391: No, There is No Turning Back

Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast

The narratives about time and growing older that our culture hands us often fail to name and invite the kind of luminous gathering of life that we can become with age. What if we found a way to fully grieve the losses of aging, rather than fight against them, and in doing so we deepen into a kind of translucent generosity of heart and spirit in which we allow ourselves to give ourselves away to those around us and to life itself? And what if we could do that together, rather than alone?
This week’s conversation is 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.
Episode Overview
00:00 Introduction and Gratitude
03:11 Exploring Wendell Berry's Work
06:00 The Nature of Time and Aging
12:01 Grief and Acceptance
18:12 Generosity in the Face of Loss
23:57 Community and Intergenerational Wisdom

Here's our source for this week:
Sabbaths 1993 I

No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility you were.
More and more you have become
those lives and deaths
that have belonged to you.
You have become a sort of grave
containing much that was
and is no more in time, beloved
then, now, and always.
And so you have become a sort of tree
standing over a grave.
Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.
by Wendell Berry

Photo by Maria Krasnova on Unsplash