Back in 2021, the Rev. Canon Dr. Herb O’Driscoll (1928-2024) served as the speaker (by Zoom) to our annual clergy conference for the Diocese of Kootenay and the Territory of the People.
O’Driscoll spoke on a wide range of matters pertaining to carrying the Good News of the Gospel into the 21st century. I found him very encouraging in his emphasis on the centrality of the faith resting always in Christ, while being constantly attentive to current trends in culture. “Christianity is Christ!” he reminded us – and from that centre he spoke of moving into the world with an eye to carrying grace amid the ‘deeply shadowed world’ we encounter along the way.
I found it particularly interesting that one of the cultural matters O’Driscoll highlighted as demanding attention was that of the rise of AI – Artificial Intelligence. That was 2021. Since then, of course, ChatGPT and other AI frameworks have come into increasing prominence. A quick search on the WIRED magazine website is enough to paint the picture of how much ink has been spilled in reckoning with the rise of this new reality.
If this is a trend, it is one that has exploded and seemingly dominates every horizon, especially causing worry in its unpredictability. Where is this going? Will it come to so dominate our horizon that everything will be run through the artificial rather than the human? Will we be able to tell artifice from art, fake from truth? Will the ‘intelligence’ in the (computer) cloud turn out to be more than information-processing at such a high level as to become an active agent that we will come to be dominated by it?
Many questions. The question O’Driscoll raised bothered me and has stuck with me. Partly because it is now simply a given – it is an inescapable new reality in the world.
But it is also a new reality generated by ourselves. We have created the cloud into which our data has been uploaded and resides. It is in that cloud that it is processed, chewed up and spat back out – affecting us in new ways, both good and bad.
The season of Epiphany also concludes with a cloud – in the Transfiguration on the Mountain: “While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” (Luke 9:4-5)
It strikes me that this is a witness to both transcendent mystery and grounded wisdom for the sake of the world: “Christianity is Christ!” And that must be carried into the world as a gift of grace that breaks forth new light.
An epiphany entails illumination. Epiphany illumines what has already been revealed. It breaks forth new wisdom but it is wisdom from the depths of God-With-Us, even and perhaps especially in the midst of fear and uncertainty. The light of Christ “shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
So what I’m pondering in Epiphany is how to cultivate that mystery – a “cloud of unknowing” if you will – that stands out as a gift for the sake of a wise humility and generates a wise humanity that will not simply be consumed by a cold cloud of uploaded data (even if shaken and stirred), but will remain open to the wisdom of being creatures in communion with the Creator.
