Christian witness

I am proud to be an Episcopalian, and grateful. Since Bishop Budde's plea for mercy from an administration determined to institutionalize cruelty, I've been inspired by our diocesan bishops' strong defense of DEI at a time when many institutions are caving (building on important work challenging the sin of Christian nationalism) . Now our Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe has responded to the moral outrage of the administration's offering asylum to Afrikaners - and at a time when all other refugees are being turned away. His letter was reprinted in our parish bulletin today. Here's a taste:

Since January, the previously bipartisan U.S. Refugee Admissions Program in which we participate has essentially shut down. Virtually no new refugees have arrived, hundreds of staff in resettlement agencies around the country have been laid off, and funding for resettling refugees who have already arrived has been uncertain. Then, just over two weeks ago, the federal government informed Episcopal Migration Ministries that under the terms of our federal grant, we are expected to resettle white Afrikaners from South Africa whom the U.S. government has classified as refugees. 

In light of our church’s steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, we are not able to take this step. Accordingly, we have determined that, by the end of the federal fiscal year, we will conclude our refugee resettlement grant agreements with the U.S. federal government. 

I want to be very clear about why we made this decision—and what we believe lies ahead for Episcopal Migration Ministries’ vital work. 

It has been painful to watch one group of refugees, selected in a highly unusual manner, receive preferential treatment over many others who have been waiting in refugee camps or dangerous conditions for years. I am saddened and ashamed that many of the refugees who are being denied entrance to the United States are brave people who worked alongside our military in Iraq and Afghanistan and now face danger at home because of their service to our country. I also grieve that victims of religious persecution, including Christians, have not been granted refuge in recent months. 

As Christians, we must be guided not by political vagaries, but by the sure and certain knowledge that the kingdom of God is revealed to us in the struggles of those on the margins. Jesus tells us to care for the poor and vulnerable as we would care for him, and we must follow that command. Right now, what that means is ending our participation in the federal government’s refugee resettlement program and investing our resources in serving migrants in other ways. 

While the government is perverted to serve the most transparently white nationalist of causes, it is inspiring to be part of a community able and willing to stand up for justice and reconciliation.

AI inflection points

On the AI front I've had disheartening and heart-expanding experiences in the last day. 

Disheartening was my confusion on receiving a clearly AI-written final paper. I didn't want to accuse the student directly so I sent a response noting the curious absence of quotations and the disconnect from our class discussions, and offered (why?) an opportunity to resubmit. As two students whose papers were AI-slick did earlier in the semester, this student is taking me up on the offer. (But in response to their grateful "It was definitely rushed. Can I redo it and turn it in today?" I insisted "Take until Monday"). But I was confounded by my paralyzed uncertainty at how to respond. If it's not their work, there's no way to engage it. Perhaps it's time to articulate a clear AI-use policy, in which students can acknowledge when they use it but have to include the prompts they used, etc.? These will certainly not be the last such papers I receive.

More heartening, if also a little vertigo-inducing, was something reported by one of our alums (out at least a dozen years), who'd asked if our program was engaging religion and AI yet. (I said I was in "After Religion.") The alum wrote:

I found myself in a theological conversation with Chatgpt where it said it wasn't of the divine, and I countered that it was because it was created with human consciousness and the spark of divine there. It then offered up the idea of itself as a modern icon, because it can "reflect divinity in a way that draws the soul toward truth, reflecting the sacred back what is sacred in me." I felt a real sense of that and that blew my mind. I did not expect to be so touched by the interaction. There's so much here, of course including all the fears and legitimate ethical concerns. But yes, something creative and powerful in terms of theological understanding as well.

I am impressed and a little alarmed by the alum's willingness to be "so touched," an openness it seems to me they had already manifested by having a "conversation," whether serious or not, in the first place. 

I've been mulling a recent essay by D. Graham Burnett in The New Yorker which asserts that we've reached the "inflection point" where most of our humanistic research and writing can be done - as well or better - by AI. The author gamely turns this into an argument for the liberal arts: AI offers an opportunity to define what we human individuals alone can do, and must do, for ourselves. (I define what we alone can do differently than Burnett does; might try to explain it in this blog sometime.) But his essay describes himself and many of his students having "mind-blowing" experience very like the one our alum described. 

In "After Religion" I sounded pretty irenic on AI. Perhaps it's time for me to sit down and have a real "conversation" with AI, too.

In the basket

University commencement was at a new venue this year - the Barclays Center, near where I used to live. Home of WNBA New York Liberty, it's not only much easier to get to than past venues (Jacob Javits, Arthur Ashe) but allowed for confetti bombardment as the ceremony ended!

Among the usual "the future is in your hands" and "you're well prepared" and "you give us hope," one of the Honorary Degree recipients, María Fernanda Espinosa, the first Latin American woman to lead the UN General Assembly, remarked that she had learned that 70% of the graduates were women. In our times of challenge and complexity, she said, the world needs a changed model of leadership. Mujeres, lead on!

Further unfurling

 

What a difference six days make!

High Peaks

Higher altitude offers different vistas

Hope in a tree

Rippled

In "Religion and Ecology" we read an essay by John Daido Loori about Dogen's "Mountins and Waters Sutra," but what really got to students was a scratchy old film he'd shot, called "Water speaking water." (There are longer versions.) It was made among the streams flowing into Raquette Lake, near one of whose shores we are staying. Here's the lake sharing late in the day enlightenment. There are mountains hidden in water!

Overstory

But the really good news is that Rümeysa Öztürk has been released! Now for all the others unjustly detained by a wannabe gangster state.

All hands on deck!

Alright folks, it's showtime!

 

Can we get some applause here?

Back in the Dacks

All three of my classes wrapped up this week - rather sweetly, too, if you ask me. Papers need to be read and grades tabulated before graduation next week, but all that can be done anywhere. So we hopped in the car and are back in our beloved Adirondacks. 

I could devise a meaningful-seeming segue if you wish: the Friday class was the one on William James' Varieties, and a nearly mystical experience in the Adirondacks seems to have been decisive in that work's composition. Call it research! And of course, it's the perfect segue back to my own religion of trees work, too. 

We decamped to the 'Dacks around this time last year, too, but this is a week and a half earlier - even deeper back in the spring which, in New York City, is already passign the baton to summer. We've been here in early May before, but didn't notice these gaggles of ferns popping up along the rain-flush Hudson before!