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To be a living, conscious, experiencing being is one of the great miraculous wonders of the universe. And being \u2018this one\u2019, the unique one each of us is, will never happen again. And yet\u2026 we learn to discount the unique first-person experience of being ourselves, pushing our ordinary everyday sacredness to the side, often in favour of treating ourselves and others more like objects or production machines than the sacred conscious beings that we are.\xa0\n
\nWhat would it be to let ourselves honour the beauty and mystery of our everyday consciousness, our joys and losses, our lost-and-found-ness, and to honour the sacredness of that in each other?
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\nThis week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about saying hello, with love and reverence, to the miracle of the everyday experience of being a person, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.\n
\n\nThis 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.
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\nHere's our source for this week:
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\nWhat You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade
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\n\n\nMrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen
\nto the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas,\n\n
\nhow peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took
\nquestions on how not to feel lost in the dark.\n\n
\nAfter lunch she distributed worksheets
\nthat covered ways to remember your grandfather\u2019s
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\n\n\nvoice. Then the class discussed falling asleep
\nwithout feeling you had forgotten to do something else\u2014
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\n\n\nsomething important\u2014and how to believe
\nthe house you wake in is your home. This prompted
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\n\n\nMrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing
\nhow to chant the Psalms during cigarette breaks,
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\n\n\nand how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts
\nare all you hear; also, that you have enough.\n\n
\nThe English lesson was that I am
\nis a complete sentence.
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\n\n\nAnd just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation
\nlook easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions,
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\n\n\nand feeling cold, and all those nights spent looking
\nfor whatever it was you lost, and one person
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\n\n\nadd up to something.
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\nBrad Aaron Modlin
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\nPhoto by Leonardo Toshiro Okubo on Unsplash\n