368: One Word Spoken Slowly by the Stars

Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast

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

“Aye,” Ged answered. “Light is a power. A great power, by which we exist, but which exists beyond our needs, in itself. Sunlight and starlight are time, and time is light. In the sunlight, in the days and years, life is. In a dark place life may call upon the light, naming it.” …
There was a little pause; and Yarrow asked, “Tell me just this, if it is not a secret: what other great powers are there besides the light?”
“It is no secret. All power is one in source and end, I think. Years and distances, stars and candles, water and wind and wizardry, the craft in a man’s hand and the wisdom in a tree’s root: they all arise together. My name, and yours, and the true name of the sun, or a spring of water, or an unborn child, all are syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars. There is no other power. No other name.”
Staying his knife on the carved wood, Murre asked, “What of death?” [Yarrow] listened, her shining black head bent down.
“For a word to be spoken,” Ged answered slowly, “there must be silence. Before, and after.”
Ursula K Le Guin, The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition (p. 157). Orion

Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash