[embed]https://youtu.be/JoJhya_Gveg[/embed]In this episode of our 'Turning Towards Life' Project Lizzie and I talk about how attempts to turn away from the dark usually have the effect of turning us away from our own aliveness. We consider how we might start to see the unknowability of life as part of life's essential condition, and how telling the truth about our own experience is a path towards embracing what we can't change and flourishing in the midst of it.Along the way we start to see how in the end, we can never really turn away from life - because we are, all of us, expressions of life - and how it's our misunderstandings around this that cause us so much difficulty.

The journey of the wildflower

This morning I was stopped in my tracksBy the simple, exquisite beautyOf a violet-petalled flower who hadBurst her way into bloomOut of a crack in a concrete wall.I wondered why I was so moved by her –Why I felt such deep and instant friendship,And I realised that she was beaming meWith the truth thatAll growth starts in darkness.That all beginnings are seemingly hopeless –That it is impossible to imagineThe violet of a future petalWhen all you know is the darknessAnd hardness of the unknown.And that this is how it is for usWhen we are asked repeatedly by lifeTo turn towards the pain,The sacredness,The beauty,The grief,The constant endingsAs well as the constant beginnings,Without knowing how or whyOr even if we can bear any of it at all.But here she was,Blooming at me,Telling me with every cellTo keep turning towardsThe fire of the Sun.To keep risking it,To keep my petals open,To know beyond the hardness of the concreteWho I really am.Sometimes it happens like this, you see;A wildflower invites me all the way homeAnd I follow her.Hollie Holden

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