154: You Might See an Angel, Anytime

Published: Sept. 13, 2020, 3:14 p.m.

A great deal of our suffering comes from our certainty that life is meant to go our way... and this certainty easily throws us into on the one hand imagining we're meant to have the powers only a deity could have and, on the other hand, feeling small and cynical and disconnected from life. But what if we could see that we're participants in something much more like a dance in which we barely know the steps, and came to be less certain about exactly how this would turn out or, even, quite what it is that we are dancing with. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about looking beyond our certainty and catching a glimpse, perhaps, of something quite astonishing beneath, with 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. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website.

Our source this week is brought to us by Lizzie:

ANGELS
by
MARY OLIVER

You might see an angel anytime
and anywhere. Of course you have
to open your eyes to a kind of
second level, but it’s not really
hard. The whole business of
what’s reality and what isn’t has
never been solved and probably
never will be. So I don’t care to
be too definite about anything.
I have a lot of edges called Perhaps
and almost nothing you can call
Certainty. For myself, but not
for other people. That’s a place
you just can’t get into, not
entirely anyway, other people’s
heads.
I’ll just leave you with this.
I don’t care how many angels can
dance on the head of a pin. It’s
enough to know that for some people
they exist, and that they dance.

Photo by Josh Howard on Unsplash