Books
Future Sacred
How is human flourishing connected to the flourishing of other species? Julie Morley, a leading thinker in interspecies intersubjectivity and relations, reflects on this question in her book, Future Sacred.
Future Sacred: The Connected Creativity of Nature
In Future Sacred, Julie J. Morley offers a new perspective on the human connection to the cosmos by unveiling the connected creativity and sacred intelligence of nature. She rejects the “survival of the fittest” narrative–the idea that survival requires strife–and offers symbiosis and cooperation as nature’s path forward. She shows how an increasingly complex world demands increasingly complex consciousness. Our survival depends upon embracing “complexity consciousness,” understanding ourselves as part of nature, as well as relating to nature as sacred.
Morley begins by documenting how indigenous cultures lived in relative harmony with nature because they perceived themselves as part of the “ordered whole” of all life–until modernity introduced dualistic thinking, thus separating mind from matter, and humans from nature. The author deconstructs the fallacy behind social and neo-Darwinism and the materialist theories of “dead matter” versus those that offer a connection with the sentient mind of nature. She presents evidence from complexity studies, cultural history, philosophy, indigenous spirituality, biomimicry, and ecology, highlighting the idea that nature’s intelligence and creativity abound everywhere–from cells to cetaceans, from hydrogen to humans, from sunflowers to solar panels–and that all sentient beings contribute to the evolution of life as a whole, working together in sacred symbiosis.
Morley concludes that our sacred future depends on compassionately understanding and integrating multiple intelligences, seeing relationships and interdependence as fundamental and sacred, as well as honoring the experiences of all sentient beings. Instead of “mastery over nature,” we must shift toward synergy with nature–and with each other as diverse expressions of nature’s creativity.
“In her deeply thoughtful and wonderful book, Morley presents an engaging argument for bringing the sacred into all our world-making endeavors. She invites us to reawaken to our cosmic connectedness, re-enchant our present and future, and create possibility in the face of crisis. Timely and essential reading.”
— Dr. Judith Orloff, New York Times bestselling author of Emotional Freedom
“At this teetering moment in the story of our species, when the fate of not just our kind but of so many other species hangs in the balance, we are massively in need of fresh ways of thinking attuned to the more-than-human matrix that holds, enables, and secretly nourishes all of our human cogitations. Future Sacred could not be timelier—its themes are crucial to the very prospect of a livable future.”
— David Abram, PhD, author of The Spell of the Sensuous and Becoming Animal
“One thing is certain: our future is uncertain. Looking at the state of the planet today, it is hard to imagine how humanity can avoid the looming ecological catastrophe. But with enough wisdom and inspired action, we can pull through. Julie Morley’s message is clear: ‘We need to think differently about how we think and act.’ Her book Future Sacred, a manifesto for the future, shows us all the way forward.”
— Brian Thomas Swimme, PhD, professor of evolutionary cosmology at the California Institute of Integral Studies
“Future Sacred elegantly weaves many different threads of indigenous wisdom, philosophy, and science into a new and ancient fabric of meaning that re-enchants the Earth and our co-creative role within her. This book reconnects us with the ‘radical enchantment of now,’ reminding us of our innate kinship with life as a planetary process and of our co-creative agency and hence responsibility for the future of life. At this time of planetary peril, Morley issues a call for embodying our sacred interbeing in all we do, so that we may heal ourselves in intimate relationship with a living planet, individually and collectively living into the future sacred now—today—through our thoughts, words, and actions.”
— Daniel Christian Wahl, author of Designing Regenerative Cultures
Crow Cosmopolitics
Julie’s dissertation, “Crow Cosmopolitics” focuses on crow-human relations. She is currently expanding her research to understand urban multispecies relations, especially in the context of reviving watersheds, wetlands, rivers, and other bodies of water.
One of the most gratifying aspects of my life… is cultivating a caring relationship with more-than-human creatures and understanding more about them as individuals and as cultural groups. My daily engagement with birds as an ornithographer – one who photographs birds – allows me to cultivate these relationships and deepen my understanding of their worlds. Time “flies” when I am watching birds, and that time is deeply rewarding.
I’ve considered that how I enter crow spaces matters. Their communities, cultures and ways of knowing embody crow-centered meaning that I do not understand from my human-centered subjectivity. Corvid ways of knowing and expressing themselves still present a mysterious puzzle to corvid experts, and they are slowly and meticulously attempting to gain a window into their worlds. That is always the essential challenge that all creatures perceive through different subjective sensory adaptations, once called umwelten, or “environments” by the great semiotics scholar, Jakob von Uexkull. I am deeply aware of this in my own field work, that my umwelt is quite different from the subjects of my study. Even humans with cultural differences may have quite different windows into the world. I am merely a student of crow cultures (and human-corvid cultural relations), and my fieldwork is about learning from observing them, and talking to those who know most about them.