Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast Thirdspace

We make all kinds of separations inside ourselves and between ourselves and one another. “I’m like this, but not like that” we tell ourselves. But that division leaves us bereft of all kinds of possibility and freedom. Perhaps right when we’re feeling most serious, it’s time to reach for that in us which is playful and bring it right alongside. Or when we meet someone very different to us, it’s time to discover their many virtues and see what it is like to bring those virtues inside us, alongside the virtues we already claim as our own.

We bring ourselves into life in a dance we learned right from our earliest days… in which we’re often carefully managing what we can show to one another of ourselves. And others learn to dance with us in this way too, finding out from bring around us what to talk about, and what to avoid. Pretty soon we’re all dancing around that which, if we pay attention, was in plain view all along. Oftentimes the dance feels necessary. Sometimes it is necessary. But keeping on the surface of things is hardly a way towards the intimacy, connection, contact and realness we long for. So who could we be for ourselves and for one another, so that we can bring ourselves - and all our rich complexity - into the light for the benefit of everyone around us?

Change is everywhere. Within us. Around us. And, sometimes, in our longing for some stability, some centre of ‘no change’ in the tumult of our lives, we’ll close ourselves off from the truth of things, numbing ourselves, distracting ourselves, and pretending it isn’t happening. But the truth is that everything changes. And although we might try to fight it, we human beings long for what is true, what is real, and for intimacy with the world. So can we instead ‘make an altar to change’, and turn towards its ever-presence as a way of deepening our engagement with life, and with one another?

We often go searching out in the world, far and wide, for qualities that already live in ourselves. And, fuelled by the story of our wider culture that our longings are best met always by ‘more’ and always ‘away from ourselves’, we can forget the treasures that live right here within us, in this living, beating, life-filled heart and body that we are never separate from. So how can we open ourselves to meeting the deeper something that we long for, that we already are? And how can we help one another home?

How can we come to know the vast stores of goodness, care and benevolence that are in each of us simply by being human? What makes it possible for us to bring this goodness to bear on the many difficulties and realities that face every single human life? How can we do this without minimising or explaining away the dark sides of human life, and the genuine pain and confusion we can experience at what happens to us? And how do we at the same time cultivate a deep faithfulness our individual and collective capacity to respond in ways that care ever more deeply about the world?

Right when we’re in the mess and complexity of things - for example when raising children, or being in a partnership, or working alongside others - is where we can learn so much about what it is to be human. And it’s where we also learn the most about our own power - to make a world that is better for others to live in, or worse. In this week’s conversation we explore how we might turn everyday complexity into a deeper care for the world and the use of whatever power we each have for the benefit of those around us. We refer in this week’s conversation to Lindsay Green and Charlie Lyons’ wonderful podcast ‘Made Possible by Parenthood’ which you can also find on Spotify.