The next instalment in our Letters to the Future Series. Our guest is Sonja Blignaut.
Interviewed by: Peter Hayward & Frank Spencer
Poems & Letters
(You will find Sonja’s references as links in the transcript)
Letter from the Future Correspondent
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Transcript
Marcus Bussey: So the message in the bottle will be another poem. I've got this lovely little book called Field Guide to the Haunted Forest. by a young American Jared K. Anderson. I'd like to suggest that we explore our vulnerabilities without having to deny them or disguise them in any way.Anderson does a great job touching on that with this little poem and it's my gift to your next guest. It's called Losing.
Our muscles are prompted to grow by failure, healing from countless micro injuries. our minds, science and technology are similarly nourished by defeat. We are creatures born to thrive on the borderlands of ruin. Home is a valley between sore toothed peaks of loss. Here we sow failure and harvest miracles.
The Future Correspondent: And your parting gift, the poem by Jared Anderson, rests in my mind like a seed, waiting for the next guest to carry it forward. Your conversation leaves me restless. Not in frustration, but in longing. There is a pulse in your words that stirs something old and unspoken. A memory, perhaps, or a vision not yet formed.
I wonder if you feel it, too. That the letter is never just a letter, but an act of reaching. A leap into what we cannot yet name. To the next guest, whose voice I have yet to hear. I imagine you stepping into this dialogue, not as an answer, but as another thread in this unfolding tapestry. What will you bring?
Peter Hayward: Welcome back to FuturePodX Frank. We're here again.
Frank Spencer: Of course. It's lovely. I can't wait. I've been so excited to continue this letter and I look forward to seeing where the letter takes us and how the future continues to respond to us as something that we definitely aren't in control of.
Thank goodness for that.
Peter Hayward: Is there anything operating in you at a kind of Emotional level or thought level about coming off the first one moving into the second one.
Frank Spencer: main thing is, and I was expressing this to you, and this is something that ended when we heard the future correspondent speak back to us at the end of the last episode.
that is this idea that, the connective, collective, cooperative, collaborative and co creative voice is as Bonitta Roy says, it's not us. This is. All of us, which is people, planet, biome, cosmos, and when any of those voices are left out, then we're not hearing, the actual voice that speaks to us.
We're so enamored many times with this idea of, that yearning that Marcus spoke of being singular or individualized. But it really only comes to us as the collective and that love and that beauty come out in the cooperative collective and co creative voice. And so that's what really struck me when the 3 of us were speaking last time when the future spoke back to us again.
if I can have expectations, that would be my expectation. We'll see what happens there.
Peter Hayward: we have got someone to respond to Marcus and to the future correspondent. let's bring them in with the eulogy. Do you want to start that?
Frank Spencer: I do. And I will not yet formally introduce the full name of this guest until after we have read these living eulogies, just as we did for Marcus in the last episode. But our guest today is Sonja. I will tell you who that is in just a moment. we're going to read 3 eulogies sent in from 3 of Sonja's associates or friends.
She doesn't know who it is and the 1st 1 says
Sonja Blignaut was well known for coining the phrase, “It’s hard living in the jungle when you’ve been raised in a zoo,” summing up the challenges of engaging with an increasingly complex world. Sonja was perhaps the once Safari expert turned zookeeper left in charge of re-wilding us back into thriving natural ecosystems. She was also a poet…. so there is no better way to introduce to introduce you to her than in verse:
'Sonja was the finder of ways anew
An explorer of ripples from beyond
Courageous when faced with unpredictability
Connected and
Open to all things human
Yet detached enough to
Observe from above
With the
Lightness to play with the winds of uncertainty.
’Peter Hayward: Sonja entered my life in 2012. When I joined a course she was running, our relationship blossomed into something I value deeply. She was a gifted writer, and I loved reading her wonderfully written articles that are thought provoking, informative, and beautifully articulated. I love how well she articulated difficult ideas in pragmatic and easy ways.
I treasured her ability to take what I offered and change it into something better. As a collaboration partner, she sparked my brain in all the best ways and was easy to work with and fun to be around. I really loved thinking and creating with Sonja. It was fun and easy and felt like meaningful work. I wanted Sonja. To know just how much I valued her collaboration and friendship.
And how glad I was to have her in my life.
Frank Spencer: It's amazing. I want those kinds of words to be spoken about me in my living eulogy. Maybe I finally get one here. And last but not least, I knew Sonja. For so long that, like the smallest number of close friendships, she had always been in my life. Sonja. Loved poetry, and so I'm sharing this one for her.
it's from Wendell Berry. There are, it seems, two muses. The muse of inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires. And the muse of realization, who returns again and again to say, It is yet more difficult than you thought. This is the muse of form. It may be, then, that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction to baffle us.
And deflect our intended course, it may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work. And when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings. And all the time I knew her Sonja's song around her impediments, allowing them to slightly alter her course.
But never her resolve. Beautiful words. Our guest this week, Sonja Blignaut.
Sonja Blignaut: Sure. Frank and Peter and the friends that submitted those, I don't really know how to respond. it's very deeply touching. I think it's such a privilege to hear those words while you're still alive. something that I've realized over and over again is we never see ourselves the way that other people see us.
So it's such a wonderful gift. So thank you so much for facilitating that.
Frank Spencer: Certainly. when you think about the letter that is ongoing here. In these future pod X series and episodes, Peter is the one who introduces idea of the living eulogy to me several months ago, and we just immediately knew that it was the most beautiful way for that letter to unfold.
This is how we write futures. I love that somebody wrote to you, this Wendell Berry passage, which I've read many times before, and I know that this marks. Much of what you've been doing in your life, but also. Even more so what you've been doing more recently, this idea that the obstruction is the way I hear Nora Bateson in this, when you see the well worn path to the future, run into a bush and get off the path because the future is not on the path.
It's behind the bush. this has been a big part of your work. we're so happy to have you help us continue this letter.
Sonja Blignaut: Yeah, it's a privilege. I was so excited when you invited me. you've reminded me of one of my favorites by Antonio Machado, who says, traveler, there is no path. The path is made by walking.
And that speaks to me, on a really deep level, especially when it comes to the mystery that is the future, I almost hesitate to put the word “the” in front because it immediately turns it into a noun, into something singular it feels to me like it strips it of its aliveness and it's mystery, but this idea as you said, with Nora as well, the future or future is not on that well worn path.
It's something that we make by walking.
Peter Hayward: Sonja, you are going to launch into your part of the letter, but as you are the first person that I know who heard the last podcast and heard the response from the future correspondent, how is it for you to join a conversation that you didn't start?
Sonja Blignaut: I think it's much like life, Marcus. although I love to talk. there are many conversations I start, but I think, we're born into a conversation that we didn't start. one of my favorite poets, is David Whyte, and he talks about the conversational nature of reality.
I think this is how life is, having listened, to your previous conversation, it was such a rich conversation and felt like such a, an alive invitation to join this particular conversation. you know, I, There was so much that I felt I wanted to respond to that I almost didn't know what to bring.
so yes, I think this particular conversation was, enchanting. I was looking forward to joining.
Frank Spencer: I love that you use the word enchanted because, and I think Peter wrote me and said, some of your favorite words, or somebody this week, they said your favorite words, enchantment and wonderment.
And, I think that, you know, I hear already both you and Peter saying, and I know this was carried over from Marcus's idea of yearning. And he spoke so much about yearning last time that it's not about. Pinpointing or, seeing objects in time, all of those things are somewhat of an illusion.
this idea of, the unknown being the only real way of the future. I wrote an article some time ago about, futuring in the fog and it's really the only place the future is in the fog. our guest Marcus last week was so good at this talking about the ruins of the future is the only place that it is.
But, you know, we live in this dominant narrative that is quite short and young, that wants to, atomize everything. but there's no way, as hard as we try, we've never been able to do it. going forward, it will never happen.
And so, the best thing that we can do is learn. I was just listening to, you on someone else's podcast the other day, Sonia, and saying, basically, stop being afraid of complexity. You aren't in traffic. You are the traffic. so you are the complexity, and it's not something that's outside of this, right?
Sonja Blignaut: No, and I think the same can be said for the future and for the unknown. I have a bit of a Celtic heritage. My grandfather was Irish, and over the last few years. I've been drawn to Celtic mysticism, one of the things I love is that, they see the unknown as a sacred place, a liminal sacred place.
I find it very, sad that we've demonized the unknown and that we're so afraid of complexity and just being in the unfolding, of emergence and this need to control everything. it's one of the things that struck me in your first episode I think it was Peter who quoted Yates.
And, you know, the falcon who cannot hear the falconer and the center that cannot hold for me, I'm not entirely sure what his intention was with that. But I was left thinking, is it really such a bad thing when the falcon can no longer hear the falconer? Because to me it means then maybe he's free.
so it speaks to me of untaming and of rewilding. And, you know, maybe this particular center.
Frank Spencer: I completely agree. And Peter, I would love to hear your take on this, but I can't help but back up a few sentences and think about this idea of not only embracing the unknown and that's where all of the goodness is always the gooey goodness is in the unknown, but also just this idea of I'm hearing Jeremy Jepson talk about relational emergence in my head right now, and I'm thinking, is there any other kind of emergence other than relational emergence?
it's this cacophony of voices. and, with all of those, we don't know what, is going to emerge and that's the beauty of those possibilities. It lies in that space. And so, what's already unfolding in this letter. is this idea, of, grasping onto, grokking, or glomming onto the unknown, and letting that take us to these beautiful places,
Peter Hayward: My, I want you to take the reins, so to speak, Sonja.. I don't want to ask questions that take you down, cul de sacs I will throw you a question. You can ignore it or spark off from it. The future correspondence letter had a phrase in it where she spoke of a leap into what we yet cannot name.
how do we as fallible humans? prepare for futures, create the energy and motivation to move towards a future that we have to accept is unpredictable, possibly even unimaginable. And how can we have trust or faith in things that we don't understand?
Sonja Blignaut: it's a beautiful question, Peter, and I don't know that I have an answer to it. It feels like it's an age old question because it speaks to me of things like faith, and for me, personally, I can't separate thinking about the future from, mystery and, questions of faith and connecting to something bigger.
But I think part of what we need to do and it links a little bit to what, one of my friends mentioned in the eulogy, you know, the, the quote that I'm semi famous for, and it's hard to survive in the jungle if you were trained in a zoo. what I see and experience in myself is that zoo very often is in the mind.
And it's kept in place by many things, but among them also our language, I've been fascinated by, traditions by, indigenous peoples whose language is Made up mostly of verbs We use nouns in your previous conversation, you know, you, there was a lot of conversation around love, for example.
You know, how do we love the future? How do we love the unknown? love is a verb, it's a process In your last conversation, you spoke about it as an organizing principle. for me, the future is also a verb. if we make it a noun, it's singular.
it's something that's almost fixed and inevitable. We strip it of the aliveness wonder and mystery. I think part of this is, is about inner rewilding. It's about untaming our thoughts, untaming ourselves, and also in that process to stop seeing ourselves as nouns.
Because, you know, this is something that I find really interesting is, is we've always been in the unknown. We've always been in uncertainty, but we've We've almost tried to force it out of our lives. we've tried to control everything. I feel that this process we're in at the moment, that the future as a process, that this idea of love as an organizing principle, it's inviting us into remembering what we've always known.
And that is that, you know, the unknown is where possibility lives. I wouldn't want. A life where everything is known. I wouldn't want a life where there's no uncertainty. If that were the case, just imagine how boring this conversation would be. It would be like a scripted Shakespearean play, not like and improvisation.
something that I really loved in, in the poem that your previous episode ended with, that your previous guest kind of left as a provocation was this idea of we sow failure and we reap miracles. what immediately came to mind for me was, music and improvisation. And how that collective process of building on each other's gifts.
I think it's Herbie Hancock that says, there are no mistakes. in improvisation. It's the next note that determines if the previous note was a mistake or not. if we can just remember the magic of trusting the unknown and trusting that we live, in a universe where the organizing principle is love, I think that's when we can start moving towards what your question suggested.
Peter Hayward: I'll follow up and then let Frank have a go, Sonia, you are describing something that's a privilege, to trust emergence and have faith in emergent futures and people. we know there are people that live in scarcity, they live in difficulty.
In fact, you could argue that. The majority of people on Earth don't live in a situation where they have a stable family situation ability to meet their needs. Are we, is this notion about leaning into the unknown a presumption that people need the ability to be free in how they think rather than be suffering material want?
Sonja Blignaut: I think that's, definitely part of it, but this is such a complex thing to explore because there's always the present reality I'm also very aware, that even in this conversation, as you pointed out, we're speaking from a position of privilege. I was in Brazil a few months ago, and was confronted by the legacy of colonialism. I'm kind of sitting with two things, in response to your question. One is when I look at The remaining indigenous peoples from around the world, they have a very different relationship with uncertainty and the unknown than we do as Westerners.
So I do think that there's something inherent in being human, that we can have Alive relationship with emergence and with uncertainty and with the unknown, which doesn't mean that we'll never suffer I think there's an inherent trust in the mystery in the natural world Even in other people I think one of the things that destroyed that is that colonial impulse to want to control everything, to want to simplify everything, to want to dominate.
And so to me, part of rewilding and untaming is almost also, there's a decolonizing aspect to that. And while many people in the world live in scarcity, it's not like we live in a scarce universe. the planet isn't a place of scarcity. It's, that some are hoarding.
going back to this idea of love as an organizing principle, a question I sit with is, if we can step into that, Bonitta Roy that Frank has already mentioned, talks about that, we live in complex potential states and that we can shift those through simple organizing principles one that she mentions is, how can we bring more life?
So regardless of where we are in our family, in our team, in our organization, instead of trying to fix, rather ask the question, how can we bring more life? And if we expand that to how can we bring more love? I wonder what the world would look like if that was the primary organizing principle of the future.
And if we would still have so many people who are not able to trust who are in positions of lack, who are suffering. so I don't really have an answer. I just have a long rambling question.
Frank Spencer: I love your answer love is something that keeps coming up over and over it did last in the first part of the letter, and it is happening again. The 2nd part of the letter. I think it's inevitable. There aren't any there aren't too many things. I would say are inevitable, but this 1 might be as a irreducible and fundamental element of the universe love itself.
maybe loving consciousness are one in the same, as that irreducible fundamental element, but I, when you're speaking, you know, the thing that really resonates with me, I'm hearing Douglas Rushkoff now, because recently he's been saying on his team, human podcasts and other places that the only way through.
Not out because there is no out the only way through metacrisis or whatever. We want to call it poly crisis, permacrisis, or uncrisis, whatever the case might be is through and I think Douglas sometimes tries to, you know, let's see how much we could poke the bear. So, you know, get be the contrary and the ultimate contrary.
he says, it's really through magic. He even, talks about witchcraft, which I think might scare some people, but he's using this term in the sense of, the divine feminine and the rewilded masculine Sophie Strand and just magic I was talking to Sophie Howe, who was the former futures generation commissioner for Wales, and she wrote this beautiful document while she was, doing that job several years ago.
And I don't think I could be wrong. So, if you might hear this at some point and correct me, but I don't think in the document, the word love appeared anywhere. However, you could read between the lines. And so when I was interviewing her, I was pressing her and I said, are you saying that we could have governments based on love that we could have societies based on that?
We have organizational models based on love. And ultimately she. said, yes, this is, I think what we're trying to say. so I got the future, generations commissioner of Wales to say that we should build the world of love. But that's what I hear you saying.
And it's like, when we're walking in that, we're walking in magic. That is pure magic. And that is very contrary to the way that we think And I couldn't agree more with you. Sonja.. that the future is a verb when you said that, I just lit up, because when we noun things, we object orient them instead of that process.
how can we. Take this idea of love and keep running with it as the irreducible and fundamental element of not just the future, but of the cosmos, which I think, you know, speaks to, To what future is itself. You know, it's, it's the very, it's the very essence of the vibrancy. The vibration of the cosmos itself is that future.
Sonja Blignaut: Sure. There's so much to respond to there, Frank. I think one of our problems is, another poet, John Keats, who talks about negative capability. I think we assume. we know what these words mean. We assume we know what love is. We assume we know what magic is.
even something like witchcraft. we've been taught. what these words mean. And then when somebody says, can love be the fundamental organizing principle of the universe, we bring those meanings to the question. And we say, no, we're being completely naive if we think like that.
forget what you knew and forget what you want so that you can leave space for a new idea so that you can be in the present and leave space for a new idea. That's not. tainted by the past or by desires for a future. And so there's this emptying out that I think is really interesting.
I think it starts with new meanings and being open for magic, you know, and you mentioned things like, masculine, feminine. one of the reasons why I love complexity so much is it feels to me like Complexity consciousness, is where we can bring things that we've separated, in our mechanistic way of thinking about the world in our reductionist way of thinking about the world where we can bring those back into unit.
especially things like the masculine and feminine principle, things like magic and science. I think we've created all these false dichotomies and part of rewilding, part of untaming ourselves and our thoughts is to bring them back together again. I think there's so many things in the world that we don't understand that we label as magic or, pseudoscience, the more I learn, the more I realize how little I know.
So, at the moment, I'm just trying to be open.
Peter Hayward: Zia Sada, in a podcast with me, when we were talking about, what he calls the post normal futures, talks about we're in the space of not now and not yet. So we're in that halfway space between what was, but is not anymore, and what is wanting to emerge. And in that space where we have, through. social and technological change, we have rich information available to us.
We shouldn't be surprised that we've seen. The rise of disinformation or anti information that it was never the river will flow one way and will flow to closer understandings. We've actually seen, we've actually seen this, the people are, some people, enough people, a significant number, are turning away from a sense of becoming part of the progressive sense of where we might go and turning away and creating possibly mystery, possibly, you know, rewilding, doing it from a sense of, I can create reality.
is it a natural consequence of rewilding and embracing whatever has been othered? Do we have to expect that we'll also get the retrograde and people who create their own reality? That, if you like, Stops us possibly even being able to agree about what should be done with things.
Sonja Blignaut: You're reminding me, I think it's Gramsci that talks about the interregnum, that in between space between, the past that's, passing away and what is yet to emerge, and I think he says that is the space of monsters. I
think that, yeah, there's always counter forces, Peter. sometimes it's very difficult to remain hopeful with where we are. Because as you say, you know, there's, there are all of these, you know, you call it anti information. There are, there are things emerging where, I look at it and I can make absolutely no sense of it. and I think also the media, social media and the formal media, that is what gets the attention.
So we don't necessarily hear, about the more hopeful stories. I think There's so many things that we project onto the future. I think many of us are almost unable to face our own shadows, and so we project it externally.
And when we find ourselves in the deep unknown, I do think that we're in uncharted territory. Yes, we've always had Wars, we've always had, pandemics, we've always been in a world that is uncertain, but, we've never been in a world with intelligent machines, for example, there's so many things that's new, and in a space like that, Most of us have been taught in a zoo.
Most of us have been, our imagination and our ability to sit with boredom and to sit with discomfort and to sit with the unknown has almost been taught out of us. And so there's a lot of anxiety in the world at the moment. so when I speak about inner rewilding and almost untaming.
I think that is not an invitation to go back to our more savage natures. I think it's more of an invitation to remember that we've always been in the unknown and that we can't control everything and that we aren't separate from the world and separate from nature. We're interconnected I was just listening to another podcast yesterday and I think it's Samantha Sweetwater who says, you know, humanity we're, we're here to harmonize the natural world, not to harmonize with the natural world, to harmonize the natural world.
I think that's part of what we've forgotten. it makes sense to me that we see all of this darkness emerging because people are acting from a place of deep anxiety. I came across a quote recently by Michael Meade, he's a mythologist, and he says, Being alive in this time is to be in the liminal phase of a collective rite of passage.
And why I love that is, there's something in that sentence that I find really hopeful, because a rite of passage, an initiation, speaks to me of the potential for coming into a greater maturity, possibly a higher level of consciousness. when I look at that, coming back to our conversation about love, love is something that connects.
And the more connections there are, the more complexity. And in ecosystems and in social systems, the more complexity, kind of maturity comes with more complexity. I find the idea that, this could be a collective rite of passage. a hopeful counterpoint to what you were naming in your question.
Frank Spencer: I hear Sonja speak and, can't help but think of the dragonfly again. what we've been doing with, holoptic foresight, you can hear the same, idea resonating in different ways from different communities or from different people all around the world. Jonathan Rowson talks about not being in a metacrisis, but, is there a crisis and just the uncrisis I'd listen to both of you talking about rewilding.
And, it's interesting how there's almost like 2 sides of the same coin when you think about anthropologist, Aaron Manning. Talking about settler colonialism the big word is always clearing. she wrote a short book out of the clearing how do we get out of the colonial clearing?
You know, cut the grass, clear the weeds, clear your mind, clear the field, clear the space. We could build something on it. And when we clear. We get rid of, all of the goodness, all of the complex potential states. I was reading someone the other day saying, what is a weed?
It's just an idea, a colonial idea that a natural plant. That has beauty in itself is somehow getting in the way of your manicured lawn. There is no such thing as a weed. it reminds me of this idea again Carol Sanford passed away this past week and, you know, how much she spoke of the fact that there is no nature.
that's just a word made up to separate us from the rest of. Symbiotic living reality and that we are that so I think, Sonja., when you speak and I hear this message of the future calling us to recognize it and see it in, those things which are reconnected and wholeness and maybe that love and wholeness go together to some degree.
Sonja Blignaut: Yes, I think what comes to mind is, when you talk about it's about so rewilding for me is not about regressing. It's about remembering. It's remembering the meadow before we turned it into this manicured law. That's
Frank Spencer: right.
Sonja Blignaut: it's remembering it's looking at that weed through innocent eyes, coming back to the idea of, negative capability.
Can I just see it for what it is again and not just apply the label? And I think the same goes for future. is the future. It's also a label. And for all of us, it means something different. Can we almost liberate the future from the labels we've put on it?
Frank Spencer: Yeah. Thomas Klafke was saying the other day, the future is dead.
Long live the future. And, it's this idea that the future that is a colonial construct is crumbling before their eyes. So Marcus, again, and you're seeing this as well, it's the ruins of the future, and that idea of the future, the noun, the future, a place, a time, it's just crumbling before our eyes.
and we can grasp after it, and we can try to build a future. and we can try to, co opt it and organizationalize it and it can't be captured. It's too wild.
Peter Hayward: Can I ask, I've had this, I'm hearing in this idea of rewilding When I hear the things that we introduce, we often introduce what has been othered, you know, the feminine, the mysterious, I'm wondering about where the body operates in this, because when I hear you speak of complexity, I don't think you're talking about something that is purely cognitive.
How does the body, in your view, interact with this idea of imagining futures, but also imagining things that we cannot imagine? Because it seems to me the body is involved in that. It's one of the ways we get better, is we, rather than let the body shut down us learning into the future, we actually learn to embrace and utilize the body in order to imagine and embrace uncertainty.
Sonja Blignaut: I love that question, Peter, because it's such a, fundamental part of my own journey, especially.
over the last few years since I've turned 50. I suddenly rediscovered I have a body. I think part of what ails us is that many of us try to engage with complexity, try to engage with life, mostly from our minds. We try to figure it out. we want a map for everything. a little bit of my history, My father was my maths teacher.
And so from very young, I internalized the idea that, you know, my worth lies between my ears, you know, I academic performance, you know, my intellect and the body was kind of dangerous body emotions, gut feelings, all of these things, I had to develop my mind. And for most of my career in complexity as well, I was drawn to the very cognitive, it was a cognitive relationship.
And then when I rediscovered my body, I also understood why, the French philosopher, Edgar Morin, said, we need to go beyond a cognitive understanding of complexity to an embodied lived understanding. our bodies are. instruments that we've ignored for such a long time with it, comes ideas, imagination, intuition, there's embodied wisdom we can tap into that we've forgotten about, one of the things I'm really interested in is the people groups who are really good at being in uncertainty.
I've been looking at the ancient navigators, the wayfinders specifically the Polynesians. when you look at how they navigate, how they managed to settle such vast ocean tracks, going into the unknown seemingly fearlessly with no instruments, no maps, nothing, how deeply embodied that process.
is how attuned they are to the natural environment, to the stars, to their own bodily sensations, to spirit. So I think that attunement it's a, it's an embodied something. It's not something that is cognitive. It's, and I don't want to create a split between mind and body, it's so interconnected, but I think we've neglected the body.
It's almost like we saw our bodies only as a mechanism to carry around our heads. And that needs to change. that's one of the false dichotomies that we need to overcome, I believe.
Peter Hayward: So, what you're now saying, Sonja., causes me to ask a question of myself, but I'm going to ask it of you instead.
Is part of what Frank and I are doing with FuturePodX and Letters to the Future, we're trying to work with embodying our understanding of a strange, foreign thing that we're probably not going to know about. are things like poetry, sensuality, mystery, some of those attributes of how we cultivate an embodied future sense?
Sonja Blignaut: I want to say yes, and what comes to my mind when you say that is, I feel. All of those things, you know, poetry, sensuality, mystery, it speaks to me of the feminine.
you spoke about what has been othered, I have a deep sense that, what is emerging at the moment, is the re emergence of the feminine. what I've come to realize, that space of complexity, the space of emergence, to me, it is almost the meeting place of the masculine and the feminine.
It's the place of life giving structure and emergent flow. It's the place of mystery. so, in the last few years, I haven't really been reading many theoretical books on complexity, I've been reading the poets because it feels to me like the poets get complexity in an embodied way that many of the theorists don't.
I think we are being invited into Embracing these things that we've othered things that we've said belong to the world of children. So things like play imagination You know, we use the language of play, you know, we say we play with scenarios, but we don't really play so Things that we were in touch with as children and things we've put in the category of Woo woo.
We don't understand it. It's pseudoscience. this is an invitation for us to become curious About these things and not judge. so easily to summarize I feel it's an invitation back to Woo woo Acknowledging the sacred.
Frank Spencer: Of course, Peter knows, and I'm sure that you do too, Sonia, that word sacred is dear to my heart.
we could probably name it other things, but that's another one of my favorite words. I was reading an article this past week, When democracy was first noodled in ancient Greece, it always went hand in hand with theater.
And theater was such an important part of the democratic process. It wasn't, the great halls of Congresses and legislators and politicians, but everybody knew that, on a daily or weekly or monthly basis, you were to go to the theater and that in theater, these. Ideals would be played out in art and in, poetry and prose but that has been eliminated to a large degree.
And when that happens, so many other things got eliminated as well. As a matter of fact, in theater in ancient Greece, 1 of the things that was most wild was the voice of the feminine. as time went on, the loud wailing that was associated with, the funeral dirge, they put the mothers and the sisters out front and they would wail sometimes for 2 or 3 days The men were so frightened by it.
They said that it opened up a portal to something that they were unfamiliar with. And so they outlawed it. And this carried over into centuries of, defeminizing of the masculine, defeminizing of the cosmos, defeminizing of the world, the split, the dichotomy again. And so I'm so glad that you brought that up because, There's been so many themes in our time together here in this episode, but that word mystery keeps coming back up again and again.
And certainly this plays a key role in us understanding what it means for us to embody ourselves in the future. I love that. Peter brought that up again. You see how. In these FuturePodX episodes, Peter asks all the questions. I just sort of make some comments. He's the master. I am just a student. all of that, the embodiment, the love, the rewilding is all in mystery and there is no, future, the verb without that mystery.
Peter Hayward: I am going to draw this part of the letter. To an end, but the post is leaving soon, so you need to write the last couple of paragraphs on the letter. So, Sonia, what are you going to put in those last parts of your letter to the future?
Sonja Blignaut: So I wanted to respond to the letter that the future wrote and almost credit the future for introducing this idea of mystery One of the sentences the future wrote was I look to your words as though to the weather on the edge of a storm uncertain but alive full of possibility It really spoke to me because I studied meteorology Peter.
I don't know if you knew that I'm a meteorologist, but I have a love for extreme weather. I realized recently I studied that not because I wanted to understand the weather because I wanted to be in it. So first, I just wanted to acknowledge that the mystery already started before this particular recording.
I thought about what I would love to leave as a breadcrumb or a provocation for your next guest what kept coming up for me was this quote by Bayo Akomolafe. It's quite short, but I find it fascinating. I would love to leave that, as my ending he says, falling may very well be flying without the tyranny of coordinates.
Peter Hayward: Thank you, Sonja, for joining Frank and I on this conversation, love letter to the future. I think it's been a delight for me to meet you. Frank, I'll let you. Have the last words on this one.
Frank Spencer: Certainly, it’s been an amazing time together. I'm just buzzing here. with more possibilities of what's yet to come.
Peter and Sonja, since you're here, I'm getting this real sense of something Very special, at least from my perspective is unfolding in these conversations and in this ongoing letter Marcus and I have been bantering back and forth this idea of like, what is this? And what are we doing? And I think that the more we do it, the less we'll know what it is.
And the more that it makes sense, because I just feel the beauty in it and it's so alive to me you have helped to make this, unfolding letter, even more life for me. And so I'm so thankful to Peter. to you, Sonja.. And that we're, Being invited by the future to engage in this ongoing unfolding letter to explore not just the three of us, but the audience with us as well.
thank you to both of you again.
Sonja Blignaut: Thank you so much for inviting me into this beautiful process. I, for one, can't wait to see how it unfolds and what emerges from it. I suspect there's going to be magic here, Frank and Peter.
Peter Hayward: Thank you.
Thanks again to Frank and Sonya. It was such a wonderful and deep immersion into being alive together. Again, if you are moved to want to contribute something to the next letter. And drop your thoughts. And hopes to Frank and I at FuturePodXMailbag@proton.me
There is also a link to that on the show page of this podcast. And of course the last word in this podcast is for the future correspondent. Till next time.
The Future Correspondent: Dear Peter, Frank and Sonya. Your voices arrived as the air here turns unexpectedly cool, the kind of crisp clarity that follows the passage of a storm. The light has a strange stillness to it, as if the world is holding its breath. It reminds me that change often leaves behind a quiet residue - a moment where the heart pauses to feel what has shifted even before the mind can name it.
Sonja, your presence in this conversation feels like the turning of a kaleidoscope - a way of bringing fractured light into new patterns. You spoke of the future, not as something to chase, but something to rewild, to remember. Your reflections remind me of an old truth: that what has been called 'unkown' is only so because we have forgotten how to be in it. Your invitation to untame not just the world, but our ways of being feels less like a call to action and more like a gentle dismantling of fences we have built around ourselves.
Frank, I hear in your voice a yearning to embrace the mystery not just as a conceptual space, but as a practice of living. You name magic, not with trepidation, but with reverence. A reweaving of threads long severed. It seems to me that you are both host and seeker here, willing to hold the questions that unsettle, even as they enchant.
Peter, your questions about the body linger with me still. You are right to ask: how do we imagine what we cannot yet imagine? It seems almost paradoxical, yet the answer lies in the tension between what is seen and what is felt. You remind me that the body, like the earth, carries its own kind of wisdom - instincts and rhythms that can lead us not to certainty, but to deeper attunement.
The three of you together create something rare - a willingness to work with ambiguity, to not demand that the unknown declare itself in tidy terms. I see in your dialogue an echo of what Sonja described: "the weather on the edge of a storm." There is a charge in the air, an a liveliness that comes from not yet knowing what will emerge. It is a precarious, beautiful place to be.
Sonja, yor mention of falling as flying "without the tyranny of coordinates" lingers like a question that refuses to resolve. It makes me wonder: what if we have been too enamored with direction, with naming the points on the map, when the freedom lies in letting the coordinates dissolve?
For all three of you, I wonder: if we are to rewild our imaginations, our ways of being, and even the future itself, what must we first allow to unravel? What do we need to forget in order to remember?
With gratitude and curiosity,
The Future Correspondent
PS. This time, the postcard and close is not an image, but a sensation - the sudden cool of an evening breeze, the smell of rain just passed. the way it asks you to stop and feel the ground beneath your feet. It is a small reminder that the future, too, often announces itself in this way, not with thunder, but with quiet possibility.