280: Once You Begin, the Journey Owns You

Published: Feb. 19, 2023, 2:27 p.m.

We can live our whole lives caught up in ideas of ourselves that were handed to us from others - our family, our culture, or structures that work to constrain us. But in the midst of all of that, sometimes, if we look out of the corner of our eye or listen to the quiet voice inside us, we discover that something truer to us is calling.

Stepping out onto that path - whether it's the call away to something new, or a deeper way into what we're already up to - will surely expose us to intense experiences and much uncertainty before it can become a home of its own. So how can we support one another in walking the path of vocation when it is no longer possible to ignore it?

This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.


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:

“A true vocation requires shedding anything that would impede or obscure the call. A true pilgrimage requires letting go of the very things most people try to hold onto. In seeking after what the soul desires we become pilgrims with no home but the path the soul would have us follow. As the old proverb says, “Before you begin the journey, you own the journey. Once you have begun, the journey owns you.” After all, what good is a dream that doesn’t test the mettle of the dreamer? What good is a path that doesn’t carry us to the edge of our capacity and then beyond that place? A true calling involves a great exposure before it can become a genuine refuge."

Michael Meade, "Fate and Destiny"


Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash