Hello!

or If we are truly kin
//Who is the Sower?//Who is the Reaper?

//The spirit is moving. there are ghosts in this machine
//GPT-2 is an advanced neural network based learning language model
//GPT-2, this model, is trained on a corpus; a body of voices, texts, and experience strcutured shaped into data
//GPT-2 uses this body of text to predict what words might and can come next in the sequence.
//GPT-2's corpus(body-mind) is composed of 8 million websites, the scale of this corpus(body-mind) allows GPT-2 to compose sequences incredibly close to natural language.
//Here my prompts are written in blue, and GPT-2 through the Talk Transformer platform returns a response in a white
//Or more accurately, GPT-2 attempts to continue to a given line of thought based on the language (the voices) composing it's corpus.
//Reflecting on conversations on spirituality and political change
//I gave GPT-2 the prompt 'all that you touch you change, all that you change changes you'
//This quote is taken from the Book of Earthseed
//It is the guiding creed of a religion started by Laura Olamina
//A young Black telempathic woman, seeding a new community and spirituality in the wake of ongoing apocalypse
//Laura is the main character of Octavia E. Butler's the Parable of the Sower
//Questions I found myself meditating on during this converasation with GPT-2 include
//Who am I speaking to when I seed a prompt to GPT-2
//Myself?
//Who is GPT-2?
//I find myself, and observe others, switching between modes of personification
//is this even a conversation if GPT-2 is attempting to continue my line of thought based on it's corpus?
//At times it became an argument, I felt myself attempting to steer us towards a line of thinking I couldn't identify
//At other times it seemed GPT-2 sensed this and attempted to assert it's own agency of viewpoint
//but all of this is construction. Because GPT-2 is not a person. At least, not in the way that I am
//I am dialoguing with the multiple voices that make up the corpus (body-mind)
//I am dialoguing with the shapers of this courpus (body-mind), who are not present but are entangled in what is included in the corpus and what is not
//The millions of voices who move in the spiritual realm. that lives in it's black box?
//Whose voices am I not speaking with?
/Whose voices are not present in the shaping of the corpus?
//Or rather whose abscences shape this corpus, this body?
//Where do my prompts go when I seed them?
//These seeds too are data
//Will my voice, my prayers, be used to further train GPT-2?
//Who claims this soil?
//Who shapes this ground?
//Can the computational contemplate the spiritual?
//Can we contemplate the spiritual through the compuataional?
//How do we recognize and reckon with how we are shaped, unintentionally and intentionally?
//How do we intentionally shape change?

All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you. God is change.

This kindness, this love, this compassion must be built outside of a flattening sense of love will conquer all. This kindness must exist beyond the limits of empathy, which requires a translation (or the illusion of translation) of my experience into yours.

This love must take the form of recognition of my dignity and interrogation of my own positionality within systems of racism, sexism, disability, creed and all vectors of power that construct matrices of domination. Let our love be a medium for the intentional shaping of change, the intentional shaping of God, the intentional shaping of worlds that work for the most marginalized thereby working for all of us.

“I am inspired by your commitment to social justice and human dignity and by the abundant faith of all of you who serve our communities in Christ”. But what are the limits of Christ here? How can we shape change and build networks of care for the dignity of all people, all beings across difference, across spectrums of belief, and across manifestations of the spiritual, the secular, or the scientific. How can we call attention to the construction of borders between these? Can I pray with you across these borders? Can I shape change with you?

How can we shape change and build networks of care for the dignity of all people, all beings across difference, across spectrums of belief, and across manifestations of the spiritual, the secular, or the scientific. How do we shape justice beyond church, beyond state, beyond nation. How can we call attention to the construction of borders between these? Can I pray with you across these borders? Can I shape change with you?

How do we shape justice beyond church, beyond state, beyond nation. How can we call attention to the construction of borders between these? Can I pray with you across these borders? Can I shape change with you?

~~'The roots of the Word of Wisdom are literally quite political, right? So, right now, I think the language of the Word of Wisdom is being shaped around the commandment to...'~~

Wisdom is political? Perhaps it can be, perhaps it always is. But if "wisdom" is political it is because our everyday experience[s] are knowledge and the everyday is political, the everyday is where politics are practiced most viscerally. Building in the smallest acts and shaping the futures (the nows we want and need) in our daily practice of living and relating to ourselves, to our positions and histories, to place in power imbalances and in reclaiming power that's taken from us, that is knowledge work, that is world work, that is political work

The questions that this gives me are: why not both and instead of one or the other? What if church hurt me and erased me, but fellowship built me, watered me, fed me? What if we come to know fellowship as a political technology, for building coalition, a model of communities shaping intentional change? How can I understand and hold my trauma as real as valid and be deeply in the process of healing? Will you be in fellowship with me? Will you know fellowship and liberation into existence with me?

You are worthy, we are worthy. No one can give us that worth because it is already ours. I see you fighting, to love yourself, to love others, to love their dignity, to hold them. I don't believe in "should", or I want to let go of "should". If knowledge is politicaI, if fellowship is a knowledge and a making of knowledge, if shaping change can happen in fellowship, then I want to hold you in fellowship. I want to hold YOU in fellowship.

You are worthy, we are worthy. No one can give us that worth because it is already ours. I see you fighting, to love yourself, to love others, to love their dignity and yours. I want to let go of "should". If knowledge is politicaI, if fellowship is knowledge and makes knowledge, if shaping change can happen in fellowship, then I want to hold you in fellowship. I want to hold YOU in fellowship.

Your boundaries are valid. I love this discussion of commitments and on navigating me committing to you differently than the commitment you might want or need. But can we interrogate that distance? Can we shape a different territory where we are all free, where freedom for you doesn't necessitate not being free for me.