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How to respond to AI?
THIS is the focus in age of AI
“AI is phenomenal at generating, summarizing, analyzing, and pattern-matching. It is not good (yet) at: original judgment, deep relationship building, physical-world problem solving, moral reasoning, cultural intuition, or leading people through ambiguity. Double down on those skills. They become more valuable as AI handles everything else.”
Also. 11) Use the tools. Today. Not tomorrow. 2. 2) Think “with,” not “instead of.” 3) Expand your ambition. 4) Invest in what AI can’t do. 5) Study history — and refuse to repeat it.
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What I can Do because of AI:
“Because those tasks are faster, I’ve been freed up to do higher-order work that I never had time for before. Strategic thinking. Deeper creative projects. More relationship building and networking. Building things I’d been putting off for years because the execution cost was too high. And (this is the part that I enjoy the most), having ideas I wouldn’t have had otherwise.”
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Plan and Prompts and Schedule for a “Think Week” or “Think Day”
We should do this for Open Book. I love these prompts.
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What AI Can't Do -- and why I think Open Book matters.
“The truth is there is a lot more disorder, unpredictability, and humanness in so much of our lives.” … “But you know what it can’t do? It can’t work a source over for years on end. It can’t / doesn’t / won’t bear witness to live events. It reminds me of the famous Good Will Hunting scene, where Robin Williams is chastising Matt Damon about being such a smart ass but not being able to describe what the Sistine Chapel smells like. Damon is the AI.
I say this as someone who has experimented a ton with the latest versions of ChatGPT Matt is writing about here. I can feed it limitless writing of mine from my archives and then have it write a take about a new current events story; I’ve tried, actually, because if it were good it would save me hours of work every day. But it is always useless. Not sometimes; always.
Why? Because the AI still can’t predict when certain emotional elements of a story drive me away from a previously held position; because it doesn’t know what happened to me that week, or what stories I’ve read about the topic at hand, or an experience my grandmother had that my family always talked about that informs my view on, say, antisemitism or Israel. It just predicts where I’d land on an issue based on what I’ve written before, which is actually not a great way to understand humans who are always moving in new and different directions.”
From here: x.com/SahilBloo…
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AI: Formation, Not Information is the Real Crisis/Opportunity
See Finding 3 in Scott Crosby’s article: parrishtree.substack.com/p/we-are-…
Formation, Not Just Information, Is the Real Crisis
Understanding AI as a map rather than a mind or mere tool helps us see where it can genuinely serve spiritual formation—and where it cannot. I do think that the notion is right, that this moment is a “rite of passage” for our species. The bottleneck isn’t just whether we can build safe models. It’s whether we can become the kind of people who live with God’s presence in this new terrain, rather than trying to wield this power apart from Him.
Part of my research develops a series of pastoral letters for what I call Sacred Terrain—eight recurring “seasons” that God uses in our formation (Beginning, Discovery, Testing, Crisis, Waiting, Renewal, Collaboration, Steady).
The core insight: the same circumstances can either form us or deform us, depending on whether we live them with God’s presence or apart from it. A season of waiting, for example, can produce patient trust (the Spirit’s fruit) or cynical bitterness (fear without God). Same external terrain, opposite formation.
Where does AI fit?
What AI can do:
Recognize patterns across your story that you can’t see yourself—when old habits are at work versus when real growth is happening Surface connections between Scripture, history, and your current season that would take you years to find Help you see formation as it unfolds in real time—distinguishing genuine patience from its counterfeits (apathy, cynicism) Map patterns across all the different areas of your life at once—work, marriage, parenting, friendships—and how the seasons in each are connected and shaping each other What AI cannot do:
Experience God’s presence the way persons do—it has no interior life or personhood Walk the formation journey for you or make your choices about how to respond Replace the Spirit’s work of illuminating truth to your heart The real constraint isn’t AI capability—it’s human character.
We need:
Steadiness in Testing when the newsfeed screams crisis Wisdom in Collaboration as humans, institutions, and tools all pull on each other Hope as we move between seasons, especially as whole professions reshape around new capacities The church has something unique to offer: not just a set of rules about technology, but a story of formation where suffering, limits, and waiting are not glitches but ingredients. Where the same pressure can produce either bitterness or hope, depending on whose presence we’re living in.
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ON AI -- combatting fear with possibility
ON AI:
That question—what is this making possible?—is the most valuable question you can ask right now. About AI, about your career, about your life.
The knitting machine didn’t ruin England. It made it the wealthiest nation on earth.
The power loom didn’t destroy the textile industry. It expanded it beyond anyone’s imagination.
The computer didn’t end employment. It created the modern economy.
AI won’t shrink your future if you refuse to let fear shrink your vision.
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On the myth of the exit sign (medical-assisted suicide or otherwise)
Russell Moore: “I want to encourage you to live. That’s not because I am worried you will go to hell. God’s mercy is greater than all our sin. It’s because your life is worth living. Your life is a mystery—indwelt by God—even when you don’t feel like it. You are not alone. It’s okay to pray now for future Max, but you don’t need to store up the grace you will need then. It’s already in the future waiting for you. I can’t imagine the suffering you face or will face. But Jesus loves you, this I know.”
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The Paradox of Control -- making meaning in life
“Evans shared something that initially sounds discouraging. The correlation between good decision-making and desired outcomes is zero.
Let that land.
How well you think through something today has no causal impact on the future. Too many variables intervene. Other people make choices. Circumstances shift. The world doesn’t cooperate.
But here’s the twist. Good decision-making, coherent living, still matters. If you ran the same experiment across a thousand parallel universes, the person making thoughtful, aligned choices would succeed more often. The odds improve. You just can’t guarantee any individual outcome.”
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Notes on servant leadership
Organizations often, though, confuse stability with health. It is possible to do genuine good while also consolidating power.
Servanthood, at its most authentic, calls for deep mutuality. No display of personal virtue can substitute for the structural courage required to redistribute authority.
Not offering content; he was modelling a discipline. Just as important as Greenleaf’s ideas was the form he chose to write them in. His early work was not a systematic leadership theory but a set of reflective essays. In writing as he did, Greenleaf was not merely offering content; he was modelling a discipline. He practiced a way of thinking, listening, and discerning in public, slower than a framework and more demanding than a slogan. The essays are deeply contextual, shaped by a social landscape he found increasingly fractured. His central question was not “How can a leader be seen as virtuous?” but “How can a leader be of use to a society in pain?”
In Greenleaf’s vision, the servant leader is a listener, a healer, a practitioner of mercy in public life. Yet as his work became institutionalized, particularly in business schools and religious circles, his questions were translated into formulas. Presence became posture. Empathy became technique. And the attic door quietly closed.
This work begins with storytelling, because narrative has the power to reshape us. But I am not referring to the familiar stories of heroic leaders triumphing over adversity. What we need instead are stories of communities empowered, of shared decision-making, of leadership reimagined in non-traditional and relational ways. The classroom must become a space where voices from the margins are not just included but centred. Curriculum should move beyond the classic texts to embrace the contextual and lived experiences of those who have long been excluded from the leadership table. These are the stories that disrupt inherited hierarchies and invite a more just and generative vision of leadership.
Finally, leadership programs must resist the pressure to turn servant leadership into a marketable tool. Institutions that frame it as a productivity strategy or morale booster are missing the point. Greenleaf’s challenge was not to optimize systems but to reimagine them, to raise new questions, to listen to the silenced, and to lead with love, even at the cost of power.
Again, Greenleaf did not set out to create a model for moral performance. He saw a broken world and broken institutions and sought a different path. He called for leadership that heals, listens, and empowers.
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The dark side of servant leadership
“But something happened on the way to the boardroom. Servant leadership became a brand, something leaders perform rather than embody. In many organizations, being seen as a servant leader now offers not humility but credibility, a moral certification that shields a leader from critique. “
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Prayers for Minneapolis
Henri Nouwen Lord Jesus, make us attentive to one another. Teach us to listen with patience, to speak with honesty, and to act with love.
Keep us from turning inward when the world feels frightening. Give us the courage to remain present to our neighbors in their pain, trusting that you are present with us all.
Walter Brueggemann We are your people in pain, O God, learning again what it means to live by mercy and not by fear.
Give us courage to stay present when withdrawal would be easier, and faith to believe that love is stronger than the powers that wound.
Stay near to those who suffer, and make us neighbors who do not turn away. Amen.
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The Devil’s Plan to Ruin the Next Generation -- not violence but convenience...and kept always distracted
Earlier this year, someone started a viral trend of asking ChatGPT this question: If you were the devil, how would you destroy the next generation, without them even knowing it?
Chat’s responses were profound and unsettling: “I wouldn’t come with violence. I’d come with convenience.” “I’d keep them busy. Always distracted.”
“I’d watch their minds rot slowly, sweetly, silently. And the best part is, they’d never know it was me. They’d call it freedom.”
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Everyone knows that digital life is hurting us. Everyone knows. How long will we keep lying about it?
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The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves. -Bessel Van Der Kolk
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Late Fragment
by Raymond Carver
And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.
— From A New Path to the Waterfall
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More Berry on the story we're in.
From LIfe is a Miracle:
“The world is not a machine; it is a mystery. And it cannot be managed, it must be loved.”
“We are alive within mystery, by miracle.”
“The proper measure of our work is not its profitability, but its accordance with the health of the world.”
“To think better, to do better, we must tell better stories.”
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“The significance — and ultimately the quality — of the work we do is determined by our understanding of the story in which we are taking part.” — Wendell Berry, Life Is a Miracle
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Friendship requires work --"Outlasts spouses and outpaces siblings in rescuing the heart"
We’ve mistaken social media connections for the hard-earned treasure of true friendship—what Seneca described as admitting someone “with all your heart and soul” after long deliberation. Alain de Botton argues that deep friendship is as significant and rare as romantic love, yet our culture provides zero education in cultivating it while drowning us in narrow romantic models, leaving us unable to distinguish genuine connection from cheap counterfeits. Real friendship isn’t luck or divine inspiration but a learnable skill requiring specific insights: understanding there are different species of friendship for different kinds of loneliness (emotional confidante, thinking partner, counterpoint), committing to absolute sincerity and vulnerable presence, and making the daily choice to walk together in the same direction. The paradox is that those who feel friendship’s absence most acutely may simply be those who refuse to accept the sentimental world’s shallow substitutes, holding out instead for connections that make us “wiser, more sensitive, more able to cope with the complexity of existence”—the kind that outlast spouses and outpace siblings in rescuing the heart.
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AI on research and SPECIFIC thoughts from a SPECiFIC person. It’s not just produing research/insights/writing. The question is what specifically YOU have to say.
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Use words specifically. Writing is communicating.
From John Warner:
The most important essay I ever wrote was in 3rd grade.
My teacher, Mrs. Goldman, told us we needed to write directions for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She never used the word “essay” because that would’ve been meaningless to us, but this was actually a “process” or “how-to” essay, and to write a good one, you need to think very carefully about what you’re telling your audience.
We were 3rd graders, so of course, we didn’t do this. The extent to which we didn’t became apparent next class when Mrs. Goldman brought in the necessary supplies for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and then told us we had to make our sandwiches exactly according to our directions.
If you forgot to mention that you needed bread on which to spread the peanut butter, you smeared it on the plate. If you wrote to spread peanut butter on a slice of bread, but didn’t say to use a knife, we were instructed to use our hands.
I don’t think anyone in the class managed to create an edible sandwich, but we had a lot of fun laughing at the attempts, and the memory is indelible. That day, I learned that writers need to be careful with their words because if someone is asked to follow them, things can go very very wrong.
Mrs. Goldman was teaching us a number of different things, genre awareness, audience, structure and sequencing. None of it had anything to do with a standardized assessment. We were solving a writing-related problem. Most of all, we were absorbing the lesson that above all, writing is done for audiences.
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A lovely story and tribute to a mom's bookstore -- and the power of bookstores today.
A lovely story and tribute to a mom’s bookstore – and the power of bookstores today. biblioracle.substack.com/p/indepen…
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If it isn’t the sun, it’s the birdsong. If it isn’t the air, it’s the view. I’m completely undone by the endless abundance of life. Aren’t you? -Sondheim
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You can be at the bottom of an org chart and still be a leader. Leadership is an action, not a position or title.
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To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul. -Simone Weil
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