The next instalment in our Letters to the Future Series. Our guest is Rowena Morrow.
Interviewed by: Peter Hayward & Frank Spencer
Additions
Letter from the Future Correspondent
Transcript
Bhavana Nissima: I was, thinking of what I could leave as a gift for our next guest and as this beautiful piece comes together, I feel like moving from the sound to something that is visual and imagery. And I wanted to offer. An imagery of a Jhali window in India, both in Mughal architecture as well as Rajasthani architectures.
There are window screens that are intricately carved and through that light streams into the room, throwing casting patterns on the floor as well as on the walls.
My gift is, as you sense your window screen, and the carvings that have happened through your journey, and the light streaming through it, what patterns are cast in the floors and walls of your world? What do you notice?
The Future Correspondent: There's a quiet brilliance in what emerged between you - the shadow lights Bhavana spoke of, the sacred certainty of change. It is not about erasing what has come before, but about holding the light and the shadow, the known and the unknown, as companions. Perhaps this is the essence of weaving futures: not in separating strands but in letting their tensions hum in harmony.
Your imagery of the Jhali window stays with me, Bhavana. Through its intricate carvings, the light filters into the room, casting patterns that are both shadow and illumination. It reminds me that the spaces in between - the negative spaces - are just as vital as the light itself. What stories might they hold if we dared to listen?
Peter Hayward: Hello everyone and welcome back to Future PodX and hello to my co pilot Frank.
Frank Spencer: It's always beautiful to be with you Peter and I'm super excited for continuing our letter to the future. It was so beautiful these first three episodes that we've already been through and where we've left off so far and I got to thinking about it before we recorded this week.
Frank Spencer: This living letter. It's like every week it becomes more alive to me. And I literally am starting to walk through the weeks now thinking, I wonder how the letter's doing, what it's up to, you know, and what it's going to say to us next. And and so I'm super excited for the guests that we have on today to continue that living letter.
Peter Hayward: And happy birthday, Frank, for you. Cause you and I. And our guests celebrated our birthdays this month. We're three, three water bearers on the on the podcast. Yours was a occasion to buy a post. So you reached three score years. Congratulations on that. Count.
Frank Spencer: Thank you. I made it. But then you jumped right in and said, like, I remember, I don't remember being 67.
Frank Spencer: I knew I was still young. Yeah,
Peter Hayward: I get mine got very surreal. And I'll just tell you a future pod x story, which is I got a present. I always get presents from my nieces and nephews. And one of my nieces gave me a t shirt because what do you buy an uncle who's You know, got everything, of course you're buying me a t shirt.
Peter Hayward: But she, rather than just buying me a t shirt, she got one printed, and she wanted to print it with some words that she thought were mine. So she hunted around on FuturePodX, and she found one of the letters by the Future Correspondent. And so what I opened on my birthday was a parcel from Kelsey. And it was a quote from the Future Correspondent, and I wore that on my birthday, and that will be my photo for the rest of the series, and I sent the photo to you, Frank, didn't I?
Frank Spencer: Yes, I, you know, of course, immediately I thought, do we have a shop in merch now? But no, but more seriously, I couldn't think of a better birthday gift. I wish I had received that gift and it was a, it was beautifully done and the quote was amazing. Of course, there's been so many quotes she could have pulled for almost any point in any podcast.
Frank Spencer: But it was the perfect one and it's so beautiful and I can understand why you'll continue to wear it. And and if things go well, you'll be wearing it for quite a while because I don't think we're going to stop this anytime soon.
Peter Hayward: Thanks, mate. Well, let's start and we start with the eulogies and I will read the first one for our guest.
Peter Hayward: Rowena is an exceptional foresight thinker ahead of a time who would probably feel more at ease if born in a future era. When I was reading Trillion Dollar Coach, I could only think of Rowena being that professional coach for me during the time I worked for her. And here's one of the quotes. Work the team, then the problem.
Peter Hayward: When faced with a problem or opportunity, the first step is to ensure that the right team is in place and working on it. She was always able to find the right people, lead them in the right direction, and facilitate their teamwork to solve the wicked problems. When leading teams, it was like she had a sixth sense telling her what to do or say next.
Peter Hayward: No one else had that. Innovation was her gig. Another quote. Innovation is where the crazy people have status. The purpose of a company is to bring a product vision to life. All other components are in service of the product. Under Rowena's leadership, our team made all things possible. We had so much fun being the crazy people with the great ideas and important work to do.
Peter Hayward: Rowena saw possibilities in others. A third quote, be the evangelist for courage, believe in people more than they believe in themselves and push them to be more courageous. Rowena did this for me, allowing me to soar to greater heights that even I thought I could I was possible. I'm so glad we can still share the joy and excitement Rowena brings to our world.
Peter Hayward: It's certainly a better place with Rowena living in our time.
Frank Spencer: Before I start and read the next living eulogy, it's just so profound, this idea of courage, and I hope that we get to ask our wonderful guest today. How we might define that in a future that's sort of beyond the one that we have known or as Marcus would have said, the future in the ruins. So that's so powerful.
Frank Spencer: I know we tell people all the time, it takes courage to think about these things and to, and to ponder the unknown. So let me read another living eulogy that we received for our guest today. When Rowena introduced me to foresight as a practice, she gave me both a name. For a way of thinking that made perfect sense and the language to talk about that thinking that helped other people see its value.
Frank Spencer: I've had the very good fortune to nearly always work for clever, generous and kind women. But among that pantheon of inspiring leaders, Rowena stood out for her ability to hold boundaries while also holding space for those around her. She was able to maintain objectivity. And dispassion while caring profoundly about how life is lived and our role in it.
Frank Spencer: Which made her rare rants more satisfying. I try, and I frequently fail, to emulate much of what she modeled for me. But even the attempts make me a better leader. Hers was an opinion I valued and trusted. Her friendship was one of the good things. That I took from my time at an organization that was distinguished, quite frankly, by its mediocrity.
Frank Spencer: And I'm so grateful for that.
Peter Hayward: Last one. When I think of Rowena, I think of this song from Muriel's wedding, The Musical. Music and lyrics by Kate Miller Heike and Keir Nuttall. And I'm not going to sing it, but I'm going to read it out. Because how can you grow? When half of you's hiding. A girl needs a friend. Someone to confide in. I waited so long for someone to find me.
Peter Hayward: You are legit. One of the coolest people I know. You don't give a shit. You don't go with the flow. You've got your own style. I like your style. You've got your own thing. You're fucking amazing. She was definitely the Rhonda to my Muriel, and showed me how to be authentically and genuinely myself. I don't think my life truly began until I met Rowena.
Peter Hayward: Her intellectual brilliance was obvious to anybody that spent five minutes with her, but people would often overlook. Her empathetic side and her deep caring for people and the planet, her leadership and support for all of those in her orbit, made her someone that changed many people's lives for the better, myself included.
Peter Hayward: She had acute spidey senses and was able to sniff out subtle changes in others behaviour that were undoubtedly Sorry, that were often the signs of a bigger shift or disruption that was about to occur. This undoubtedly helped her as a foresight practitioner, and she was also able to apply it later to working with organisations going through change and disruption.
Peter Hayward: What will stick with me most are the moments of raw vulnerability and humanness that we shared together, little moments of awe and appreciation. When one or both of us were just struck by the beauty of something we or others had just done, often accompanied by tears of utter joy. So thank you Rowena for having been in my life.
Peter Hayward: You are fucking amazing. Welcome to Future Products. Rowena Morrow.
Rowena Morrow: Oh, thank you, Peter. Thank you, Frank. Oh, it's a thing, isn't it?
Frank Spencer: Yes, I was just going to say, it's like I don't often, we haven't actually had the camera on for most of these, and I'm looking now, people are listening to this, but I can see Peter's face, and I can see Rowena's face, and it's profound to hear these eulogies.
Frank Spencer: And I'd like to ask the guests, it's like, how that sort of you know, how did you feel when you were hearing these? And it was interesting. I'll just make this comment too. That last eulogy, I have no idea who wrote these, but that last one seemed a little bit more personal than the first two. They were all, they all loved you.
Frank Spencer: The last one I thought Nora Bateson had entered the room for, well, curtsying for just a moment there. But but, but it was, it was very personal.
Rowena Morrow: I feel very seen.
Rowena Morrow: And I just, I love the Muriel wedding. I just think that's it. I just, it's a level of dagginess and insightfulness and raw aliveness that feels very me. So yes, I feel very seen. And I'm also noticing that an earlier version, a previous version, last week's version of me potentially, would have shut down and not have been able to cope with that.
Rowena Morrow: And today I'm sitting openly. listening and loving the fact that I can be on a planet with eight billion humans, three of which have seen me. And I've, I just feel really, really grateful for that opportunity. So thank you to the two of you for this opportunity. It's just That alone was incredible. So, thank you.
Frank Spencer: It's hard when you first start off the podcast, and I'm almost in tears already. We have a few minutes to go.
Rowena Morrow: We do a bit.
Frank Spencer: Yeah.
Rowena Morrow: And, and this is the work, isn't it? It's creating these spaces of vulnerability and courage to step into our emotional feeling, energetic bodies, as well as our heads. So, I think this is the magic that you and your three guests to this point have created and why I was so excited to come on board and, and dip my toe in the river as we're starting to love that you said
Frank Spencer: that and I'm going to turn it back over to Peter here because I know he wants to set us on the path with the letter.
Frank Spencer: Although this is a part of that unfolding as well. But I love that you talk about this embodiment. And that has been, you know, our previous guests have talked about this as well. And the future is an embodied state. I was reading another piece from our mutual good friends, this week, and he was talking about the fact that, you know, we often think about consciousness being in the brain much less in the mind.
Frank Spencer: But it really starts with the body and this you know, when we, when we move foresight and futures thinking in the future, whatever that means outside of the head, and we understand that it's connected to body and eco tones and the spaces outside of this. And there is no. Singularity. There is no silo.
Frank Spencer: There is no separation. Then it just becomes so profound. But I did want to ask you about the courage piece that I said just a moment ago. Somebody in the eulogy talked about you giving them courage. And I wonder how you would respond to this idea that when we normally say courage, we think about stepping into battle or You know, overcoming the dragon or whatever.
Frank Spencer: But I think in the, in the space, in the terms of what we're talking about in this letter to the future and everything, the future said back to us again, courage might be slightly different. Just like we talked about the last podcast agency, isn't how we would define it in another system. And maybe that courage means something different to you.
Frank Spencer: And I would love to hear you expound on that a bit.
Rowena Morrow: It does. So for me the moments where I've I've been able to step into my courage and hold the space to encourage others to step into theirs. They've been the moments where I've been able to be quiet and still and listen to that part of me that reflects the spark of the universe that I hold.
Rowena Morrow: And so it is in the quietness and the stillness, and also then I experience like a building of energy, so that I actually can't be quiet. So the moments that that person, that come to mind when that person was describing that experience are the moments where I've sat and I've tried to be quiet and I've tried to be adhering to the social norms of the group in which I'm operating.
Rowena Morrow: And I can feel this future emerging from the conversation that's not the future we've all agreed we want and I need to give voice to that and the need and the dis the need overcomes the discomfort. So we're So, that's described as courage, I experience as a requirement to come back into comfort.
Rowena Morrow: Because if I don't do it, the times where I haven't done it, where I've just damped it right down and just not said anything for whatever reason, I wear that and feel it. So I wear it personally and energetically, and the group wears it because I haven't had the opportunity to do the work I need to do, or I haven't taken the opportunity.
Rowena Morrow: So I guess for me. In certain settings, that courage is that need, as I've said, to dispel that discomfort because of the futures I feel emerging that are being shut down or othered in a way that may not be of use to us. And usually what I'm doing is not actually saying this is what we should do. What I'm doing is saying Giving, giving voice to that future or asking a question that it's difficult to ask.
Rowena Morrow: The question, the emperor has no clothes question often, and they're hard questions to ask. And I think my experience of organizations today. is that those questions are getting harder, not easier to ask. I think, to your point, the overlaying of that you've made in previous podcasts, both of you, the overlaying of all of the dysfunction that's happening, the metapoly crisis, everything that's going on outside of us, let alone what's going on inside of us.
Rowena Morrow: Means that trying to find those quiet moments to create that island of coherence and sanity amongst the mastermind, that's, that's very difficult work. And for me, that is the work. I'm actually moving my practice, or it's, I've moved to the practice of that as opposed to the practice of doing foresight and futures as an activity.
Rowena Morrow: The foresight and futures turns up because the future's alive in all of us at any moment. And it's not my main focus. It's that courage creation space, if you want to call it that, that I'm really interested in doing and being
Frank Spencer: well,
Frank Spencer: it's profound. The reason I wanted to ask you that is exactly what you said and all of this. And it's so beautiful that this courage is not this necessarily starts off as this boisterous thing, or I'm never there. You know, I'm never not afraid necessarily, but it's this liminal space when people think about this liminal spaces.
Frank Spencer: And that's how you described it. So well, it's like I'm entering the spaces. It's the courage to be still and to be quiet rather than to jump out in the front. And I think that what we've been talking about and what the letter has been saying. To us and is responding back to us is that it keeps talking about this emerging, this quiet, this liminal space that we have to occupy if we're going to understand that that, that future that wants to emerge rather than the one we're trying to force onto things and to, to box in, you know, what would unfold and, and walking into that unknown that takes courage.
Frank Spencer: And then that's just a space that's foggy and quiet and and that's where all the goodness is. I really appreciate that.
Peter Hayward: I think there's another courage too, Rowena, after I've just about got myself back together again after reading that third letter for you. It's this courage to do with vulnerability.
Peter Hayward: Mm-hmm . I mean, you know, me as well as anyone would. We've been together so quite a while. On the journey of learning about ourselves and learning what it is we do.
Peter Hayward: How does vulnerability, and you said it, being comfortable to sit with vulnerability, to realize when you are doing an act like me reading out a letter about you, where my vulnerability is heightened by the words that someone wishes me to say about you. And I had a job to do, but I also didn't want to hide the vulnerability I felt doing it.
Peter Hayward: How does that operate?
Rowena Morrow: So I think what I'm learning is that in safe spaces like this one, that's possible. So the experience that I watched you have as you read the letter, was laid over the experience that I was having listening to the letter, which was overlaid by me watching Frank watching the both of us. So you've got all these overlays.
Rowena Morrow: And this is a safe space where I can be grounded into my body, through my feet, into the lands. That I sit on that have got 60, 000 years of history of people who came before me. So I'm, you know, authentically into space, place, and time and feeling safe with two people to have an experience, to go where things, where that open heartedness might open me up to being hurt or to experiencing negative emotions in some way, shape, or form.
Rowena Morrow: And I think that's very difficult to do in places that aren't safe. So when I hear vulnerability, I know we talk about it a lot. And I'm wondering whether we're starting to use it in organizational settings as dress up. Language to talk to sort of hide some of the shit that we don't want to discuss, which is how unsafe so many of our interactions are today.
Rowena Morrow: So I think vulnerability is absolutely something we should aspire to and we should try and practice and cultivate the conditions in our interiors to hold ourselves in those spaces. And what was coming, what I heard or what, what came into my head as you asking the question, Peter, is we shouldn't be stupid about it.
Rowena Morrow: Being protective of our vulnerability and protective of our spark of universal consciousness and holding a space so that it can still grow and and emit its light into the world. I think that's work. And what I did some work over the weekend with some colleagues and what came, well, as in the conversation what came through really clearly for us in that conversation is there's a whole lot of people in the world wanting to do wonderful, vulnerable, authentic work who are having this spark with, you know, toxic water thrown over the top of it and shit being thrown at them all the time.
Rowena Morrow: And how do we create spaces of wonderment, beauty and awe where they can come in and replenish and you know, fill their cups, because I think that's so important for the work of Futures Foresight and anything else. But just this, probably the time that we're in as well, it's it's a difficult time.
Peter Hayward: As a leader, as a builder of culture, how do you start to create the conditions, the micro ecologies of safety? in broader unsafe cultures.
Rowena Morrow: I think this is something you taught me how to do.
Rowena Morrow: I think part of what the foresight and futures course that. we both did at Swinburne taught me or gave me was a language around how to do that. And working with you and Jo and Richard and all of the wonderful people that were in that mosaic of experimentation and learning is it's creating the interior conditions first.
Rowena Morrow: So who Bateson's question and I love that because I think the who am I is the starting point. So who am I? What is my stuff? What are my interior conditions? How am I going to be or how am I being triggered in this moment? Can I see that? You know, that balcony dance floor analogy of where am I in this moment having this conversation?
Rowena Morrow: And I think for leaders being able to wander around, and I'm using that language consciously and deliberately, wander around organizations, sniffing out places that they can B, in the future that needs to emerge, is part of the key. So how do you, how do you step into and embody the future that needs to emerge, or is emerging for that organisation and lead from that place?
Rowena Morrow: Not from the place of the past, which may be traumatic, or may be highly successful. And what I see leaders doing often is leading from the past and hoping they're going to get a different future. And it just doesn't work. So, I think it is the micro moments. It is the if, in all my work around culture that I've done for now 10 years, the thing that most people want most of the time is they want someone who turns up in a predictable way, which doesn't mean you can't change, but if your emotional state's all over the place and you're turning up every day differently, that is very difficult for people to hold.
Rowena Morrow: So part of my work as a leader. With a team that was perturbing the system, upending norms, coming up with great ideas, doing whatever we were doing. I needed to hold a space that, I guess, normalized how we were thinking and being from that emerging future. And also meant that I wasn't as I got battered.
Rowena Morrow: by the existing power structures and dynamics in the organization, I could sort of buffer them from it. Now I could only do that for a period of time. It wasn't, it wasn't a recipe for longevity, I have to say, because it's hard. Like that's really quite difficult. So I think for me, there's bits of it.
Rowena Morrow: So that's, you know, how you turn up your interiority. and how you spread that interiority to others and create collectives. And the thing I'm really enjoying about the space you, the two of you are creating with this conversational series is it reflects for me the work that Tyson Young Caporta talks about, the IWE space.
Rowena Morrow: You know, how are these spaces created? How do we talk about them? What language we've, we got for them? And it's difficult to, I find it difficult to talk about in language, because I don't think we've got good words for this. Stuff. I don't, it's not something that turns up often. So I find it fascinating when I'm trying to find words for things that I can't find words for.
Rowena Morrow: So I talk around them or I use metaphors or analogies because the language isn't quite there yet. That tells me that we're putting down train tracks to somewhere else. And I think that's really interesting.
Frank Spencer: Yeah, I think it's one of the most fascinating things because it means you're walking right back into the fog again, where all the goodness is.
Frank Spencer: There's no words in there. There's no furniture in there. There's no, there's no street signs in there, and that's where all the goodness is,
and I'm
Frank Spencer: listening to you say this and going back to courage. And then Peter marries that with vulnerability is so smart. Because quite honestly, the way that you're talking about.
Frank Spencer: Futures, not the future, but futures and futures thinking and anticipation and imagination and all of that is just so foreign to the system we're in. But there's, but people are hungry for it. They just don't have words or any image of it because. They've been deprived of it. You know, in all this has been shrunken.
Frank Spencer: It's like a shrunken head for people. And and this isn't a question, but I'll just say a statement. And then I'll let you go from there. Because it's like literally being in a conversation like this, the three of us together right now. I think for some people, this can sound very foreign, but maybe they even listen to this and they don't get what is being said necessarily.
Frank Spencer: Not because they're not smart. That's not the case. It's just because this might be the first time they've ever listened to something like this and but they, but it doesn't matter what the words are. There's a feeling of a yearning to be in this space and And back to that courage and vulnerability again for for you to be in this conversation and then to go back into organizations again that say, like, we can't commoditize that we can't monetize that.
Frank Spencer: And when we when we turn the future into a commodity or to an object, instead of. This living generativity, this ability then we strip it of, of all that you were just talking about that emerging, no words, no furniture, no, you know, where all the goodness is, and you use my three favorite words, all.
Frank Spencer: Wonder and enchantment. And so, you know, I just that's my mantra all the time. And so, you know, it's like I have to put that end of every sentence. All wonder and enchantment. You know, just what am I having for breakfast? All wonder and enchantment. And that's why I really believe that, you know, that's what gets stripped out of the future that you were just sharing is that how do we get not just organizations, but, you know, beyond everything that we do, everything that we structure.
Frank Spencer: How do we transform that to not only think about how, you know, What is the box that we put this in, but how, how are we producing our journey to our inhabiting sacredness, which is a word I like to use to sort of just encapsulate all that you could use spiritual or whatever word you wanted. But, but this is a sacred thing that we hold.
Frank Spencer: And and that's what I'm hearing you describing. And how do you go back to people and to bring them into the, how do you usher people into the fog?
Rowena Morrow: So this is the work, Frank. So, mid 2023, I was working with one of the best leadership teams I've ever had the opportunity to work with, a multi billion dollar organization full of really great humans wanting to do great work in the world leading an organization who was in the future.
Rowena Morrow: So what they were doing is what we need to be done if we're going to live. on a finite planet. You know, so everything was aligned. We had a wonderful, difficult, but wonderful conversation space for a whole day doing some work they hadn't done before. They'd stepped into vulnerability about it. There'd been a bit of a breakthrough, et cetera, et cetera.
Rowena Morrow: And I came out of that loving them, loving the work. but wondering what the fuck I was doing with my life. Like, why am I spending my time? Doing this, and I think by that I was feeling, so it took me quite a long time to understand what was going on because you know, this was the pinnacle, this is what the work is, this is, I should have, should have been beside myself with joy, and in one sense I was.
Rowena Morrow: And in another sense, I was like, nah, I'm out of here. I am so done with this. And I think what I'm done with is the stuff that Vanessa Andrigoldi talks about in Hospicing Modernity. I am done with the old ways of being and doing. I'm done. I just don't think they are servicing or set us up for the futures that are emerging.
Rowena Morrow: And The point I made, and you talked about the courage point, that takes courage to say, because it's one thing to say it, and another thing to live into it. So then how do I live into that? And Peter has had, I don't know if it's a benefit, has had me have long conversations with him over the last 18 months.
Rowena Morrow: around the whole death, dying, and ending piece. So for me, I'm less interested in the seeds of transformation and renewal while they're there. Like, I like to see them and I like to find out what's going on and hear about them because they make me feel good and make me optimistic. And I am fixated, for want of a better word, on endings, dying, and finishing.
Rowena Morrow: So, Douglas Hine, Vanessa's work, Nora Bateson's, like, how do we finish this stuff? Let's put our ways of being, doing our entire societies and civilization, let's put it into a hospicing moment and hold that and see what comes from it. So, where I've gone then is into, well, palliative care organization because I wanted to get absolutely pointy.
Rowena Morrow: on what does that look, smell and feel like to be in and around death all the time. And I've moved much more into ecological metaphors and ways of thinking and doing. So I am looking for inspiration and guidance from the non human Biosphere of which I am a part, both with looking within myself and outside of myself.
Rowena Morrow: And so there's a whole lot of practices that come with that, which may or may not be interesting and we can talk about. And, how do you, to your point, how do you pack, package this up and, and re, like re, so what comes to me is how do we inoculate people with this virus, so that they can have a crack at seeing what this might look like.
Rowena Morrow: And that's, How I have been doing it, up until this point, is wandering around finding people to talk to who are interested in talking about it. I found a group of people that I can work with, so what is, what does this look like in terms of processes, things that we do, interactions that we have, and we've started working out what that might look like.
Rowena Morrow: And I've started writing about it, and I've started wanting to talk about it. So I, I don't know how you do this. In a way that's less chaotic than it feels. And I think the one thing that Futures and Foresight teaches us is if you have a view, an intention, a direction, a momentum that you want to go with, then you just take the next right step and then the next right step.
Rowena Morrow: So I'm holding curiosity and taking the next right step. Is probably how it looks in practice and there's a whole wealth, 18 months of deep work that I did in order to be able to take that next right step, or did and doing, like it's not finished. So, yeah.
Frank Spencer: I don't mean to jump in front of Peter, but I can't help, you know, cause.
Frank Spencer: We're having our first online community of practice for the dragonfly journey, which is the whole haloptic piece. And I have to find a way to fly you from Australia next September to get you to come out to retreat and Peter will sit around the table again and see if we can't get our sandbag together.
Frank Spencer: But this idea of of not only being in a safe space but of understanding what wants to emerge and waiting to see what that is. And that comes from the parts to the whole and the feedback of the whole back to the parts again, and then waiting to see what wants to emerge rather than forcing something to emerge.
Frank Spencer: And you've just spoken, I feel like we're in communion with the future when we speak this way, but you've just spoken the opposite of everything that. You know, popular foresight thinks the future is supposed to be all about. And and I think that's why this conversation and this journey with the future is so important so that the future can speak back to us again and let their, let us know that there's something so much deeper going on here.
Frank Spencer: And that if, as Vanessa says, hospicing modernity, if we allow that to happen, then we're going to be able to see what wants to emerge, what wants to emerge instead of. What's, you know, it's just like the word transformation, right? We can read transformation, but it can mean a completely different thing.
Frank Spencer: It's after what wants to emerge. It's not before what wants to emerge and forcing something to happen. Emergence can mean we throw AI and a bunch of technologies and things in there. And we see what's emerged. We built that. That's not necessarily what wants to emerge because we haven't hospiced yet.
Frank Spencer: And I love this. And I think it ties into, to the, the courage and the, and the vulnerability and everything that you're talking about. Which is. So deeply profound. Sorry, Peter, A I jumped in ahead of you.
Peter Hayward: No, no, not at all. Rowena, the Bana left us and you with the image of the Jolly Window. Mm-hmm . The idea that the shape that we bring to the world creates the patterns that others see through us.
Peter Hayward: We create shadow.
Peter Hayward: I'm just curious as to whether this playing with the dark and the lit, the spaces in between, I think the future correspondent said in her reply. And for what you're talking about, I mean, is the shadow modernity or is actually the shadow is, is modernity in the light and you're leaning into the shadow space to find ideas and enthusiasm?
Rowena Morrow: That's an interesting question. So when I engage with the, the window and the dance of the shadow and the light, and I think the future correspondent said something like. What's left, what's left after the shadow and the light have danced. The shadow and the light for me over the last few weeks has been actually, I've, I've held it in personal transformation terms before I've gotten to the collective.
Rowena Morrow: So the work I've been doing on self around connecting to my higher. Self. So I've been using Michael ing as the untethered soul to get into the seat of witness consciousness and to ex to, you know, through various practices, understand what my spark of universal consciousness feels, looks, and smells like.
Rowena Morrow: And that was great and is great. And the shadow I've also been working with. It's Bill Plonkins work around soulcraft, because there's something to me about going deep around the soul's expression, and then going into light around the connection to universal consciousness, and the bit in the middle is the meat sack that I wander around in.
Rowena Morrow: I find that really interesting and a helpful way of holding my sensations and how I experience different parts of the world hitting me in different ways. So that's been my personal experience of the window, Tali window metaphor. And your question about the modernity. It's interesting for me about whether or not hospicing modernity is light or shadow.
Rowena Morrow: And I think it probably depends on your perspective. So for some people, the idea that everything around us is dying and crashing around our ears is horrendously scary and discombobulating and just the most awful thing that anybody could ever contemplate. And for others, it's the best thing that's ever happened to them.
Rowena Morrow: And I don't know that I'm on either of those. I think I'm in the dance. So when the future correspondent talked about, and I'll have to find her words exactly, but the, the bit that happens after the dance, that's the bit. And I did some body percussive work on Saturday morning. And so you run around, you know, you're jumping around and you're whacking and it was just great.
Rowena Morrow: It was drumming. It was fantastic. And when you finish, all you can feel is your whole body throbbing with this energy that you've been expending and you've been, you know, your blood's moving and everything's happening. And that's the dance. And there was, there's something about that moment of doing it.
Rowena Morrow: In self, well, how might we create that collectively, and how might we have language around the light and the shadow, and we do have language, but pulling it all together around the light and the shadow, and the perspective taking, and how we hold it, and then also how we move. So one of the things I grappled with a bit in the three episodes was the agency question.
Rowena Morrow: Now I'm Much like you, Peter, I've been banging on about agency for 20 odd years. And there's something very modernity laden around our concepts of agency. And I wonder whether holding that window metaphor, so being the space in between the light and the shadow, is actually the emerging whatever this thing is that comes after modernity.
Rowena Morrow: That we need to learn how to do as one of the species on our planet, amongst many others. And I guess this is the other thing that I wanted to introduce into the organiza into the orga into the conversation, was this idea that the human and non human, our connectedness, and I think Frank quoted Doug Carol Sanford around here, nature was a concept created to keep us separate, like that's just stayed with me for however many weeks it's been since you said it, Frank.
Rowena Morrow: Like, I think That's, it's that constructed nature of reality that we need to put down. And we have species learning. We have First Nations people around the world that know how to do this. So me sitting in my western, white, colonial, you know, lineage can access earlier lineages of my own. So I've got good Celtic blood that I can go in and I can access those earlier images, lineages.
Rowena Morrow: And I have lineages of 60, 000 years on the place that I'm lucky enough to inhabit in the world. And there are lots of other lineages that we can draw upon. If people are willing to help us weave those together in this new futures dance. And I just find that so exciting.
Peter Hayward: I think Savannah talked about kindness to regard things that are out of reach.
Peter Hayward: But if we approach it with kindness, if we approach it with affection, I think was the emotion she attached. We don't have to understand it, we mightn't understand it, but. Let's build a relationship based on affection, the affection she had for the spiders in her bathroom and the goddess holding the door together.
Peter Hayward: There are many ways that she could have chosen to take An intellectual stance to it, and the one she leaned into was affection.
Frank Spencer: You know, what's so funny about that is this week, someone wrote me and said, it was on one of our discussion boards, and they said, Oh, I love where this is all going. And, and this is such a wonderful community of practice. And it reminds me of Arachne, you know, saying I can outweave you, you know, and it was punished to become the spider always, always weaving and always hanging.
Frank Spencer: And immediately I was reminded that in my last interview that I did here with Sophie strand, she talked about it as well, but she was coming at it from the perspective of DCS and Persephone and talking about, you know, weaving of, of, of the of the The garment, the death garment, and then every night she would unweave it again.
Frank Spencer: So it would, you know, lengthen the time and the weaving and unweaving the weaving and unweaving is really that space of futures and that place that, you know, Rowena, you just talked about of universal consciousness. And I do think it's relational. It's all all all emergence is relational. And this is much as well of what you've hit on as we've been speaking here.
Frank Spencer: I would like for you To tell us more about how you perceive universal consciousness in terms of sort of as Benita Roy would say, not just the, the, I and the, we, but also the us and the, all of us was she, you know, she says, it's not just about us because we can still delineate that is. This is us, and that is you over there.
Frank Spencer: But, you know, it's the all of us. It's the biome. It's the person. It's the kin. It's the planet. It's the cosmos. And that's all of us until we reach that place. And so how do you see universal consciousness in that way? And how do you relate it to it? What we might call futures consciousness of going beyond the work of foresight is numbers and trying to, you know, get trends or whatever, but really diving into this futures consciousness that the correspondent is telling us about.
Rowena Morrow: I might start with the futures consciousness because I think that's really interesting. So we've. We whack labels around ideas to make them work in our meat sack brain, which is great. Like, it's a great thing to have developed over millennia and, and it's limited. So, where I started was. Much as you've described was futures and foresight as I came across.
Rowena Morrow: It was an incredible thing to come across a way of thinking being Well a way of thinking and doing and as I thought and did what became pretty obvious Also through the integral futures lineage was that how I am influences what I think and do so as the how I am the being became you know, as Peter and I wandered around being curious around how we do this work, how I am and how I am going to be became preeminent, I guess.
Rowena Morrow: And for me, the futures consciousness shift into universal consciousness happened quite naturally. And futures consciousness is still there. I can still access it. It's useful in various. And every so often I'll get a peek, so a P E E K. You know, every so often I'll get my head up and I'll see and I'll get a taste of what it might feel like to be connected to source.
Rowena Morrow: And then I drop back down into my meat sack that I wander around in that I love and I'm very grateful for. And I think it's that When I'm able to peek and I'm able to feel into the space, I'm spending a lot of time in nature, nature having said it doesn't exist, a lot of time out with trees and birds, etc.
Rowena Morrow: In order to feel what that feels like. And what I'm noticing is how nature speaks to us, if you can listen. And now I'm nowhere close to being anywhere, I don't even know. I'm so far, I'm a novice. We'll say a novice of a novice. I'm so, like it's just, anyway. So I'm like, am I really, am I really experiencing this?
Rowena Morrow: Or am I just saying I'm experiencing? And so if I can get my head out of it. And just experience it. So one of the things I do, is I walk up to a tree, and I look at a tree, and I try to look at a tree without judgement or labels. And that's really very difficult to do. And when I do it, I have this connection with this tree, that is indescribable, actually.
Rowena Morrow: I did a similar thing on Friday, I went to a, a colleague's she runs an equine therapy practice, and I am scared of horses. A horse and I had a very bad interaction when I was a young person, and I've never ridden a horse. I've always been scared of them. And so this was a big deal for me to go and, you know, interact with a horse.
Rowena Morrow: Well, The human and non human came together and created a relationship and a connection that still stays with me nearly a week later. So there's something so incredibly profound about getting out of our own heads, out, even out of our own bodies, and into relationship and connection. With the non human, of which we are an integral and required part.
Rowena Morrow: Country needs people just as people need country. So we are not separate in any way, shape or form. And in order to do that, I have to let go of a whole heap of stuff about who I am, my ego, my identity. So the me ness of it gets dissolved into the we ness. And I think holding, for me holding that weenus, I can't do it for long periods of time.
Rowena Morrow: And I know, as I said, I think we've got species knowledge that tells, that we could draw on that could hold, help me hold it for longer periods, if that's of use. So, I don't know if that's an answer to the question, but that's where it's Ended up, I guess,
Frank Spencer: I think it's in these podcasts and in this ongoing letter what comes out of your heart is the answer to the question, because this is not that space for some road answer.
Frank Spencer: And that's why we don't prep for that. You know, it's so funny. You were saying to me exactly what Sophie said to me a couple of weeks ago, they called her the wonderer. And that's why she called one of her books, of course, the wondering flower, because she was known in the Hudson Valley as being the wonder because from a young age.
Frank Spencer: 12 years old or whatever. People would say there goes the wonder again. She just would go and talk to trees. And she said, I have this one tree that is still there years later. And I've seen it go through its seasons. And I know when it's about to flower. And I know when it's trying to speak the certain thing.
Frank Spencer: And I see it changing. And I've come to. No, it as well as I would do any human or any animal. And and that has had such a profound impact on the way that I see past present and future. And I think that you just put it so beautifully that tapping into that consciousness is what really helps us to understand what wants to emerge because it's not emerging from a piece of paper.
Frank Spencer: It's not emerging from a course, it's not emerging from a degree program, it's not emerging from a training, it's emerging from that connection that is the us to the, the all of us, and then in resonance back again. So I love that.
Peter Hayward: I'm going to ask you to start to consider how you leave this conversation.
Peter Hayward: It's not the last word because there is never a last word. But it's a chance for you to leave a pattern, shadow, and light for a person that follows you. So what do you want to start with that?
Rowena Morrow: So I have two offerings. So one is an offering from me, and one is an offering from someone else that really popped into my head a couple of days ago, demanding to be offered.
Rowena Morrow: So, I'll offer my, I'll offer my offering first. So when I went back and listened to the three episodes all in a row, one of the, this, this image emerged. So, we're in a conversational river. The image I have is of Peter and Frank standing with Marcus at the mouth of the river. They walk up the river for a while.
Rowena Morrow: Marcus steps onto the bank. And Sonia joins the river. It bends and speeds up slightly. Sonja steps onto the bank, and then Bavana joins the river. It slows and eddies. Peter Frank and Bavana end their conversation. Bavana steps out, and I appear on the bank. I've walked up the river, listening to the conversation and appreciating the reflection and insights from the future correspondent about what I might attend to and what I'm, in what I just heard, and what I might hold onto as I step in.
Rowena Morrow: So for me, that was the image that turned up across the three conversations. And I love Bhavana talking about the river. For me, it linked into the pilgrimage image that's come through. And the love connection theme that's also come through. And so as I was sitting with all of that, this story kept coming into my head and absolutely demands to be part of the conversation.
Rowena Morrow: So I'll offer it up to you. So this is a story from Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. And I'll just launch in. So native people speak of a gardening style called the Three Sisters. There are many stories of how this came to be, but they all share an understanding of these plants as women, sisters.
Rowena Morrow: Some stories tell of a long winter when the people were dropping from hunger. Three beautiful women came to their dwellings on a snowy night. One was tall, dressed all in yellow, with long flowing hair. The second wore green, and the third was robed in orange. The three entered the shelter, drawn to the warmth of the fire.
Rowena Morrow: Food was scarce, but the people shared what little they had and in gratitude for the generosity the three sisters revealed their true identities, corn, beans, and squash. They gave themselves to the people in a bundle of seeds so that they would never go hungry again. At the height of summer when the days are long and bright and the thunder has come to soak the ground, the lessons of reciprocity are written clearly in the three sisters garden.
Rowena Morrow: Together their stems inscribe a blueprint for the world, a map of balance and harmony. The corn stands tall, eight feet high, its rippling green ribbons of leaves curling away from the stem, each one placed to catch the sun. No leaf sits directly over another, each gathers light without shading the rest.
Rowena Morrow: The beam twines around the cornstalk, weaving itself between the leaves, never interfering with their work. And beneath them both, at their feet, a carpet of broad squash leaves spreads wide, intercepting the light that falls among the pillars of corn. Their layered spacing uses the gift of the sun efficiently, with no waste.
Rowena Morrow: Every leaf, tendril belongs together. The harmony of their form speaks their message. Respect one another. Support one another. Bring your gift to the world. Receive the gifts of others. There will be enough for all. Above the soil they grow in balance, and below the same is true. Corn roots don't go deep.
Rowena Morrow: Instead they create a shallow network, calling first dibs on the incoming rain. After they've had their drink, the water descends out of the corn's reach, deeper down the bean's weight. Their tap roots reach into the depths, ready to absorb what the corn cannot. The squash finds its own share by moving outwards, spreading wide, seeking what the others do not.
Rowena Morrow: And in return, the beans enrich the soil, creating nitrogen fertilizer, fueling the growth of corn and squash alike. It's tempting to imagine that they do this deliberately. And perhaps they do. But the beauty of their partnership is this. Each plant does what it does to thrive, to grow, to flourish. And yet as each one flourishes, so does the whole.
Rowena Morrow: The Way of the Three Sisters is a teaching, one of the oldest and most important lessons of our people. The most important thing each of us can know is our unique gift and how to use it in the world. Individualism, individuality is not just accepted, it is cherished. Because in order for the whole to thrive, each of us must be strong in who we are.
Rowena Morrow: Each of us must carry our gifts with conviction so they can be shared. Among the sisters, we see what a community can become when its members understand their gifts and offer them freely. In reciprocity, we fill our spirits as well as our bellies.
Peter Hayward: Thank you. I grow the throes. I've got a three sisters bed in my garden. And one of my challenges every year is to sequence them such the reciprocity operates. It is It's a great challenge to get the three working in harmony but yeah, thank you, that's a beautiful, beautiful story.
Frank Spencer: For some reason, I knew it was going to be Brady and Sweetgrass.
Frank Spencer: I don't know why. It's just, I was like, I got a feeling and you don't know how profound that was at, at our transformation retreats on the first night, because everybody arrives sometime in the afternoon of day one and then they get ready and we have dinner together and all of this. And then there's a nightly bonfire is really the first thing that really, really happens at the retreat.
Frank Spencer: And so night one is all about ancestors, past, present and future and becoming ancestors ourselves. And in our first retreat in 2022 it had, it had never been done yet by us, you know, so this was our first time. And I, you know, I break in and I think, you know, well, I'm going to read this thing and do this thing.
Frank Spencer: And it's going to, you know, I'm trying to. Facilitate and lead that there's no facilitation and emergence and and everybody just starts weeping and they're breaking out, you know, stuff that they got from the great, great, great grandmother, a shoe or a deed or a book or a game. And they, they all brought these objects with them.
Frank Spencer: And somebody said something about. Braiding sweetgrass and he pulls it out of his book bag that he has because braiding sweetgrass and everybody starts reaching in their book bag and they all pull out braiding sweetgrass and and just the tears started flowing again. And it's so profound.
Frank Spencer: And that particular section speaks exactly to that healthy individuation that is so necessary for the whole program. To do this amazing, unique, emerging thing that then speaks back to the parts and the health just continues to flourish and perpetuate, and it has an abundance that it's that it generates on its own.
Frank Spencer: And so I think it's just such a profound passage that you read and that that doesn't, you know, speak to the future and have the future speak back to us. I don't know what will.
Rowena Morrow: Yeah. She certainly, so I haven't read. Thanks. braiding sweetgrass for probably five years. So there's five years of other things that could have been the thing. And this morning it was absolutely crystal clear that this was going to be the thing. I was like, okay.
Frank Spencer: Wow. That is wild.
Rowena Morrow: Yes. So she wants in Frank.
Frank Spencer: Beautiful. Well, she's in like Flynn
The Future Correspondent:
Dear Rowena, Frank, and Peter,
The wind today carries the scent of woodsmoke and something unnameable, something between rain and dust, as if the air itself is remembering both fire and renewal. It reminds me of your conversation—the way it wove between courage and vulnerability, between the quiet pulse of endings and the restless hum of what longs to emerge.
Rowena, you spoke of courage not as a battle cry but as a kind of inevitability—the moment when discomfort builds until silence is no longer an option. There was something of recognition in your words, as though the future, waiting at the edge of language, presses against you, asking to be given voice. You described it as a requirement to return to comfort, but from where I sit, it sounds like something wilder—an unwillingness to let the unspoken remain in the shadows. What does it mean to hold the shape of what is not yet seen? And what does it take to step forward when stepping forward means carrying the weight of both endings and beginnings?
Frank, you spoke of the fog—the strange, liminal space where meaning has not yet taken form, where the future is neither captured nor named. I wonder if that is where the deepest listening happens, in the spaces where words dissolve, and only rhythm and resonance remain. You spoke of awe, wonder, and enchantment—not as indulgences but as necessary states of being, portals to a different kind of knowing. Perhaps it is not that the future is unknowable, but that it must be met differently—less as a problem to be solved and more as a landscape to be entered.
Peter, you asked about light and shadow, about whether modernity is the light we stand in or the shadow we must learn to enter. But perhaps that question itself is too bound to a way of seeing that insists on contrast. The Jhali window does not choose between light and shadow; it only offers the patterns they create together. Maybe we are not meant to pull them apart, but to dwell in their dance, to notice not just what they illuminate, but what they leave behind.
Rowena, your words returned again and again to the threshold—the moment of transition, the willingness to step into endings, into the grief and dissolution of what no longer serves. You spoke of hospicing modernity, of tending to its last moments not with resistance but with reverence. There is something profound in that gesture, in choosing to stand at the bedside of what is passing, to whisper kindness into its fading breath, even as you turn toward what must follow. It is a hard task, this work of unmaking. But you reminded us that something must be released for something else to take root.
Your offering of Braiding Sweetgrass lingers in me like a quiet refrain. The Three Sisters do not compete. They do not dominate. They do not take more than they need. They simply grow, entwined, each supporting the others in ways too intricate to map, too natural to need explanation. I wonder—if futures work is a kind of planting, what seeds are we truly tending? And do we trust them enough to let them grow in ways we cannot predict?
With quiet gratitude,
The Future Correspondent
PS:
I once stood before a garden where corn, beans, and squash grew together—entwined yet distinct. The corn stood tall, the beans curled upward, the squash stretched across the ground, holding moisture in its broad leaves. It was not competition but conversation, not control but reciprocity. I remember wondering then, as I do now: What does it take to grow together without losing ourselves? And what might we become if we trusted the weave of interdependence more than the illusion of standing alone?