a nearby barn. A brilliant morning sun was shining, and a great burst of sunlight shone off the tin roof. Suddenly he knew for certain that this was what he would become. In a few minutes he would die, and he would become this blazing, radiant light. This knowledge filled him with an ecstasy so intense he thought that if it went on for even another minute, he wouldn't be able to bear it. It was then that the czar’s captain told them it was all a joke. The czar had only wanted to frighten them. They wouldn't die after all. Dostoyevksy was changed forever by this experience. It showed him what he really was. It took him to the core of his being, and he was a different man for the rest of his life. Alan Lew, from ‘This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared’ Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash 

207: The Brilliance We Are

 Language is a doorway through which we can step into new relationships with the world and with one another, and as such our ways of speaking and listening are a profound kind of power. We are changed by what we say and by what others say. So how do we find ways with language that honour its power, and that open up possibilities and understanding for one another? And how might we be ones who, by our listening, gift others around us with the possibility of speech, so they they can bring themselves and their powers of creation fully to the world? This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about about giving name to what would otherwise be hidden, 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: In Hebrew the term davar (דבר) means both ‘word’ and 'deed.’ Thus to say something is to do something. I love you. I hate you. I forgive you. I am afraid. Who knows what such words do, but whatever it is, it can never be undone. Something lay hidden in the heart that is irrevocably released through speech into time, is given substance and tossed like a stone into the pool of history, where the concentric rings lap out endlessly.  Words are power, essentially the power of creation. By my words I both discover and create who I am. By my words I elicit a word from you. Through our converse we create each other. Frederick Buechner  Photo by chris liu on Unsplash 

206: Through Our Speaking We Create Each Other

 Can we learn to live with the certainty that we'll lose the ones we love, and they will lose us, without tuning out, avoiding, denying or imagining that it's some form of punishment? Can we learn how to bring together the fullness of the joys of loving as well as the sorrows? This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might find ways to help one another enter into the fierce grace of living in a world in which love and loss are inseparable, 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, written by our dear friend and partner in Thirdspace, Neena Sims Falling There is a moment upon waking full of grace empty of knowledge, free of suffering the length of a breath - only and then we’re falling, thrown once more into the certain heart-wrenching knowledge that he’s dead that she’s ill that our beloved is leaving - or we are our greatest fears made flesh our cherished tomorrows torn asunder - we’re left grasping and gasping Perhaps this is what it’s like to be born, to arrive blinking and crying into the light Perhaps this is what Eve accepted and Adam received: that to be human is to know to be human is to wake-up to be human is to keep breathing - big painful gulps of paradise that to be human is to fall again and again not from grace, but into it. Neena Sims Photo by Bruce Christianson on Unsplash 

205: Falling

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, Google Podcasts, YouTube and FaceBook, at www.turningtowards.life and at www.wearethirdspace.org

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Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast

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