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

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

It seems like it should be so simple - giving to one another, receiving from one another, loving one another, opening ourselves to the love of others. But it’s so often hard, and so often we make ourselves unavailable to what we most need and long for, and hold back from what we are most able to give (or give it, but without taking into account the impact of our way of giving).

What can we do to understand the relational dynamics that shape our giving and receiving and our holding back our contribution from one another? And what kind of conversation and skilfulness can help us find our way through the maze of expectations, stories, culture, conditioning and habit so we can find one another in a more straightforward way?

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 Loving

Give the gift of loving you to others. Ask for their help. 

We seem to have learned that helping involves sacrifice. 

So we think that by asking for help, we’re asking people to make a sacrifice.

So we don’t ask. We try and do it all alone. And we forget that people can just say no. So it’s OK to simply ask.

Maybe life is about the giving and receiving of gifts…..

It’s a true joy when someone feels loved and we have something to do with it. 

So what are we doing removing opportunities for people to love us, taking this away from them, this joy of loving us ?

If we all knew what it meant to truly say no, and what a true yes means, what kind of love filled, supported world might we find ?

Lizzie Winn

Photo by Brad Switzer 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

In a culture that values 'keeping it all together', it is no small thing to trust ourselves - to welcome the parts of ourselves that are scared, or confused, or unravelling. When we remember that there's always something of ourselves that we can trust, perhaps we can turn towards those parts of us - that we might otherwise try to push away - and hold them in just the ways in which they long to be held. And when we do this for each other, we strengthen the bonds of trust in one another that support us as we voice our differences, our lostness, our gifts and and our grief.

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:

Above the Paradox Valley
/after Ocean Vuong, “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong”/
You do not need to know what comes next.
There is always another storm, and you
cannot hang the tent out to dry before
it has gotten wet. You cannot shovel snow
that has yet to fall.
Put down the shovel. Breathe
into the dark spaces of your back,
feel how they open like cave doors
to let in the light.
Let your face soften. Let the creases
fall out of your brow. The mind,
no matter how clear, will never become
a crystal ball.
The wisest part of your body
knows to run when it hears
the first crashes of rock fall.
It does not pause then to consider
metamorphic or igneous,
nor does it hesitate to wonder
what might have pushed them down.
It is no small thing to trust yourself.
It’s okay to cry. It is right
that love should shake your body,
that you should find yourself trembling
in the rubble and dust
after all your certainties come down.
Your breath has not left you.
Here is the morning rain. It opens
the scent of the leaves, of the air.
All around you the world is changing.
What are you waiting for?
Here is the cup of mint tea
growing stronger in itself.
Here on this cliff of uncertainty
there is a stillness in you
so spirited, so alive
the wisest part of your body
is dancing.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
https://ahundredfallingveils.com/

Photo by Davide Cantelli on Unsplash

What if what is most called for in order to live our lives is remembering the mystery that we each are... the essential depth that we are, which is often buried beneath layers of habit, personality patterns, the strength of our feelings, our busy-ness, our worry? But we forget, and we take ourselves to be something much smaller than we are. One way that we might begin to remember is to pay attention to that moment between sleeping and waking, before we 'put ourselves back together' and become our familiar habitual selves, when we can catch a glimpse of our essentialness... a path to recover our depth and the depth of others.

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 to Remember When Waking

In that first
hardly noticed
moment
in which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret,
moveable
and frighteningly
honest
world
where everything
began,
there is a small
opening
into the new day
that closes
the moment
you begin your plans.
What you can plan
is too small
for you to live.
What you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.
To become human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.
To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.
You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.
Now, looking through
the slanting light
of the morning
window toward
the mountain
presence
of everything
that can be,
what urgency
calls you to your
one love?
What shape waits
in the seed of you
to grow and spread
its branches
against a future sky?
Is it waiting
in the fertile sea?
In the trees
beyond the house?
In the life
you can imagine
for yourself?
In the open
and lovely
white page
on the waiting desk?

by David Whyte

Photo by Jack B on Unsplash

Whenever we speak, there's a something from which speech arises which is not itself yet, quite, words. And when we make art, there's a something from which the art arises that is itself not yet, quite, art. And it's in this vast unspoken background of before and between, of body and world and story and imagination, that so much of who we are and who we can be is found. Can we learn to see and hear each other as the unfolding, budding, opening works of art and worlds of possibility that we are? And might not this be a greatly powerful act of dignity and care, countering the narratives of fear and separation of our times?

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:

We’re always rationally explaining and articulating things. But we’re at our most intelligent in the moment just before we start to explain or articulate.  Great art occurs - or doesn’t - in that instant.  What we turn to art for is precisely this moment, when we ‘know’ something (we feel it) but can’t articulate it because it’s too complex and multiple.  But the ‘knowing’ at such moments, though happening without language, is real. I’d say this is what art is for: to remind us that this other sort of knowing is not only real, it’s superior to our usual (conceptual, reductive) way.

George Saunders
From A Swim in the Pond in the Rain


Photo by Inge Maria on Unsplash

We've often internalised a particularly destructive story about what it is to be human - that we're inherently selfish, grasping, and inevitably violent to one another. And that because of that we ought to live very warily indeed. But, as the writer David Graeber reminds us, the 'common-sense' story of what it is to be human is just one story out of many. And we are filled with many different kinds of qualities and capacities, some of which we choose to prioritise over others - and some of which we've practiced more than others. But which qualities we bring to the world is a choice - the unique gift of being sentient, choosing humans. And the real question is which qualities we choose take as the foundation of our humanity, and therefore, make the basis of our civilisation.

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:

“Freuchen tells how one day, after coming home hungry from an unsuccessful walrus-hunting expedition, he found one of the successful hunters dropping off several hundred pounds of meat. He thanked him profusely. The man objected indignantly:
‘Up in our country we are human!’ said the hunter. ‘And since we are human we help each other. We don’t like to hear anybody say thanks for that. What I get today you may get tomorrow. Up here we say that by gifts one makes slaves and by whips one makes dogs.’
… The refusal to calculate credits and debits can be found throughout the anthropological literature on egalitarian hunting societies. Rather than seeing himself as human because he could make economic calculations, the hunter insisted that being truly human meant refusing to make such calculations, refusing to measure or remember who had given what to whom, for the precise reason that doing so would inevitably create a world where we began “comparing power with power, measuring, calculating” and reducing each other to slaves or dogs through debt. It’s not that he, like untold millions of similar egalitarian spirits throughout history, was unaware that humans have a propensity to calculate. If he wasn’t aware of it, he could not have said what he did. Of course we have a propensity to calculate. We have all sorts of propensities. In any real-life situation, we have propensities that drive us in several different contradictory directions simultaneously. No one is more real than any other. The real question is which we take as the foundation of our humanity, and therefore, make the basis of our civilization.”
― David Graeber,
Debt: The First 5,000 Years


Photo by Darrell Chaddock on Unsplash

In the choices about what to pay attention to, the wider culture many of us inhabit tells us - be afraid, be in a hurry, get things done, be productive, panic about the future, distrust your own senses, distract yourself. So much of the media that comes our way reinforces all of those messages. But what if we turned towards the beauty and wonder that is, alongside all there is for us to worry about, always here? And what if our attention to the beauty, wonder, mystery and relationship could spur us to take care - of ourselves, of those around us, of the wider world - with eyes and hearts of a deeper love and courage than any fear and any panic could ever generate in 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:

IN THE MEANTIME
Tom Hirons

Meanwhile, flowers still bloom.
The moon rises, and the sun.
Babies smile and somewhere,
Against all the odds,
Two people are falling in love.

Strangers share cigarettes and jokes.
Light plays on the surface of water.
Grace occurs on unlikely streets
And we hold each other fast against entropy
And the struggles of our time.

Life leans towards living
And, while death claims all things at the end,
There were such precious times between,
In which everything was radiant
And we loved, again, this world.

IG: @bearspeakstothestars


Photo by Daniel Thomas on Unsplash

So many of us have been taught to flatten our imaginations, and in the space that is left we so easily feel as if we somehow have to magnify our experiences of life, always striving for something more intense or more meaningful or more vibrant. And, while there are times for that, we wonder what would happen if we allowed ourselves to kindle our radical amazement (itself an imaginative act) with what or who is right here with us in this moment. What new wonder could we then find gazing into the eyes of a friend, lover or child; or mopping the kitchen floor; or allowing ourselves to be playful in the midst of the ordinary every-day?

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:

MAGNIFIES AN OBJECT TEN TIMES
is what it clearly said
on the handle of the magnifying glass
my father received on his fifth birthday.
He took it as a warning; the birthday gift
would only work its magic ten times
and no more, becoming, after that,
just a small round window with no miracle,
toy giant’s monocle, a circle of simple glass.
And so he went about his days with curious thrift,
weighing how much he needed to see any part
of the world up close, observing as best he could
with his own eyes first, thinking, Do I need to see
that dead bug big? That dandelion, that blade
of grass, that wriggling moth in the spider’s web?
I can imagine most of nature’s gifts and crimes.
Best not to waste one of my ten precious times.
He lost count of how many miracles he’d left,
and for weeks after half-expected the magic of the glass
to simply stop. And I have asked him to tell me
of the thrilling moment he realized, or was told,
“ten times” in this context simply meant tenfold
and not ten instances, but he cannot remember.
Likewise the joy that must have come with such
a limitless epiphany. But what he does recall
and says most he misses still is the way the magic
made him see the world the rest of the time,
not through the glass, but all the time
he thought that magic would not last.

Taylor Mali

Photo by Stephen Kraakmo on Unsplash

There are moments when we suddenly find out that we're not separate from one another or from life... and in those moments we discover that what we're here to do is to love. Isn't that a possibility we all long for, and sometimes find so difficult to entertain - the opportunity to give love, to receive love, to have love flow through us into our work, into our relationships, into our friendships, into the street?

Perhaps if we quieten down our striving and inner chatter enough, we'll find deep rivers of love waiting to be expressed. Or maybe we could put ourselves in situations where - because of what we're practicing, or opening to, or how we're softening - we might be reached by the grace of the moment and discover all of this from what and who is around us.

Whichever way, it's our contention that to love and to trust in the capacity to love this heartbreaking and beautiful world, with all its tragedies and all its possibilities, is a necessary act of great faithfulness in life.

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:

Grace 

It was Grace Stunned by the last light of the sun We were swimming in a green sea, as deep as a drum There are things I must record, must praise There are things I have to say about the fullness and the blaze Of this beautiful life The beloved watched the world on its knees with an infinite degree of separation That was something to see And my friend told me death is like taking off a tight shoe And when I stopped looking for me I was able to find you Right there where everything is transcendent I can feel myself opening up, getting closer No hope is enough I've stopped hoping, I'm learning to trust I came to under that red moon I was completely crushed Please use me Please move through me Please unscrew me Please loosen me up Make music with me Make everything stop Make noise and make silence with me Make love Let me be love Let me be loving Let me give love, receive love and be nothing but love In love and for love and with love In love and for love and with love Surrender, I do surrender Move through me and feel me get out of the way And tune into something more deep and reflective than what's to be achieved Or perceived Or affected What's my problem? I'm always drawn back to that wrestling match Ten thoughts in the ring of my mind playing catch I can't live for the noise in my head I just want to dig a big ditch in the soil of my breath and bury my brain there But love said "If you bring forth what is within you What you bring forth will save you But if you do not bring forth what is within you What you do not bring forth will destroy you” It was Grace Stunned by the last light of the sun Swimming in a green sea as deep as a drum There are things I must record, must praise There are things I have to say about the fullness and the blaze Of this beautiful life, of this beautiful life

Kae Tempest
www.kaetempest.co.uk
Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash

We can change - that much is certain. But change doesn't come by magic, and rarely does it come alone from a moment of inspiration, but instead by the steady, faithful application of practice - the walking of a path, step by step. The magic is that even practices that turn us by just a degree or two can, when held with dedication and consistency, make a huge difference in our lives and in the lives of those around us. And the second magic is that changing ourselves is best done with others - in a spirit of 'it's never too late, and we are not alone'.

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:

Holding the Angle

Things change slowly, over time, through incremental shifts. Human beings are complex, living systems where a small change can have far-reaching effects. I liken the process (…) to turning a cargo ship at sea. A large vessel with that much momentum can’t make sharp turns. However, a one- or two-degree course correction of the rudder, if held steady, will take that ship in a very different direction over time.

This process of change often occurs in two stages. First, we gain an insight or new understanding into some aspect of ourselves or our world. This is the initial spark that sets the cycle of transformation going. Insight turns the angle of the ship’s rudder.
Insight can feel great. Clarity dawns, and a weight has been lifted. Seeing things in a new light often comes with a rush of inspiration, a sense of freedom or spaciousness. (…)
Many practitioners make the mistake of stopping there. Insight is the beginning of transformation, not the end. It opens us to a new possibility, but as quickly as we change the angle of the rudder, the currents of our life come rushing in. The tyranny of habit exerts its force, pushing us back toward our old ways.
This is the second stage: holding the angle. It’s what turns a moment of insight into lasting change. We work in a patient and steady way, applying effort to integrate this insight. Each day, we recollect the new perspective and practice this new way of being. Inevitably, we lose our grip and the rudder slips back into its old position. We course correct, readjust, and work to hold the angle.
The second stage of change isn’t glamorous or exciting, yet it’s where real transformation takes place. It takes dedication, patience, and genuine interest to sustain. It’s the meditator showing up at their mat each morning, come what may; the artisan diligently throwing another pot on the wheel.
Over time, the steadiness of that effort takes root, and a new way is forged. (…) The transition often occurs so slowly that we only notice it in retrospect. One day we turn around and realize something is different.
Oren Jay Sofer
Photo by Mathieu Stern on Unsplash

What we long for, what we most need, is the simple kindness of others. But the world teaches us otherwise - that what we need most is away from one another. What a tragedy unfolds for all of us when we live in forgetfulness of our deepest longing. We think the world can be different - and this conversation is about just that.

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

Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Coaching For Development programme for people who work in organisations, which we talked about a couple of episodes ago.

Here's our source for this week:

Shoulders

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world's most sensitive cargo
but he's not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy's dream
deep inside him.

We're not going to be able
to live in this world
if we're not willing to do what he's doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

Naomi Shihab Nye


Photo by Aditya Chinchure on Unsplash

Holding on too tightly to expectations of just about anything can trap us in a cycle of frustration and despair. And often our expectations are really ways we're trying to be in control of a situation rather than surrendering ourselves to the unfolding moment. Of course, our ability to control many circumstances so they will be just the way we want them is often beyond us. And so perhaps we might cultivate a kind of openness to the way things actually are combined with a fierce kind of intention to bring ourselves to whatever is happening with as much of our essential goodness as we can, whether that be courage, tenderness, creativity, love, truthfulness or any other of the many virtues available to human beings.

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about meeting the always unexpected happenings of life with grace and presence. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Coaching For Development programme for people who work in organisations, which we talked about a couple of episodes ago.

Here's our source for this week:

Knee Sounds

The older I get the more I notice knee sounds my own quiet desires dumb egos baby’s sharp intuition the return of the blackberries boneheaded binaries. Sometimes I long for an organized drawer or a morning without the realization that one went to school with unbrushed teeth but then I remember how short life is how wide my forgiveness mostly of others more and more myself. The noticing is mostly small. Sometimes it’s big. This life I walk through is not what I expected. How could I have imagined her first questions upon waking or his tender body? How could I have known I would birth my own much-needed teacher on solitude? Or care so much about those two red poppies? Aging is a long, drawn out experiment in being wrong about how you will live, who you will be, what you will love and see and love and see and love and see and that’s okay. It’s more than okay. Each day unpromised and fecund.
I am worse than I thought and also better. Humanity, too. When the violence is too much I touch a lot of tree trunks eat some more bread. watch my kids sleep their sweaty sleep and try not to let any of it tragic or tender feel inevitable.
Courtney Martin
courtneyemartin.com/writing/

Photo by Harli Marten on Unsplash

It’s easy to try to resist the inevitable passage of time, as if our ignoring time would some how save us from its consequences. But what if we found an everyday way to make time sacred, by honouring its transitions rather than turning away?

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the rituals we can create to mark life’s big changes and its more ordinary ones - sleep, waking, eating, the start and end of experiences, births, deaths, the moments when we arrive and the inevitable moments of moving. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Coaching For Development programme for people who work in organisations, which we talked about a couple of episodes ago.

Here's our source for this week:

Every Day Is A Threshold

At any time you can ask yourself: At which threshold am I now standing? At this time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter? What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold? What gift would enable me to do it? A threshold is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms, and atmospheres. Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience or a stage of life that it intensifies toward the end into a real frontier that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up. At this threshold a great complexity of emotion comes alive: confusion, fear, excitement, sadness, hope. This is one of the reasons such vital crossings were always clothed in ritual. It is wise in your own life to be able to recognize and acknowledge the key thresholds: to take your time; to feel all the varieties of presence that accrue there; to listen inward with complete attention until you hear the inner voice calling you forward. The time has come to cross.

John O’Donohue

Photo by Kairat Murataliev on Unsplash

The background culture that surrounds us very often makes the unspoken claim that what's most true about existence is cold, hard matter, and that anything else we encounter - meaning or love for example - is just something we humans invented. But what would happen if we trusted instead that there is an ancient light doing its best to shine forth through us and between us? And what would happen if we could treat the most difficult aspects of our experience, and the most challenging and painful parts of ourselves, as if they were right next to this source of light that could illuminate them? And if we treated ourselves and one another as if the light was the very surrounding in which we move and which wants to move within us?

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about what opens when we understand the context of our lives and our experience to be an ancient light that's trying to find us and shine through us. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

Here's our source for this week:

How the light comes

I cannot tell you how the light comes. What I know is that it is more ancient than imagining. That it travels across an astounding expanse to reach us. That it loves searching out what is hidden, what is lost, what is forgotten or in peril or in pain. That it has a fondness for the body, for finding its way toward flesh, for tracing the edges of form, for shining forth through the eye, the hand, the heart. I cannot tell you how the light comes, but that it does. That it will. That it works its way into the deepest dark that enfolds you, though it may seem long ages in coming or arrive in a shape you did not foresee. And so may we this day turn ourselves toward it. May we lift our faces to let it find us. May we bend our bodies to follow the arc it makes. May we open and open more and open still to the blessed light that comes.

Jan Richardson
Photo by Rene Böhmer on Unsplash

When we listen with total presence, the person speaking to us often communicates differently, hearing themselves more deeply. We ‘hear ourselves into being’ more fully by listening this way too. Most people aren’t used to being  heard in this way, and most of us aren’t used to listening with this much attention. But the act of deep attentive listening can change us profoundly, and change the relationships between us in life giving ways. So how might we step in to this urgent task?

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:

Listening is suspending disbelief

Communication moves in two directions, even when one person speaks and another listens silently. 

When the listener is totally present, the speaker often communicates differently. Most people aren’t used to being fully heard, and it can be jarring for them. 

Sometimes we block the flow of information being offered and compromise true listening. Our critical mind may kick in, taking note of what we agree with and what we don’t, or what we like and dislike. We may look for reasons to distrust the speaker or make them wrong.

Formulating an opinion is not listening. Neither is preparing a response, or defending our position or attacking another’s. To listen impatiently is to hear nothing at all. 

Listening is suspending disbelief. 

We are openly receiving. Paying attention with no preconceived ideas. The only goal is to fully and clearly understand what is being transmitted, remaining totally present with what’s being expressed – and allowing it to be what it is.

Rick Rubin, from The Creative Act: A Way of Being

Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash

What happens when we give up trying to control each other, and instead allow ourselves be changed by our encounter with one another? Could we let the extraordinary beauty and mystery of others really reach us? What would happen if we did this in the roles where we have the most power over others - when we're teachers, parents, employers, or leaders? And what are the costs if we don't, if we stay closed off to the gifts we each have to bring one another?

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the wisdom and possibility that can come from learning from all our encounters and all our relationships. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

Here's our source for this week:

Let Me Become Orange

They say people don’t change.
But when you came along it was obvious that new territory beckoned.
All the ways I had begun to take myself less seriously began to make sense.
Like a hungry horse hearing the shaking bucket of carrots held by the little girl as she comes to visit.
I come bounding towards you, galloping.
Wanting to eat your carrots.
And I soften so that the carrots can make me orange.

If I’m not open to you changing me, how can I truly receive all you’ve come to give ?

Lizzie Winn 9th June 2022
Photo by Ben Mater on Unsplash

How can we learn be the ones who don't turn away when we encounter other people's difficulties and suffering? And how can we learn to be the ones who offer a profound welcome... to others and to ourselves? One way we've learned to do this is to take up a regular 'sitting' practice - an apparently simple practice of sitting very still for long enough that we get to encounter our own inner vastness and all that comes with it.

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how to practice being the ones who turn towards all of it. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Coaching For Development programme for people who work in organisations, which we talked about last week.

Why Sit Still

The point of sitting through anything is to cultivate trust in our own strength and ability to meet whatever arises in our lives, and to know that we can welcome everything, resist nothing, and allow it all fully into our hearts without walking away. The point of sitting is to see just how equipped we are at dealing with the unknowable, and with what feels intolerable — and then, we might feel able to offer our presence and strength to others. You’re suffering the insufferable? Okay, I’ll go there with you, I’ll help you hold that. I will not abandon you.

I began a sitting practice because I felt gutted and ill equipped to meet the circumstances of my life – much less anyone else’s. I know you’ve felt abandoned by someone who could not meet you in your darkest hour. I’ve felt it, too, and it breaks my heart to see how I’ve been an abandoner, as well. Yet I feel a becoming, and a transition that I feel only the persistence of residency has allowed: a turning outward and the cultivation of, I hope, an ability to not abandon the world or others in painful service to my own wounds.

Cassandra Moore and Norman Fischer
Photo by Christian Paul Stobbe on Unsplash

When we take a moment to look, we'll probably find that we're listening more to ourselves than to one another. But how can we create things together, coordinate together, learn together, trust one another if we're not listening? And what does it take to listen - in our organisational life, in our families, in our friendships, in our communities? It's both simpler, and harder, than it seems.

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the courage, practice and support it takes to listen in a way that opens up possibility. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Coaching For Development programme for people who work in organisations, which we talked about today.

Listen

It’s when we actually listen to another human being that they get to be human too. Listening allows a shift from I-It relating in which the other is essentially an object to us (an irritation, a way to get what I want, a way to feel good about myself) to I-You relating, in which the other gets to be a person.
As Martin Buber points out, I-It relating is essentially a form of It-It relating, since it’s impossible for us to show up as full human beings, even to ourselves, when we are in the midst of making another, or a group of others, into a thing. To relate to another in an I-You way, to listen to them in their fullness, bestows dignity on everyone and opens wide horizons for understanding, compassion, truthfulness, and relationship. Listening ought to be the easiest thing to do. After all, it requires no complex framework, no technique, no technology. And yet it can be so, so hard.

Most of us have a lot of practicing to do in order to drop our need to be right, to be ‘the one’, to be liked, and to hear only what we want to hear. In order to listen we have to relax our defensiveness, be skilful with the inner attacks of our own inner critic (which is ready to judge us even when there’s no judgement coming from the speaker), get over our wish to control everything, and be willing to welcome whatever we experience. We have to be able to question our own stories and accounts, be open to seeing things in a whole new way, and quiet our inner world sufficiently that what is being said can reach us. And we have to learn how to be in contact with ourselves, a fundamental prerequisite for being in contact with others.
Perhaps all of this is why real listening is so absent in our fearful, impatient culture. And why we could all benefit from doing some inner work if we want to do the vital outer work of listening well to the people around us.

from Justin Wise's 'On Living and Working'
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

When love depends upon a feeling, it comes and goes as the feeling comes and goes. And when love depends upon the way someone else is - beautiful, or kind, or successful - it’s vulnerable to the inevitable changes in a human life. 

But what if love could depend upon something deeper - not something inside me, nor something inside you, and maybe not even something between you and me? What if we came to know love as the very ground we could stand upon, or a wellspring we could draw upon that flows into actions and responses? Then love could include and infuse many experiences, including joy and grief, clarity and confusion, and all those times we feel let down or surprised or changed.

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about a grown up love we might cultivate over time, a path to walk, that is deeper and more inclusive. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Leading from Essential Self programme which we talked about in a previous episode and which is is coming up soon. And our year-long Professional Coaching Course which begins in June 2022.

This week we're bringing a (characteristically concise) source from 'Pirkei Avot', an ancient Jewish wisdom text ('The Wisdom of the Elders').

Any love that depends upon a some-thing, when that something disappears, the love disappears. But when love does not depend upon a thing, it never disappears.

Pirkei Avot, 5:19

Photo by Adam Hornyak on Unsplash

There's something inherently artistic about living a human life, in all the ways we're called to respond creatively, sensitively, boldly to the conditions and relationships in the midst of which we find ourselves. But, for many of us, the 'artist in us' got suppressed by being unsupported, or unwelcome. So what would it be to reclaim our artistry and direct it towards the unfolding of life-giving possibilities in the world? And what would it be to be ones who can sincerely welcome the artistry in others, even when it (especially when it) challenges a way of understanding ourselves in the world that we my have clung onto for a long time?

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about generosity, welcome, creativity, and owning our lives in an expressive way. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Leading from Essential Self programme which we talked about in the previous episode and which is is coming up soon, and to our year-long Professional Coaching Course which begins in June 2022

Turning Towards Life is hosted by 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 and Spotify.

Here's our source for this week:

The Art Spirit,
(Written in 1923, the pronouns reflect the period)

“When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressing creature. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and opens the way for a better understanding. Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, he opens it, shows there are still more pages possible.”

by Robert Henri
Photo by Danny Howe on Unsplash

So often our lives are ruled by 'clock time' - we're counting off how long there is to get something done, or we're aiming for a time-bound goal, or we're measuring time wasted or time used productively. But although this is the dominant way of understanding time for many of us, it is only one way of relating to the flow of things. What if, instead of filling time with work or play, we turned things around and allowed time to flow into our activity? And what if instead of trying to secure ourselves against an unpredictable future, we took up a playfulness with the unfolding of time itself?

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about living into our lives as an infinite unfolding, rather than a finite game. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Leading from Essential Self programme which we talked about in the previous episode and which is is coming up soon, and to our year-long Professional Coaching Course which begins in June 2022

Turning Towards Life is hosted by 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 and Spotify.

Here's our source for this week:

What Is Time?

There are two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play…

For an infinite player there is no such thing as an hour of time. There can be an hour of love, or a day of grieving, or a season of learning, or a period of labour.

An infinite player does not begin working for the purpose of filling up a period of time with work, but for the purpose of filling work with time. Work is not a way of passing time but engendering possibility. Work is not a way of arriving at a desired present and securing it against an unpredictable future but of moving towards a future that itself has a future.

[So] infinite players cannot say how much they have completed in their work or love or quarrelling, but only that much remains incomplete in it. They are not concerned to determine when it is over, but only what comes from it…

A finite player puts play into time. An infinite player puts time into play.

James Carse, from ‘Finite and Infinite Games’
Photo by Joe Pregadio on Unsplash

Our amazing capacity to separate parts of ourselves from ourselves - to keep the inner experiences of grief, or joy, or longing away and out of view. How this serves us. And how it can also lead us away from ourselves and all that we have to bring to the world. The letting go, falling in, opening that's available to us that can play its part in reuniting ourselves with what would otherwise be lost.

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the possibility of letting ourselves tumble into our own hearts - something that many of us have been taught never to do. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Leading from Essential Self programme which we talked about in the previous episode and which is is coming up soon, and to our year-long Professional Coaching Course which begins in June 2022

Turning Towards Life is hosted by 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 and Spotify.

Here's our source for this week:

Falling Down

We try so hard to stay up
To keep from falling down
Yet there is a falling into ourselves,
That is of the essence.

There is a tumbling
Into the heart
That means we must open
To our beauty and our pain.

Without a willingness to surrender
To a flow of feelings,
Receive them with compassion,
We may never come to know
That sweet sense of oneness
With ourselves,
That simple bliss in being
Beneath all our distress.

We try so hard to stay up
Yet there is a falling down,
That is of the essence.

— Nanna Aida Svendsen
Photo by Angga Indratama on Unsplash

The cultural story of money that we all live in has opened up all kinds of opportunities for trade and exchange in the world. And at the same time, the story is easily one of transaction rather than relationship, of fleeting contact rather that the weaving of deep reciprocal obligation and care, of efficiency, mechanism and convenience over the vulnerability and gifts of connection and reciprocity and community. Is there a way we can live in the story of money in a way that binds us into the gathering of life?

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we find our way back to living relationship when the story of money might isolate us and have us feeling separate from one another. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Leading from Essential Self programme which we talked about in the previous episode and which is is coming up soon, and to our year-long Professional Coaching Course which begins in June 2022

Turning Towards Life is hosted by 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 and Spotify.

Here's our source for this week:

Sometimes to accept is also a gift. The anthropologist David Graeber points out that the explanation that we invented money because barter was too clumsy is false. It wasn’t that I was trying to trade sixty sweaters for the violin you’d made when you didn’t really need all that wooliness. Before money, Graeber wrote, people didn’t barter but gave and received as needs and goods ebbed and flowed. They thereby incurred the indebtedness that bound them together, and reciprocated slowly, incompletely, in the ongoing transaction that is a community. Money was invented as a way to sever the ties by completing the transactions that never needed to be completed in the older system, but existed like a circulatory system in a body. Money makes us separate bodies, and maybe it teaches us that we should be separate.

Rebecca Solnit, from 'The Faraway Nearby'
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

How can we be the ones who welcome what has been lost in others, and in doing so be the ones who welcome again what has been lost in ourselves? It's a central question for our fragmented times.

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we find our way back home to what was here all along, and the crucial role of welcome, truth-telling and relationship in making that possible. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Leading from Essential Self programme which we talked about in the previous episode and which is is coming up soon. 

You can find out more about other Thirdspace programmes we talk about this week on the Thirdspace website here:

• Our two-day Foundations of Coaching programme on 25-26 April 2022 
• Our year-long Professional Coaching Course which begins in June 2022

Turning Towards Life is hosted by 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 and Spotify.

Here's our source for this week:

The birth of new life is something to behold, but have you ever witnessed a revival? Have you seen a person meet themselves after years apart, hands touching through a mirror, eyes locked together, a smile so strong it echoes. Have you ever watched a person breathe after drowning, deep gulps of air that lungs welcome with shouts of, finally, finally, finally! Have you ever witnessed the moment soul sinks into body, the calm when mind and heart look at each other with love instead of longing. Have you ever placed your hand on your chest  and with absolute clarity been able to say what was lost is now found.'
by L.E. Bowman
https://www.instagram.com/l.e.bowman.poetry/
Photo by manas rb on Unsplash

Stepping into leadership, on whatever scale, immediately asks a central question of each of us: What kind of person will I be? Can I be a person who brings out virtues of dignity, creativity, courage, compassion, persistence, humility, generosity and wisdom in myself and the people I am alongside? Can I catch on to the ways in which I contract into fear, or reactivity, or habit? Can I find others who will help me walk the path of attention, inquiry and practice that can support me in bringing myself to the world in a way that’s most fully expressive of my intentions?

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we lead together in a way that draws upon our essential goodness. And it's an invitation to a new learning community we're launching. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Leading from Essential Self programme which we talk about in this episode and which is is coming up soon. 

You can find out more about other Thirdspace programmes we talk about this week on the Thirdspace website here:

• Our two-day Foundations of Coaching programme on 25-26 April 2022 
• Our year-long Professional Coaching Course which begins in June 2022

Turning Towards Life is hosted by 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 and Spotify.

Here's our source for this week:

The Call of Leadership

We’re ‘called to leadership’ any time we find ourselves caring deeply about the world and people around us and want to respond with wisdom, resourcefulness, dignity and creativity – whether that’s in an organisational setting, in national-scale leadership, in a family, because we’ve taken up a role in a community that we care about, or whenever we want to bring a new idea, possibility, cause or work of art into the world.
Stepping into leadership, on whatever scale, immediately asks a central question of each of us: What kind of person will I be? Can I be a person who brings out virtues of dignity, creativity, courage, compassion, persistence, humility, generosity and wisdom in myself and the people I am alongside? Can I catch on to the ways in which I contract into fear, or reactivity, or habit? Can I find others who will help me walk the path of attention, inquiry and practice that can support me in bringing myself to the world in a way that’s most fully expressive of my intentions?
Another way of saying this – can I lead from my 'Essential Self’, the goodness and wisdom that’s at the heart of each of us? Can I attend to being ‘right sized’, inhabiting fully the life-giving possibilities that are mine to bring without shrinking away or trying to be bigger than I really am?

Justin Wise
Photo by Simon Berger on Unsplash

What if we were able to really deeply honour and welcome our incompleteness and imperfection, and honour our own and one another's unique ways of being in the world? Maybe then - if we gave up our harsh self-criticism and our demands for perfection - we'd ever more be able to be 'home' for one another, and participate generously, lovingly and compassionately in the reshaping of ourselves that life is always asking of us.

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:

Symmathesy (the poem)

Each one of us is a crooked tree,
Reaching for water and light,
Bending ourselves around obstacles,
Scary thoughts, hurtful moments,
darkness & thirst,
Finding a way to breathe in the sun and hold the soil,
Our branches are kinked and twisted,
Because that is what it took to be here,

The ways of learning to be in our worlds,
Have shaped responses,
Our many experiences are speaking through every gesture.
Our loves, and broken paths, a tenderness, a criticism,

Learning always,
Yearning always,
In crooked beauty...
To be a home for those who may find comfort
In the asymmetry of our belonging,
A nest cradling new life,

Tucked into an old log teeming with creatures,
learning to be in each other's reshaping.

Nora Bateson

Photo by Brandon Green on Unsplash

When we're afraid, but not acknowledging our fear, we're most likely to act out of line with our deepest intentions. It's easy from the midst of fear to try to assert our power and control - by being right or over-certain or dominating others - or to shrink away from our own dignity by saying 'yes' when something else is called for. What if we could learn to notice and name our fear, to ourselves and others, and in doing so return to the qualities of wisdom, truthfulness, and reciprocity that give us the greatest chance of addressing the challenges of the moment at a right size and in right relationship with others?

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about 'right sizing' ourselves so we can respond to the world with the depth that is the heritage of each one of us. 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.

You can find out more about the Thirdspace programmes we talk about this week on the Thirdspace website here:

• Our two-day Foundations of Coaching programme on 25-26 April 2022 
• Our year-long Professional Coaching Course which begins in June 2022
• Our new Leading from Essential Self programme from 25-27 May 2022

Here's our source for this week:

Fear Is Contraction
Fear unites the disparate parts of our false selves very quickly. The ego moves forward by contraction, self-protection, and refusal, by saying no. Contraction gives us focus, purpose, direction, superiority, and a strange kind of security. It takes our aimless anxiety, covers it up, and tries to turn it into purposefulness and urgency, which results in a kind of drivenness. But this drive is not peaceful or happy. It is filled with fear and locates all its problems as “out there,” never “in here.”  
The soul or the True Self does not proceed by contraction but by expansion. It moves forward, not by exclusion, but by inclusion. It sees things deeply and broadly not by saying no but by saying yes, at least on some level, to whatever comes its way. Can you distinguish between those two very different movements within yourself?  
Fear and contraction allow us to eliminate other people, write them off, exclude them, and somehow expel them, at least in our minds. This immediately gives us a sense of being in control and having a secure set of boundaries—even holy boundaries. But people who are controlling are usually afraid of losing something. If we go deeper into ourselves, we will see that there is both a rebel and a dictator in all of us, two different ends of the same spectrum. It is almost always fear that justifies our knee-jerk rebellion or our need to dominate—a fear that is hardly ever recognized as such because we are acting out and trying to control the situation. 
Fr Richard Rohr
Available at the Centre for Action and Reflection website

Photo by Ashley Batz on Unsplash

In the words of Marie Howe’s beautiful poem that is our source this week, “whatever leads to joy, to more life, to less worry”. Can we learn to live this way in the midst of it all - attending to joy in its deepest sense, in the way it brings us into contact with what is most real? And is there a way to not pile worry on top of everything that it already matters for us to take care of?

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the faithfulness it takes to lean into our lives, and to face their realness in doing so. 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.

You can find out more about our Professional Coaching Course, which we talk a little about in this episode, on the Thirdspace website here.

Here's our source for this week:

My Dead Friends

I have begun, 
when I’m weary and can’t decide an answer to a bewildering question

to ask my dead friends for their opinion 
and the answer is often immediate and clear.

Should I take the job? Move to the city? Should I try to conceive a child 
in my middle age?

They stand in unison shaking their heads and smiling—whatever leads 
to joy, they always answer,

to more life and less worry. I look into the vase where Billy’s ashes were — it’s 
green in there, a green vase,

and I ask Billy if I should return the difficult phone call, and he says, yes. 
Billy’s already gone through the frightening door,

whatever he says I’ll do.

Marie Howe

Photo by Sergey Pesterev on Unsplash

In those moments when, in the midst of the brokenness of the world, any of us find ourselves able to kindle our resolute love or contagious joy, we're being of much needed service - both to ourselves and to those around us. And we don't always know that we're doing that. So what would it be to begin to notice this most human of capacities in ourselves, and share it with others - as a complement to all the other strong feelings and orientations that sweep through us when we are also in contact with the fragility of things?

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about celebrating our capacity to be generous, courageous gifts to one another, this week seeded from a source from the wonderful work of David Abram. 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.

You can find out more about our Professional Coaching Course, which we talk a little about in this episode, on the Thirdspace website here.

Here's our source for this week:

Holding Together

There are so many unsung heroines and heroes at this broken moment in our collective story, so many courageous persons who, unbeknownst to themselves, are holding together the world by their resolute love or contagious joy. Although I do not know your names, I can feel you out there.
David Abram
Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash

How do we make contact with our own kindness, generosity, creativity, patience, courage, compassion, fierce or gentle love, and our capacity to stay in contact with life, right when we're afraid or wanting to turn away?

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we find that in ourself that's ready to stay faithful, when other parts of us strongly want to turn away - and how we help one another to do that. Our conversation is seeded from a source from the wonderful work of Maya Stein. 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.

You can find out more about our Professional Coaching Course, which we talk a little about in this episode, on the Thirdspace website here.

Here's our source for this week:

What If?

Whatever you’re afraid of. Whatever you’re warding off, trying to hold back
from being true. Whatever keeps sniffing at your legs, and whatever you keep
kicking away. Whatever draft you’re trying to seal. Whatever risk you push
to the perimeter. Whatever old whisper you’re turning from to deafen. Whatever exit
you’re avoiding, eyes locked on the straightaway. Whatever breakage you think is yours
to mend, and the endless ministrations of that mending. Whatever call you keep
not picking up. Whatever blank piece of paper. Whatever Hail Mary. Whatever salt
you keep throwing over your shoulder. One day, it will stop being enough
to keep you from your own magnificence. And what if, what if, what if
this was that day?

Maya Stein
mayastein.substack.com

Photo by Grant Whitty on Unsplash

We might imagine we can choose the 'threshold moments', when we're called to step into the unknown. Sometimes we can. But as events in the world remind us this week, what changes around us and within us often comes without warning and without our say-so.

One response to transitions on whatever scale is to run from them, or to try to be in control of them on our own. But that rarely works out, because for us to be in charge would mean having powers that none of us have. Instead, can we turn towards them and have them be an opportunity for us to connect with one another's lives more deeply, listen more fully, and support one another? And what kind of world might open if we did?

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about turning towards what's being born, perhaps right when we're least ready for it. 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.

You can find out more about our Professional Coaching Course, which we talk a little about in this episode, on the Thirdspace website here.

Here's our source for this week:

Liminal Space

In this
waiting place
we loiter, hover,
on a tentative cusp,
a threshold,
between the familiar
and the unknown,
with no possible retreat.
The customary comfort zone
is gone, and where
the entrance ushers
is not yet seen.
Our new question
(let alone its answer)
still is ambiguous.
We are in limbo.
We can either hesitate
or go forward.
The gossamer veil
of divine nearness
flutters ever so lightly,
breathing inseparably close,
as we step to embrace
the unrevealed with trust,
a shimmering opportunity
for connection and listening
and being led right on through.
Lean into this portal;
it is the doorstep
to fruitful ground.

by Polly Castor
pollycastor.com

Photo by Mark Basarab on Unsplash

How do we approach our lives when they don’t go how we want? Or when we find ourselves judging the value of our lives by the outcomes of our actions and projects? When we find out we’re not nearly as ‘in charge’ as we imagine, and that every choice is riddled with complexity, it’s easy to tune out and seek the promise of easy answers or to demand of ourselves a level of control and power that’s impossible for us humans. So how else might we live? Might we find a way to honour that our lives are not made of ‘final destinations’ but are a process of becoming, in which each choice and action has a chance to move the world somewhat but, more importantly, to shape who we are?

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about watching where we are going, leaning into what we love, and telling the truth. 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.

You can find out more about our Professional Coaching Course, which we talk a little about in this episode, on the Thirdspace website here.

Here's our source for this week:


Choice There isn’t a right answer.
There just isn’t. The game show
where the bells ring and the points
go up and the confetti falls
because you got the answer
is a lie. The preacher who would assure you
of how to attain salvation
is making it all up. The doctor
who knows just how to fix
what ails you will be sure
of something else tomorrow.
Every choice will
wound someone, heal someone,
build a wall and open a conversation.
Things will always happen
that you can’t foresee.
But you have to choose.
It’s all we have—that little rudder
that we employ in the midst
of all the eddies and rapids,
the current that pulls us
inexorably toward the sea.
The fact that you are swept along
by the river is no excuse.
Watch where you are going.
Lean in toward what you love.
When in doubt, tell the truth.

Lynn Ungar
lynnungar.com

Photo by Cory Woodward on Unsplash

Can we look at ourselves and others around us as we all grow older with eyes of wonder... seeing and receiving the luminosity and depth that shines out from beneath the skin? Or will we get caught up in our culture's dominant meta-narratives - that to grow old is to be diminished, and that time is a 'resource' that we get less of as we age? What if, instead, life is a ripeness that we grow into, and growing into our elderhood is a deep gift we can bring to others?

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about what might become possible as we grow into the wildness of our bones, and attune to the gifts of the ones who walk the path ahead of us. 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.

You can find out more about our Professional Coaching Course, which we talk a little about in this episode, on the Thirdspace website here.

Here's our source for this week:

Beneath the Sweater and the Skin

How many years of beauty do I have left?
she asks me.
How many more do you want?
Here. Here is 34. Here is 50.

When you are 80 years old
and your beauty rises in ways
your cells cannot even imagine now
and your wild bones grow luminous and
ripe, having carried the weight
of a passionate life. 

When your hair is aflame
with winter
and you have decades of
learning and leaving and loving
sewn into
the corners of your eyes
and your children come home
to find their own history
in your face.

When you know what it feels like to fail
ferociously
and have gained the
capacity
to rise and rise and rise again.

When you can make your tea
on a quiet and ridiculously lonely afternoon
and still have a song in your heart
Queen owl wings beating
beneath the cotton of your sweater.

Because your beauty began there
beneath the sweater and the skin,
remember?

This is when I will take you
into my arms and coo
YOU BRAVE AND GLORIOUS THING
you've come so far.
I see you.
Your beauty is breathtaking.

Jeannette Encinias
www.jeannetteencinias.com


Photo by Ýlona María Rybka on Unsplash

It's hard to turn towards the basic condition of our lives - that everything changes, and that everything ends, including ourselves. That we will lose it all. But our resistance to this truth can easily end up with us trying to freeze our lives in place, holding us back from encountering what's here in an effort to never have to face loss or grief. But we know not to do that with that which flows - we don't try to freeze each wave on the sea, for example, because we know that what makes a wave a wave is that it is free to arise and fall away in exactly the way that waves do.

And so this week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about what might become possible if we understand ourselves and everyone around us as flow, arising from the bigger flow of life or existence itself. 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.

You can find out more about our Professional Coaching Course, which we talk a little about in this episode, on the Thirdspace website here.

Here's our source for this week:

The Great Gift of Selfhood
“You will die. You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor any thing. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood. For we have only what we know we must lose, what we are willing to lose… That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes; it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself? Would you give up the craft of your hands, and the passion of your heart, and the light of sunrise and sunset, to buy safety for yourself - safety forever?”

Ursula K. Le Guin, from 'The Farthest Shore'


Photo by Ryan Moulton on Unsplash

We’re taught that what’s most of value in life is what we can explain, that which can be illuminated by the daylight, and which we can see and know. But the shadows and darkness have gifts too - gifts of belonging, and gifts of freedom, and a way of teaching us what to give up in order to take up the one life that is our own. 

What if we approached the non-obvious not as something to run from, but as a doorway into a life beyond? Can we honour the underneath and the behind and the dark and what cannot be put into words?


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.

You can find out more about our Professional Coaching Course, which we talk a little about in this episode, on the Thirdspace website here.

Here's our source for this week:

Sweet Darkness

by David Whyte (davidwhyte.com)

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone,
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognise its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your home
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

Photo by David Gabrić on Unsplash

There’s a prevalent understanding in the world that the very definition of ‘professional’ is a kind of machine-like activity - efficient, rule based, predictable, rational but unfeeling. Even when it’s not talked about we see it shaping our participation in organisations of all kinds - businesses, schools, health-care. And beyond work it shapes our entire orientation to life. 

But what if we started to notice the deadening qualities of this way and started to attend to a life-giving alternative: professionalism as a kind of deep care and sensitivity, to one another, to wisdom, to life itself? 

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about all of this, 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.

You can find out more about our Professional Coaching Course, which we talk a little about in this episode, on the Thirdspace website here.

Here's our source for this week:

The Professionalism That Will Kill Us All

by Charles Davies (www.howtobeclear.com)

“The professionalism that requires us to be unmoved by what we meet through the day is a professionalism that will kill us all.”

About fifteen years ago I started regularly going to Denmark to teach at the Kaospilots, a school of creative and social entrepreneurship. What I loved about the school was that, rather than teaching people to be ‘businesspeople’, they asked: What do you need to learn to live and work well in an unpredictable world? And so the students learned how to listen to each other. And how to listen to themselves. How to see what is happening and see what is needed — and feel able to respond. How to stand for something. They were learning how to be sensitive. How to be sensitive at work...

The insensitivity required to be part of the system is unsustainable. Without sensitivity to life as a whole, everything starts to die...

[So] how can we do the work we need to do in a way that increases rather than blocks our sensitivity? What does professionalism look like when it is something you feel your way through, moment by moment? When it requires vulnerability and uncertainty? When being more professional means being more human? Kinder, wiser, more generous, more forgiving, more loving. And — not doing these things for their own sake, not doing these things because they’re nice, but doing them because that’s what works. Because, if we go to work and we‘re on autopilot, then everything starts to die.

Photo by Davide Cantelli on Unsplash

We're born as wide-open hearts, but very quickly discover that the world around us is not ready or able to welcome us in our fulness. So early on we learn strategies to put large parts of ourselves away - to belong by unbelonging many aspects of ourselves. It's necessary, unavoidable even, but comes at a huge cost. So can we learn as we traverse our years of adulthood to bring ourselves out into the open where it is, in the end, possible to be most fully loved? And can we be the ones who love our friends, partners, children and colleagues 'out into the open' by being an affordance for those around us to bring themselves forward ever more fully?

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

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Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.

Here's our source for this week:

In The Open

No matter the strength of shyness
No matter how tempting it is to keep myself a secret

Oh how comfort’s infestation spreads
While it urges me to do nothing

There is no room to hide
In a world I am made for
Out in the open

There is no room to hide
I am supposed to be loved
Out in the open

Morgan Lahm

Photo by bady abbas on Unsplash

Lizzie and Justin are partners in Thirdspace, an organisation which supports people to recognise their goodness and capacity, helping them bring their whole selves to the world.  In this special episode Lizzie and Justin talk about the Thirdspace Professional Coaching Course, a certification programme in integral development coaching which is at the heart of Thirdspace's work and a project of great joy and love for both of us. Our next cohort is open for applications now, and begins in June 2022.

Over the course of our conversation you'll hear what makes this special programme unique, how it changes participants and what it makes possible, the distinction between 'developmental' and other kinds of coaching, and more about the details and structure of the programme.

You can read more about the course (the 'PCC') right here. 

Being open to the world, to experience, to being changed by what's around us and within us, may be one of the great human capacities, and precisely what allows us to make community and relationship, and to respond with wisdom, creativity and love to the challenges and gifts of our times. But it's greatly diminished by that in us which wants to manipulate and control, which insists on reducing to right and wrong, and the impulse in us which demands certainty. Those qualities are needed, indeed, but as support to our openness rather than as a way of dominating it. So how do we stay open to life as it happens? And how do we keep ourselves from closing down?

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the practice of standing in our lives prayerfully and willingly, 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.

You can find out more about our Professional Coaching Course, which we talk a little about in this episode, on the Thirdspace website here.

Here's our source for this week:

What Open Means

To be open means receptive,
able to be touched.
Open means undefended,
with an inner "yes" resounding
loud and clear. It means
really being here, present
and awake. Open means willing
to take the moment in.
It is a choice, a discipline,
a surrender of my being
to the truth. Open is a state
of mind, a way of life,
a refusal to close down.
Imagine a flower in full bloom.
In your mind's eye, see a tree
with leaves that welcome in
the sunlight. See the night sky
filled with stars and empty spaces.
I pray to be that open today,
with plenty of room for the
mystery to fill. I pray to be
so open the universe spills in,
pours out, and leaves me
drenched in wonder.

Danna Faulds

Photo: Katerina Pavlyuchkova | Unsplash  

We are not machines, even though most of us have grown up, quite without noticing it, as if we were in some essential way meant to be shiny, efficient, perfect, unstopping, optimal, results-producing mechanisms. And so we easily miss seeing the already-miraculous living beings that we are.

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about loving our messiness, our incompleteness, our glorious particular just-who-we-are-ness, 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:

Loving our brokenness We have to find a way to love our brokenness
No, not loving ourselves in spite of our failings But loving the brokenness itself
We have to love all the ways we’re late And all the ways we missed the point
We have to love that we were scared And that we were ashamed to say it
We have to love that we didn’t get it all done And love that we imagined it was doable in the first place
We have to love that we’re such a glorious mess And how we struggle to meet our own standards
We have to learn to love, in short, all the ways we fall short
Because our grace, courage and capacity to stand Our care of what’s broken in the world around us
Is strongest when we’re carried by that which we’ve learned to cherish
And not when we’re mired in that which we’ve chosen to hate.

Justin Wise (from a blog post, here)
Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash