Word in Flesh

So here’s a fun little experiment: pick up a book of essays written in the late 1990s about the intersection of faith and science and parse the references to impending Artificial Intelligence against the podcast you just heard about the current AI’s place within human existence. And then do a little Hebrew word study. That, my friends, is what I call a Thursday.

The quote that caught me was found in Barbara Brown Taylor’s The Luminous Web: Essays on Science and Religion (of which its second publishing was the year 2000 – you know, that time when we were stock-piling dry goods because of Y2K?) She was quoting another scientist, Rodney Brooks, who said, “a disembodied intelligence cannot experience the world as humans do… Only through experience as a physical being can smart robots develop emotions… which are essential for a truly intelligent being.”

This is not something that Yuval Noah Harari highlighted in his interview on Armchair Expert. Harari didn’t bring up embodiment, but he did make my heart beat faster when he spoke of the power of editing as an essential feature throughout human history. He reminds us that not all thoughts need elevated. The role of the editor – be it in journalism or otherwise – is holding ideas and asking if they need to be created into a thing.

This is a deeply spiritual and ancient idea. In the ancient Hebrew language, the word for “word” is davar, which also means “thing.” In the Hebrew mind, words have as much substance any thing. Indeed, words are the creative energy of the world. In the Genesis story, it’s all about how God uses a word and a thing appeared.

But it’s more than just abracadabra (a mismash of Hebrew believed to mean “I will create as I speak”). That creative energy orders things. The emergence of the heavens and the Earth of Genesis 1 is an ordering of Chaos (the Tohu Va-Vohu).

When you take this idea, that you speak things into existence, and you hold it against the function of AI at the current day – a chatGPT that you command, with words, what you’re looking for and it uses an expansive knowledgebase from the digital world to create a document or image – and we’re starting to get a lot more God-like.

Of course, we’ve always held the power the create with words; they mostly developed in the mental/emotional world before emerging into the physical. We could speak a complement into a person, but it had to be circulated through their heart and mind before we saw the physical manifestation with a light in their eyes or a lift of their posture. Coaches and teachers have that magical power to create with words – I had the most fascinating conversation with a higher-level coach about how changing the way she spoke to her player changed the way the player was able to perform physically at the game. We humans have always joined God in the co-creative power to make things – and we’ve used human bodies to see them created. (And now you know why becoming a yoga teacher was the natural next progression of ministry.)

So join me for a moment in John 1:14: The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

John starts his letter reminding folks that In the Beginning (literally: Genesis), the Word was with God and the Word was God…. through him all things were made; without him nothing was made.

Creation involves bodies. Bodies of water, bodies of land, bodies of flesh, bodies of thought, bodies of work. Words become things. God said it, and it was. We speak it, and it becomes.

If Brooks was right, way back before I was learning to drive, then AI’s power remains useless without humans. The entire enterprise is built upon the human initiative to give it orders. My cousin, who professionally dwells in the digital world, told me post-podcast share, “AI cannot invent a lie. It doesn’t invent, it can only decide among what it knows. And it employs that decision making mechanically without emotion.”

Humans remain supreme over AI as long as they lack bodies, where emotion lives. This is the difference between intelligence and actual life: embodiment.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

That which creates became created. The very act of creation becomes created. The source of the idea that a two-footed creature needed approximately 10 individual toes – bones, muscle, tendons, nerves, with a little protective nail on top that we can decorate if we wish – in order to balance upright, that source put on toes and walked around in them. That source experienced the plight of ingrown toenails and wondered, “whose idea was this?!” That source of such an idea did not just command it from above – that source lived it from within.

Barbara Brown Taylor writes in this outdated but delightful little book, “When truth and belief come into conflict, it is better to change one’s belief to fit the truth than to change the truth to fit one’s belief.” She’s citing a scientist there, who I’m sure had no idea what the movement of faith deconstruction would look like 30 years later.

As one who has rode the waves of deconstruction yet remains tethered to a buoy of truth, these ancient but essential ideas are much of what continues to anchor me to Jesus: Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing.

Creative, generative energy that gives me life also lives within me and also lives beside me.

As Eugene Peterson wrote it in his translation of John 1: The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.

I continue to read and pursue science not as a reason to continue to deconstruct my faith, but rather to give me insight on exactly what I’m choosing to believe as I understand truth. Our technology and human development in general will continue to take us down a path of asking how the notion of God is relevant when so much can be artificially be created. If AI can make an image on command, why would we cozy up to the idea of a celestial being that doesn’t have a predictable alogorithm?

For me, it’s the word becoming flesh. AI doesn’t stay up at night fearing for the future of its children. ChatGPT doesn’t relive its mistakes with a sense of regret. The experience in a body of feeling tension and ease, delight and remorse are where we find life. The tears that fall when holding a yearned-for newborn or grieving a practically-perfect mother are what remind us that we are human and this matters.

My only way to experience this world is through my body. The space/time continuum requires a physicality and flesh and blood is its vehicle. Our ability to feel it all keeps us human.

Remix

what I want my daughter to know about relationships with men What I want my children to know about relationships with a partner

Originally posted January 16, 2011

The right guy person at the wrong time is still the wrong guy person.
You need to be “me” before you can be “we”.
You become like the people you are around the most; ask, “do I want to become more like him this person?”
If s/he loves you, s/he’ll never say “If you love me…”
People can change. Not all of them do.
Never use sex as a weapon or a tool.
It’s better to be alone and content than with someone and miserable.
If you have to lie to your family and friends about him a person, he’s the person is probably not a great catch.
It’s never okay to [be] hit.
There’s NOTHING wrong with you.
Sometimes, “like the other girls” shouldn’t be the goal.
Don’t look at his the resume, look at his the heart. Just because s/he meets “minimum qualifications” or “seems perfect for you” doesn’t mean you have to date.
Yes, sometimes “good guys” are boring. And keeping up with a rebel can be exhausting.
Most divorces result from arguments about money and sex. Watch carefully how s/he talks about, uses or values these things.
There’s a difference between “perfect” and “healthy”.
Learn how to fight fair.
Stand up for yourself. And learn to say “I’m sorry.”
If s/he doesn’t encourage (which can include challenging) your faith, you’ll probably end up bored or frustrated.

Edited to add:
You will change. So will they.
A person will never solve your problems.
You are your own hero.
It’s always okay to ask for help.

The Plight of the Elder

If you’re a person that pays attention to the stars and planets, you’ll know that when I say I’m a Libra (both sun and moon), it’s an indicator that fairness is a value to me. The sign of the libra is literally a scale.

I’m a 4 on the enneagram. And as we 4s tend to do, when I’m in a healthy place, I exhibit the best of the 1 in a search for justice and equality. When under stress and more reactive, I take on the worst of the 2: angry martyr.

As I move about in the world, this sense of what is right and just is like that classic angel/devil on my shoulder. I’m critical of when people don’t uphold their responsibility. I would say with disgust in my work life, How can that phone interviewer just dish their slots to their CRM? They were scheduled! Or, in public, How can that person just jump to the open cashier when clearly the next person in line should be the one to go first? Even though I teach my kids both verbally and with action that fair does not mean same I still tend to have a lot of sameness in my parenting approach.

Also, I’m an oldest child.

The parable of Luke 15 is a tough one for me. If you’re not fresh on your Biblical addresses, it’s the one where the younger son asks for an early inheritance and frolics about the cities until he runs out of money. He decides to come home and his dad celebrates his return.

The typical teaching on this story is about how much grace God will show us when we’re stupid. And it’s true. I’m down with this teaching, I find it compelling. Also, the idea of spending any money without conscious forethought and practical consideration puts me into a panic attack, let alone when it’s spent on things of only enjoyment rather than utility. So it’s not the “application point” I’m looking for.

So, no. I don’t identify with that part of the story. I like that part of God, but I’m not the classical screw-up who finds peace in such extreme forgiveness.

I’m much more the type who likes to earn her grace.

So when I read about the older son sulking in the barn while the party music is playing much too loud, thank you, I get it. He did the right thing. He took care of the family farm. He met and likely even exceeded expectations.

And he was brutally unhappy.

“…he answered his father, ‘Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!”

Luke 15:29-30

For a certain number of us people in the population, this attitude feels righteous. This story about doing the selfish thing and doing the right thing ends on its head. It makes you ask the question: why would I ever want to do the right thing?

And then I catch myself saying it out loud, and it reveals the problem. Why would I ever want to do the right thing? Gee, I don’t know Michele. Because it’s right? It’s good. It adds beauty and structure and it moves the world in the direction of wholeness.

Even when it’s hard. Even when others don’t. Even when it feels unfair, doing the right thing for the sake of goodness is still a good thing. Nearly all spiritual traditions agree that living a life focused on little efforts but big rewards is a shallow existence. I have a hunch that those of us with Effort and Reward ScorecardsTM are living the shallowest, even when we’re putting in more than “our share” of the efforts.

In the story, the father has a graceful response to the eldest, too.

“‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.”

Luke 15:31

First: you are always with me.

The older son was so wrapped up in his sense of duty that he missed the delight of spending his life alongside his treasured father. He was caught up in the reward of doing good being more than the goodness itself.

Perhaps we miss joy because we’re bogged down by the duty and it suffocates the delight. We say that we “have to” and not that we “get to.” We begin to believe that other endeavors would be better because they seem easier, when really all endeavors require effort and energy and work. Wouldn’t it be best to put forth those efforts in the company of the ones you love most?

Then: all that is mine is yours.

Baked into this passage is a shift in perspective from scarcity to abundance. It begins with dividing an inheritance, but what it’s really about is favor and love. If you love him this much to forgive such ignorance, will there be enough for me? You already gave him his half, are you going to give him mine? How can we both fit into your heart?

As a mother of many, I know that your heart doesn’t divide with more children, it multiplies. Loving one child doesn’t decrease the love for another. Love isn’t a fresh peach pie which needs divided into slivers and doled out based upon who gets there first or who worked the hardest.

But in a world that asks you to produce, perform and perfect, hustling for worthiness, that simply doesn’t make sense. As an oldest child with a master’s in practicality, such an abundant existence isn’t my nature. It’s a perspective I have to stencil into my skin and recite every day.

You are always with me and all that I have is yours.

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