Taking Turns - Multispecies Intelligence as a Spiritual Practice

This piece was delivered as a homily on December 21, 2025 on the Winter Solstice. This time of year we celebrate how the earth tilts and finishes it's yearly turn around the sun.

Birds see things we cannot. They see ultraviolet light, see farther and clearer, and adjust focus faster than humans.  Bald eagles can see a fish a mile away.  Some birds see better at night than we do. Does this make them better than we are?  Perhaps with vision, yes.

Humans on the other hand can produce light that illuminates entire cities in the dark of night, though eels, catfish, knifefish, and even honeybees also produce electricity. Does this make humans better than other species? Perhaps in how we produce electricity on a large scale, yes.

But no being is better in terms of having more inherent worth and dignity than another, so comparisons don’t make sense. Each species has their own gifts and abilities – not better, simply different. Yet we evolved, perhaps both biologically and culturally, to make comparisons. The risk is that we promote a dualism that invites hierarchy and domination.

            Philosopher Timothy Morton writes, “Dualism is an act of severing, a foundational, traumatic fissure between, to put it in stark Lacanian terms, reality (the human-correlated world) and the real (ecological symbiosis of human and nonhuman parts of the biosphere).” He is saying that we humans cannot see everything, and dualistic comparisons constrict our world into that little we can perceive. This can cause not just disconnection, but harm.

Take for instance dark and light shades in animals. According to the National Library of Medicine, of all cats in shelters, black cats have the highest rate of euthanasia at a rate of 74.6%, and the lowest rate of adoption at 10% of any cat. Animals with darker colors are often associated with notions of misfortune or evil.

In many cultures, humans lean towards the light, and away from the dark, in each other, in other species, and in the rhythm of earth’s turning and revolving. We turn away from the long hours of the night and the soul’s struggle. As we see or want the world to be either this or that, we place a sense of “otherness” and “wrongness” or badness onto our experiences, or onto others, and risk caring for them less.

Diminishing dualism is one aspect of most spiritual practices, including Multispecies Intelligence. Multispecies Intelligence's invitation is to describe animal behavior, including that of humans, without categorizing it either scientifically or morally, or as good or bad.

Take for example the peregrine falcon (photo above). On a walk a few years ago, Meredith Garmon, my spouse, and I discussed how beautiful the falcons are and how they know it. “They are such jerks,” we joked, knowing it was preposterous to equate ego and narcissism with this species just because they are so focused on hunting — and in the process, harming and killing.

Yet projecting human qualities of “correct” and “incorrect” behavior is what we do to others all the time. We don’t consider peregrines as evil when they hunt and kill most birds, for that is their evolutionary niche, but what if they harm a bird we study or are familiar with? It’s hard for me to not see flashes of enemy images when a peregrine kills a parrot in our study area. We might imagine that from a parrot’s point of view, the peregrine is certainly a jerk for killing others. At the same time, the nourishment from one dead parrot can feed the peregrine and her chicks, and thus the bird exhibits both prosocial (helping chicks) and antisocial (killing parrots) behaviors. It’s best to not even use the words “prosocial” or “antisocial.” We might instead just describe the behavior.

            The reason to eliminate labels that interpret an animal’s behavior in terms of our human experience is to avoid engaging in dualistic thinking that can lead to disconnection at best, and harm at worst, because we see others as fundamentally flawed. Humans do this not just to other species but also to our own. The peregrine falcon in human terms is a “killer” and a “murderer.” She “tortures” her victims by tearing their flesh before they are dead, and worse than that, she eats them.  Such thoughts might lead humans to despise the bird and trap or hunt them to keep them from further killing. It wouldn’t be just falcons we judge as being good or bad, because many, many other species engage in sexual coercion, murder, cannibalism, infanticide, and war. They also demonstrate prosocial behaviors such as parenting, care, empathy, compassion, and sharing.

            In terms of evolved behaviors, humans as a whole are no worse or better than others. We are just different. This does not mean that individuals and groups of individuals are free to cause immense suffering and loss of life. In human societies we do need to hold harmful individuals accountable, so the harm diminishes or ends. But is the human species bad?  Are peregrine falcons, black cats, and crows bad? If there truly are no bad dogs, whose harmful behaviors are products of evolution, genes, and socialization, can’t we say the same for humans?

            Embracing the reality of the spectrum of harm and tragedy, in us, in others, and in existence, we can let go of seeing life or others as good or bad, or as light being better than dark. Life is so much more complex than that.The full spectrum of species behaviors cannot be unwoven from the whole – we are what we are because the earth is what it is. There is no beauty without tragedy and no tragedy without beauty. To see the world as such is no easy spiritual practice, but as we go along this path, we open to new ways of being.

           Scene in the movie "Contact" where the alien entity appears as the father, and tenderly explains the possible future that awaits humankind.

            The alien entity in the movie Contact said to the human hero, "You're an interesting species. An interesting mix. You're capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone; only, you're not." What if we could turn that sense of isolation and disconnection around? Beauty is ever present and connects all of us to one another.  As Tolstoy said, "All the beauty of life is made up of light and shadows."The stars and the moon will always need the darkness to be seen. Stars cannot shine without darkness, and neither can we.

            We don’t need to compare. We can take turns looking at the gifts of one another and other species, and if we do this, we can see the depth of the harm we cause and be present to the dark night of the soul without pushing away the nightmares of existence.

Birds can help us, for they can see what we cannot. To them, we are in the dark. They point us to the way of wonder even when we can’t see the light, but they can.

            Joseph Cambell said that “The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.”

            We can turn towards the dark and towards the light, and in so doing, open the way for the waking dream of a more peaceful, just, and flourishing world.