Category Archives: Church

A letter to the dust

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Dear friends on the way,

I have been rummaging through the digital equivalent of my attic lately, and I found something that stung. Sixteen years ago, I sat down to write out of a sense of profound frustration at the limitations of my own and our ecclesiastical vocabulary. (see HERE) Looking back at that post now, I recognise the voice of someone sensing a widening chasm between the language we were speaking and the life we were actually inhabiting.

We spoke then, as we still do now, with a polished, professional confidence. We talked then and now of mission, renewal, strategy, and “participation in the missio Dei.” Yet, beneath the surface there is the low hum of a quiet, desperate anxiety. We feared then and now that if we stop talking long enough to truly listen, the entire edifice would reveal itself to be less secure than we had imagined.

But as I read my own words from 2010, I realise I was hiding and complict. I was critiquing the “Church” while exempting myself. I was using sophisticated theology to mask a simple, ugly truth: I, too, am seduced by power. I am addicted to the feeling of being “right,” of having a “strategy,” and of belonging to an institution that still matters.

This post has sat in my drafts for months. I needed the blunt, prophetic nudges of two amazing women pioneers one Anglican from the south, one Methodist from the north, to finally pull this into the light. Our conversations about the nature of power forced me to write not just about my own complicity but to call for light to be cast more fully on all our complicity in the fallacy that we are in control.

What I could only dimly perceive sixteen years ago, I can now see with the terrifying clarity of an ending. The unease was apocalyptic in the truest sense: an unveiling. The walls we trusted, our social standing, our institutional weight, our assumed right to be heard, were already beginning to crumble. This became a recurring theme and even a category of posts (walls to dust) and 16 years on have we really changed.

The category arose not because God had abandoned the Church, but because God refuses to be contained by the structures we mistake for faithfulness. But for sixteen years, I have watched us (and I include myself in this “us”) try to reinforce those walls. We have drafted vision documents, commissioned reviews, and rebranded decline as “strategic repositioning.” We have spent a fortune on scaffolding while the foundations were returning to dust.

Consequently, we have failed to ask the most vital question: Is the Spirit actually the one reducing these walls to powder? And if so, why are we so desperate to rebuild them?

There is a profound difference between reform and relinquishment. Reform assumes the architecture is sound but needs a new boiler. Relinquishment recognises that some structures were provisional all along, and instead of taking these temporary cultural accommodations we baptised them as though they were the Gospel itself.

In Susan Howatch’s Starbridge novels, we see this played out in the clerical ego. Whether it’s the “Practical” ambition of Neville Aysgarth or the “Mystical” pride of Jon Darrow, the temptation is always the same: to use God to secure one’s own place in the world. After 10 years serving the Diocese of Carlisle, I have to face the fact that the “middle way” has often been more a “a way of retaining power”, a way of maintaining a seat at the table of the establishment under the guise of “influence.”

Now, as the cultural conditions that sustained that influence dissolve, we oscillate between nostalgia and panic. We act as though the erosion of our social privilege is equivalent to the erosion of God. It is not. What is being exposed is not the weakness of the Gospel, but the fragility of our frameworks and the depth of our own vanity.

For too long, we have operated with industrial metaphors that have shaped our very souls. We speak of “pipelines” of discipleship and “measurable outputs” of growth, as though the Kingdom of God were a production line and the Church its managerial arm. We have trained leaders to optimise systems rather than to discern seasons.

In doing so, we have absorbed a mechanistic imagination that is fundamentally at odds with the organic, interdependent, and cruciform life revealed in Christ. This is not just a strategic error; it is an ecological disaster of the spirit. We have lost the sense that the Church exists within a living, breathing web of relationships, with culture, with place, and with the “more-than-human” creation.

Ecosystems do not survive through self-perpetuation. They survive through mutuality, adaptation, decay, and regeneration. They survive because nothing lives unto itself. If we want to live, we have to learn how to die.

“Remember that you are dust” is not just an Ash Wednesday sentiment; it is a reorientation of the will. It reminds us that we are creatures, not curators of eternity; participants, not proprietors.

The ecological crisis of our planet has made this painfully visible, yet we often respond as though the “environment” were a peripheral ethical concern rather than a theological revelation. The groaning of creation is the drama of redemption. To persist with a spirituality that floats above the soil, detached from the material conditions of life, is to preach a diminished and false gospel.

For the Church, and for me, to undergo an “ecological conversion” means relinquishing the fantasy of control. It means accepting that some of our cherished institutions must die. Not because they were evil, but because their season is over. We must trust that in the ecology of God, nothing offered in faith is wasted, but becomes the compost for future growth.

The future Church will not be secured by better branding or more sophisticated leadership pipelines. It will emerge, if at all, from communities willing to be small, local, porous, and attentive to pain. It will be led by women and men who understand that authority in the Kingdom is inseparable from surrender. It will be a Church that measures fruit not in numbers, but in reconciliation, in ecological responsibility, and in justice enacted from the ground up, certainly not merely proclaimed from the House of Lords.

Sixteen years on, I am less convinced that the Church needs “rescuing” and more convinced that we need releasing form our addition to power and control and so be

  • Released from the burden of pretending the church or we are the centre of gravity.

  • Released from the anxiety that equates contraction with failure.

  • Released from the toxic need to be “useful” to the state.

What is required of us is not more frantic activity, and alignment of the existing active with the true nature of servanthood and courageous relinquishment. If the walls fall to dust, let them fall. The God who formed humanity from dust has never required masonry to accomplish divine purposes. Our task is not to preserve every structure we have inherited, but to discern what the Spirit is animating in this season and to align ourselves with that movement, however unsettling it may be for our careers or our egos. The question is not whether we can rebuild what has been lost, but whether we are willing to be re-formed by the One who makes all things new. Starting with me.

Grace and peace on the journey,

Richard

A posture for change

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The Church talks a great deal about change. We have strategies for it, consultations about it, anxiety around it, and occasionally conferences dedicated to it. And tbh I’m a great fan of developing a theory of change for organisations. What we rarely develop, however, is a posture for it.

Posture matters in leadership and culture change science, there is a growing recognition that organisations do not primarily change because they adopt new ideas. They change when their underlying habits, reflexes, and shared assumptions shift. It isn’t the new programme that makes the difference; it’s the new way of seeing.

Theologically, that shouldn’t surprise us. Jesus did not begin with a strategy but with a call. When God speaks to Abram in Book of Genesis 12, there is no five-year plan. There is only movement: “Go.” The people of God are formed not as managers of stability but as those attentive enough to move when called and learn on The Way.

The question for the contemporary Church is not simply, What should we do next?
It is, Who are we becoming so we are ready when we see the missio die and we can join in, either because of opportunities or because of a sense seeing?

In my experience, opportunities for renewal seldom arrive neatly labelled and in most cases they are rarley polite.

They appear as disruption. As complaint, a funding crisis, a new housing development on the edge of town, a lay leader with an inconvenient idea.

From a culture change perspective, these moments function as what systems thinkers call “adaptive challenges.” They cannot be solved by technical adjustment alone. They require new learning a level of power relinquishment and often a shift in identity.

And that is precisely where the Church often hesitates. We are guardians of memory we do do hold story, sacrament, and tradition. But when memory becomes preservation it becomes rooted I  fear.

The early church, as described in Acts of the Apostles, was not preserved by its structures rather fuelled by attentiveness. The Spirit disrupts them more often than comforts them. Philip finds himself on a desert road, the whole Peter’s theological framework and worldview is dismantled on a rooftop. Paul’s missionary journeys are redirected mid-course several times

So maybe Change is not primarily structural but spiritual. In organisational language, we speak about “readiness for change.” This is not about capacity alone. It is about trust.

Do people trust one another enough to experiment?
Do they trust leadership enough to risk?
Do they trust God enough to release control?

With trust, even loss can become generative because people don’t fear change they fear loss  The risen Christ still bears scars. Change, in the Christian imagination, is rarely clean. It is redemptive precisely because it carries continuity within transformation.

If we want to be ready for the opportunities that will arise then we must cultivate certain postures long before the moment arrives.

1. Curiosity over defensiveness

Cultures that thrive in change ask better questions. Instead of “How do we stop this?” they ask, “What might God be doing here?” Curiosity disarms anxiety. It slows reactivity. It allows discernment.

2. Distributed ownership

Change science consistently demonstrates that transformation sticks when ownership is shared. If readiness depends on a single heroic leader, it is fragile. If it is embedded in the culture of who we are as church and people it is resilient.

3. Experimentation without panic

Healthy systems run small experiments. They prototype. They learn. They iterate. The Church, at her best, has always done this. Monastic movements, Methodist class meetings, fresh expressions of worship, none began as dominant models. They began as responses. But experimentation requires permission to fail. And failure requires a theology spacious enough to absorb it.

4. Interior grounding

No amount of strategic clarity compensates for unexamined fear and even though people have named that much of the current strategy is rooted in institutional anxiety I’m sill not sure the impact has been fully examined.

If leaders are internally anxious, the system absorbs it. If leaders are grounded, in prayer, in community, in a secure sense of belovedness, the system can use uncertainty well even as an asset. Perhaps solitude and attentiveness need to become not luxuries but infrastructure. The leader who knows they are held does not grasp for control.

Despite my activist nature we do not need to chase every opportunity, readiness is not restlessness. To develop a posture for change is not to become reactive or trend-driven rather it is to become attentive. So when the Spirit disturbs our settled patterns our posture sees the opportunity.

Even before opportunity arises formation will shapes the future and the future of the Church is being formed long before it is revealed. In quiet PCC meetings we build trust, we form leaders who choose prayer over panic and congregations who practise curiosity rather than complaint. Let’s grow communities willing to bless what is emerging without clinging to what is fading. Change readiness is not achieved through urgency but cultivated through formation. The question, then, is not whether change will come but whether we will have become the kind of people who can recognise it as gift rather than threat.

Communion as training

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Faith communities have always been exercise grounds for resistant hope. In the cracks of empire, the early followers of Jesus broke bread and imagined life beyond Caesar’s reach. What if their gathering wasn’t simply a meal, what if it was training? A strengthening of the moral and spiritual fibres of hope that keep us reaching for the unseen alternative, even while our feet are still planted in the old order.

To dream is not to escape. It is to remember that the structures around us are not the whole story or even like a star that dies before it’s light reaches us  the current empire might already be dead. Dreaming of justice, of communion, of the future possible, is both an act of imagination and of resistance. It helps us see that what is, does not have the final word. Hope, then, is not naïve optimism but the slow work of building spiritual muscle memory for what could be.

And perhaps quiet longing of communion, holds us both securely and precariously. Securely, because it ties us to one another in a web of belonging that mirrors the creation. Precariously, because real communion demands vulnerability, and vulnerability always risks loss.

We are both held and stretched at once. The table, the shared dream, these are both anchor and edge. Perhaps that is why hope is never static. It aches, strains, and strengthens in the same breath.

To exercise hope and communion then, is to keep turning toward one another in our shared longing. It is to keep dreaming stubbornly of the alternative hidden beneath the noise of now. It is to live as if the world God loves might yet be remade, one hopeful muscle at a time

To places we have never been before

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Paul Bradbury’s recent reflection on moving beyond empire reminds us how deeply Western mission has been entangled with universalising instincts, the drive to export methods, models, or mindsets far beyond where they first belonged. His question, “How might we save the world without conquering it?” pushes us toward a more humble, localised, and participatory understanding of mission. It’s a call that echoes strongly with what I argued in my previous post what works, works because it is contextual.

If empire seeks control of space, then contextual mission seeks communion IN space. In other words, mission faithful to the gospel begins not with scale but with soil. It roots itself in place but years of contextual mission,following the missio dei and the incarnation has taught us place needs to be understood broadly. Contextually shaped mission is about both “communities of place” and “communities of interest”, and in both these, space matters or perhaps more precisely the space between matters.

Space as the Ground of Context

For communities of place, context is pretty straight forward it’s bounded by postcodes, pavements, local histories, and particular faces. Here, “listening to context” means walking the streets, dwelling among, noticing the patterns of belonging and exclusion, paying attention to how the Spirit stirs through daily life. The missional question is spatial: How is God already at work here?

But the same is true for communities of interest those gathered by vocation, affinity, digital connection, or shared passion. These are not disembodied spaces; they are differently embodied. They occupy networked space, an online forum, a workplace, a music scene, a shared narrative world. These spaces, too, have boundaries, cultures, and ecologies of meaning that also require listening, care, and presence.

To be contextual here means learning the topography of these less tangible places the rituals that shape belonging, the language that signals trust, the injustices and hopes that animate people. This too is place work. Contextual mission is not about being “place-based” versus “network-based”; it is about recognising that space and particularly the space in between is the texture of all context.

The Space Between: From Ownership to Participation

Empire’s imagination is to fill space to occupy, to own, to organise territory. Contextual imagination leaves space, space for others to speak, for grace to emerge, for co-creation. This is not the space of empire, this is the space of incarnation: God dwelling, not dominating; participating, not possessing. 

In our current moment, where both geography and culture feel unsettled, perhaps the task is not to create new models of church or even parish, but to nurture new ecologies of space, perhaps even Brave Spaces of Community and Conversation, porous enough to hold the complexity of both rooted neighbourhoods and fluid networks of meaning.

Context is not an afterthought, It isthe space where the gospel takes shape. So maybe the better question isn’t simply “What works?” but “Where does mission dwell?” Because where mission dwells, (whether a community of place or interest)  determines how God’s story is spoken and heard, and when we listen and join in we go to a new place we have been before. 

Today’s heresy, Tomorrow’s orthodoxy letting the Holy Spirit is ruin our comms plan!

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I’ve always been fascinated by the role language plays in meaning making and for several years my walk of faith has been helped by entering into dialogue with nature through of emerging church space Mountain Pilgrims. Thomas Berry suggests humanity has broken The Great Conversation, the deep, ongoing dialogue between humans, the more-than-human world, and the wider universe.  We talk a lot, but mostly to ourselves and church is no different to any other eco chamber. It has developed a sophisticated internal language but often struggles to hear, let alone respond to, the voices of culture, creation and those at the edges questioning what counts as “orthodox.”

Berry’s concern was not simply about ecology but about language. When only one way of speaking is recognised as valid, everything else gets pushed to the margins.  That resonates with our ecclesial habits. The church has learned to privilege certain kinds of words, authorised, platformed, “sound” and to distrust improvisation, lived experience, and wild metaphors that do not fit existing systems.  I know even writing this several people will comment on how I’ve lost the plot, gone mad and am talking to trees again. The result is a narrowing of conversation and, with it, a shrinking of imagination.

One thing thirty years of mission has taught me is that that like G-d, Language is not a museum piece; it is a living, mutating thing, constant in its movement even when the printed page pretends otherwise.  Berry’s work suggests that meaning arises in the between in relationships, exchanges, frictions rather than in frozen statements detached from place and encounter.  If that is true, then a church that tries to manage its language purely through control (doctrinal, institutional, reputational) ends up disconnecting its words from the world they were meant to serve.

A similar concern sits behind recent reflections on how church handles its public voice: the drift from conversation into messaging, from mutuality into management.  When our words exist mainly as outputs, strategies, statements, carefully curated content, we are no longer participating in language as a shared, risky, evolving practice. We have moved from speaking with to speaking at.

The irony is that the Christian tradition, at its best, already knows that meaning is relational. The gospel of John points to Logos not as a static “word” dropped from the sky, but as a dynamic, relational presence through whom all things come into being.

Orthodoxy should be a faithful emerging conversation but too often it is treated as a fixed package, a set of statements that must remain untouched in order to be “true.”  But if God is encountered in history, in bodies, in place, then faithfulness cannot be about freezing language; it has to be about staying in truthful conversation as the world changes. This does not mean anything goes but it does mean that orthodoxy cannot be maintained by shutting down dialogue with those who unsettle us. The temptation is always to label the troubling voices as “unorthodox” so we don’t have to listen. But perhaps the deeper danger is a church that can repeat the right phrases while refusing the great conversation where the Spirit might be speaking in unfamiliar accents.

If orthodoxy is reframed as fidelity-in-movement, then the test of soundness shifts. The questions being asked are more about if this way of speaking or being deepens love of God, neighbour, and creation, or does it protect systems at their expense?  This is a very different conversation from a lot of what I hear and ff the church is to re-enter the great conversation, who or what are are the conversation partners we need need. None of these named below are new, but each reveals how thin our language becomes when separated from encounter.

1. With the more-than-human world

Creation is often reduced to backdrop or resource in church practice, something we “use” or “care for,” but rarely someone we listen to.  Emerging eco-liturgies, “wild church” practices and place-based spirituality are tentative attempts to let rivers, soil, seasons and species become conversation partners rather than illustrations.  What happens to orthodoxy when the groans of creation are treated not as background noise but as part of the community’s discernment?

2. With decolonising and marginal voices

Mission history has trained Western churches to imagine themselves as speakers and others as listeners.  Decolonising work insists that the roles must be reversed, or at least shared: theologies forged in colonised, racialised, and economically marginalised contexts need not only to be “included” but allowed to interrogate and reshape what the centre calls orthodox.

3. With shifting identities and bodies

Conversations around gender, sexuality, neurodiversity and family structures are often handled through statements rather than stories.  People are turned into “issues,” and language is deployed to control rather than to understand. Yet if the body of Christ is genuinely diverse, then these lives and experiences are not detachable from theology; they are part of the place where theology happens.  Staying in conversation here may mean discovering that some of our long-held assumptions were more cultural than Christlike.

4. With digital and symbolic worlds

Digital culture is not simply another channel for church messaging; it is a habitat where new forms of presence, authority and belonging are emerging.  Online communities, memes, gaming, AI, are all forming people’s imaginations long before they meet a sermon. A church that only uses these spaces to broadcast pre-formed content refuses the opportunity to learn a new dialect of human longing and connection.  Conversation here would mean showing up not as brand but as neighbour.

Berry writes of the need for a “new language” that can draw humans back into a mutually enhancing relationship with the rest of the community of life.  That newness is less about inventing clever phrases and more about recovering humility and recognising that our words must once again be accountable to the earth, to history, to those who suffer under our systems.

Perhaps this is where pioneers and locally rooted parishes have role: to keep pointing to the gaps between our official language and the real conversations happening at the edges.  To remind the church that the Spirit has always been ahead of us, out in the wild, teaching new words to those willing to listen.

Re-entering the great conversation will mean losing some of the safety that comes from tightly managed speech. It will also mean discovering that orthodoxy is not a fragile artefact to be defended, but a living stream kept fresh precisely because it flows through new landscapes, picks up new sediments, and keeps finding its way back to the sea and the source.

Competition, Can Rivalries Spark Renewal

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The fourth in the series recognises that Competition is a difficult word for the church. In the wild, animals compete for food and territory, and this tension drives adaptation. But in the church, competition often feels like a zero-sum game, who’s in charge, who gets the most members, who has the best worship, more often fuelled by anxiety than faith. That anxiety can choke creativity, turning vibrant missions into mini turf wars.
Most leadership and systems theory tell us that a little healthy tension can actually sharpen identity and purpose. When churches see competition as a sign they’re uniquely called to a specific community rather than a threat, it becomes a motivator for innovation. Differentiation becomes a deliberate act of mission, each expression carving out its niche while still remaining connected to the larger body.

“Healthy organizations are understood not by their sameness but by their capacity to differentiate and adapt.”—Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline.
A good example is church communities that focus on specific demographics, one for families, another for artists, another for students, each pursuing its calling without envy or encroachment. Leaders who nurture this healthy diversity, rather than fear it, foster resilience and growth. It’s about creating a culture where competition spurs mutual encouragement, not jealousy or conflict.

The challenge lies in maintaining clarity amidst tension. Leaders must set clear boundaries of mission, respect differences, and celebrate each community’s unique contribution. And they must do it with humility, acknowledging that competition is a signal to sharpen the focus, not a reason to divide. In the end, competition when set alongside the other ecological discussed in the previous post, can be a crucible for innovation, clarity and sustainability. It reminds us that the church’s strength isn’t uniformity but a diversity of callings that, when held well, strengthen the whole.

Parasitism: Knowing When to Draw the Line

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Hopefully the series isn’t turning dark but maybe we need to be honest. In nature, parasitism is always a delicate matter. It’s where one organism benefits at the expense of another, ticks on deer or fungus creeping over plants. It’s messy and often damaging if left unchecked. In our churches, parasitism shows up when one community siphons off energy, resources, or leadership from another, without giving anything back.
It’s a quiet, often hidden relationship and at first glance, it may seem mutually beneficial, but over time, the imbalance saps the life from the system. When a fresh expression relies heavily on inherited church resources, be it finances, leadership, or space without sharing or investing in its own growth, it may drift into parasitism and kill the host. At the same time we need to remember that story of Christ is one of death and resurrection so some things need to die well, so there is a gospel tension here.

Leadership must be attentive to boundaries. That’s not about walls, it’s about creating rhythms of renewal where all parts are healthy. Systems thinking teaches us that feedback loops are vital; if one part expends more energy than it reinvests, the entire system risks collapse. Leaders on all sides need to ask: ‘Are we enabling life-giving relationships, or are some parts draining others?’
Shifting from parasitism to health involves honest conversations and clear boundaries around resource sharing and leadership roles. It also involves a culture of accountability, where both old and new expressions pay what they can, contribute their strengths, and recognise their limits.

“Good governance doesn’t focus only on what to do — it emphasizes what not to do. Boundaries protect the system’s integrity and promote resilience.” — Adapted from Heifetz & Linsky, Leadership on the Line.
In practical terms church plant that uses a traditional church’s building for free, but then drains the church’s hospitality team, without sharing in planning or resourcing, risks exhaustion. Leaders must gently reframe this, encouraging mutual investment rather than drain. Healthy mixed ecology churches grow in trust and respect, not dependence or exhaustion.
In the end, parasitism teaches us that boundaries are not barriers but safeguards, protecting life, ensuring that each expression of church can flourish without becoming overly dependent or destructive.

Commensalism – Quiet Hospitality in the Shared Space

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Continuing the series, one of the gentler relationships in nature is commensalism, the barnacle clinging to the whale’s back, the harmless epiphyte perched high in the trees. The host doesn’t lose; the guest gains a foothold. It’s subtle, unobtrusive, and rarely draws attention.

In the mixed ecology church, commensalism invites us to think about hospitality as a spacious, patient practice. Sometimes new worshipping communities, fresh expressions, or mission experiments find their home quietly alongside inherited churches, sharing the same space, maybe even the same pews. They get to try things out without demanding change or disruption. The traditional church hosts; the newcomer explores.
This is the art of supporting difference without crisis or competition. Systems thinking offers a helpful lens here: this relationship is a form of facilitative hosting that allows new life to enter the system with minimal disruption, it’s low-risk experimentation. It’s a testbed for innovation, a holding pattern for growth.

Leadership here isn’t about control but generosity. It’s creating receptive spaces that respond to emerging needs in the community. As Margaret Wheatley reminds us, “Leadership is not about control but about creating an environment where new possibilities can emerge.”

Practical examples are peppered through the history of church life. Take the laundry ministry in St. Cloud, Minnesota, part of a traditional parish but reaching neighbours unlikely to walk through the church door. They borrow a local laundromat, offer food and prayer, gradually building trust and belonging. The church hosts this venture without co-opting or reshaping it. It is hospitality without strings, a living metaphor for commensalism.
Yet, commensalism requires care not to slip into parasitism; hosts must offer space without fatigue, and guests must be mindful of their footprint. Systemic health depends on this delicate balance.
Hospitality in mixed ecology is, then, an invitation to host without ownership, to support without smothering, to share space and life with kindness and openness.

Five Ecological Lessons for a Mixed Ecology Church

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Church life often longs for order and predictability. Yet the garden outside my window or better still the fells a short drive away are wild and tangled, and reveal another truth. Life flourishes in relationships that are messy, uneven, and interconnected. In reality the mixed ecology church, a community where inherited forms of church exist alongside new, experimental expressions will be similarly messy. But how do these different expressions relate without stifling one another? What patterns might help them grow together, not apart?

Nature offers us five such relational patterns that guide growth and resilience: mutualism, commensalism, parasitism, competition, and cooperation. Each reveals different ways life flourishes through connection, sometimes in surprising and challenging ways. Over the next few weeks, I’ll explore each relationship, drawing from ecology, not just for metaphor’s sake, but as a living guide. Along the way, I’ll try to offer some leadership insights and systems thinking, because growing a mixed ecology church inevitably is also about patterns and structures as well as people.

The five patterns explored will begin with mutualism, where both partners give and receive, flourishing together through reciprocity. Next, commensalism invites us to practice quiet hospitality a kind of support without burden. Parasitism teaches the necessity of boundaries that protect the life of the whole. Competition, uncomfortable as it feels, can spur creativity and clarity. And finally, cooperation invites us into pragmatic alliances that bind us around shared purpose.

What if the church took these relationships seriously and rather than simply sitting with the metaphor of the mixed ecology we started to embody it and see what we can learn from our non human counterparts.