Walking Away During Supper, Episode 89
Men, and women, and the stories about how we're 'meant' to be human that constrain us.
Here’s Episode 89 of 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
Our source this week is a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, about men, and family, and being on a path, and about the consequences of going to sleep in our lives. The particular form of 'sleep' we talk about is the one that's kept going by our stories about what men must be, and how the choices men make about how to be men ripple out through our families, workplaces and community. We consider the kinds of narratives that both women and men might create that have a chance of freeing us from the particular difficulties many of us face in our relationships with one another. And we wonder together what kinds of conversations become possible as both women and men turn, together, towards the tenderness, vulnerability and strength that are at the heart of being human.
Sometimes a man stands up during supper
Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.
And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.
And another man, who remains inside his own house,
dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go far out into the world
toward that same church, which he forgot.
– Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Robert Bly
Photo by Igor Miske on Unsplash