Readings: Genesis 2:5-7, John 4:21-26, 1 Corinthians 15:45-49.

Marianne Williamson said in her book ‘Return to Love’ ‘Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.’ I wonder, do we feel powerful? In the day-to-day ordinariness of life, I suspect like most it does not even cross our minds that what we do matters. That what we do shapes the world around us. Yet everything touched by human hand was shaped by a thought, an idea that began in the mind of another person.

In Canterbury the flow of feet that have stood on this ground, the hands that have touched these walls and the mouths that have spoken in the space that we are – each has in some way, known or unknown to us now, moved and shaped the physical, tangible reality that is the external to us, as well as the hearts of the human family past, present and future to which we belong.

This is part of the heritage of an ancient and sacred space like this one, that sense of entering into our belonging to the deepest part of ourselves, the human part which carries the heights of beauty and depths of the darkest trials to God; of whom St Anselm says is that ‘than which nothing greater can be conceived’. We come here to feel close to God, to belong to that which is greater than ourselves; in worship, in prayer – to dream, to cry.

Yet much has been said of late about the existential threats to our shared futures; artificial intelligence being one of the biggest of them. The fears embrace the possibility of a ‘human extinction or an equally permanent and severe disempowerment.’ (Benjamin Hilton: Preventing an AI-related catastrophe). Therefore, what is required (and perhaps why developers have announced a pause) is a conscious evolution. A conversation that we all need to be a part of.

One aspect of AI chatbots, with their sophisticated language programming, is that they can allow for a range of relationships. Recently I watched a video about three women who having chosen the relationship setting reminded us of the movie ‘Her’ released in 2013 when a writer falls in love with his AI system. It made me wonder how much the language of our art enters into and penetrates the consciousness of society. Life shaped by our ability to imagine or dream our future – life imitating art – life created by a human idea.

In these chatbots the user has the power to create their avatar, that is to design as it were their perfect partner with which to enter into this AI relationship. Here perhaps lies the greatest danger of all, the belief that there exists such a thing, a perfect human being or a perfect relationship. In developing these one-way emotional bonds, power is corrupted in that it goes over and above the other. This is not love but a dictatorship, a tyranny of the self over an imagined other. The problem with living in this simulation is the habitual thought patterns and behaviours that individuals would take out into a real-world scenario whereby they encounter another soul.

There exists a real danger of embedding an egocentrism into our hearts when we were never meant to think that true meaning in our lives existed except by the relationship of one soul to another. All the contradictions of life’s ups and downs are resolved in walking the shared path of love, because it is love itself that gives us all meaning. And love alone that creates the true self in the likeness of Jesus.

Yet, to be like Jesus is not to imitate in the sense that we go about ‘rebuking’ our brothers and sisters, because that is false seeing, a lifting of ourselves to His position, rather than becoming humble servants (Philippians 2:3-11). To become a true likeness of God, we seek not to speak in order to be heard, but listen to understand, and embracing diversity of souls is accepting a ‘self-restraint’, or hesitation, which is to be consciously ‘awake’ to our neighbour and their needs.

Therefore, relationships open to love as ‘all things working together for each other’ is a good, and evil is a moving without or for our neighbour; a carrying only of ourselves on the path through life – which is essentially to break the bridge of connection between us, to leave a gap that ‘individuals’ cannot cross alone. (Luke 16:26 and Luke 17:33).

The ancient meeting point between God and man was the mountain, yet in our scripture when Jesus says the time is coming, we are alerted to the present because the time is now a time of gathering, of coming together as we are now inside the cathedral. So, the mountain and the church are a place of relationship which is ultimately every place we move out of ourselves. The ‘I am’ who is in the world cannot exist apart from it. Whichever line of transcendence we take, up towards the sky or across the earth to the other, is ultimately a bridge across time, and a movement through life to death.

Participation in the space between us becomes the place of opening up the mysterious depths of our being, the revealing of ourselves through our movement, and speaking. The bridge that place of discovering who we are in relation to the other. By permitting another’s gaze to penetrate into the depths of our soul, we allow for the possibility of a spark to ignite a flame in their eyes. To be loved and known through them as they are known and loved through us.

How can there be this opening without surrender? Intimacy must be vulnerable, an unknowing of what might be, the submission to the mystery concealed within the other, learning to dance and co-create within a new space that is not our own. An unframing of all that was to rest in an unfolding.

So, rest is in our creativity and the rhythms we create between us and all that is other. The heavenly chorus of music is in our liturgy and our souls as a moment of breathing together. Perhaps this shapes our seeing of the difference between Being as love and a dancing with desire, the latter needing satisfaction yet love pausing because love seeks to know the other not for the end of pleasure in itself.

People are not empty, soulless objects like human-like AI replicas. Love, gentle and patient, is like an open house, where we are safe to be or become who we are. So, when Rainer Maria Rilke, in his Letters to a Young Poet said ‘each protects the solitude of the other’ did not mean the keeping of distance or separation, but that place of safety to be whoever we are. Each of us is a cause and a harbour of effects.

If life is a process of ‘soul formation’ so that arriving at the gate of heaven all is clearly seen and known, this means that all our thoughts, speaking and other bodily actions we perceive as done to others are actually done to ourselves, (James 3:5). Therefore acting upon an AI is like pushing against a void, a staring into an abyss.

Then we are to love not for what we ever hope the other to be in relation to ourselves, the essence of enframing, but love because of the unconcealment of their own particularity. A revelation of love in their freedom. So Being as love, is perhaps an image of the Creator Himself, something beyond our grasp like death and time.

Love therefore never possesses, for we can take nothing with us, so the freedom to be and move within the other is a coming of heaven to earth, a gathering of a transcendent reality. Earth to sky, and in Jesus fully mortal fully Divine we move towards His image in the other. The cross also that meeting point of Love and death held together, the beginning and the end brought to the now.

God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7).

We, remade in the image of the heavenly man that is Jesus, do we see that we were made in the stars, and once carried by the wind? When we still ourselves and look up to the sun, do we wonder if the space within us belongs to the sky, or does it remain with our feet – captive to the dust that moves with the earth? Perhaps, we might think, it is our will that sets both free? If we realise that in belonging to all above and below, we are both ancient and new, perhaps our longing is left solely for love? To be loved because we exist, because we breathe. Longing, not for the productivity of this age but for a uselessness that is beautiful like the starlight that falls into our eyes.

Perhaps this is creation, the concept – a movement that takes us to the beginning of love.

Amen.

Link to video: My AI lover | Psyche Films