How Does One Deal With A Life Changing Moment

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Cor. 4:16-18)

How does one respond to a new challenge in life, when almost overnight, everything changes dramatically? You look in the mirror and you recognise that your old physical self is to a large extent gone. There is denial. There is grief. And yes, in the middle of the tears and self-pity, an anger that could surprise you. Perhaps worst of all, the onset of a gnawing despair. You are in fact experiencing the inner and outer metamorphosis. All the self-help books in the world are of no use, for their premises are no longer relevant to you. The man looking back at you is not the man you once knew. The body you inhabited for sixty-five years can no longer serve you in the same ways. One can pretend to the world that these natural human emotions do not apply to them, that you have been able to rise beyond such fallible responses. Yet, and this much I must say, if you have belonged to the community of believers, and you have seen abundant evidence of Jesus Christ, the God-Man, at work in your life, then you will not question your faith nor put away the trust in the providence of your Creator. But your hitherto public stoicism, and those standard rejoinders to the problem of pain, as theologians have long framed this paradox—so much suffering in the world and still at the same time the goodness of God—will be thrown into upheaval and shaken to its core.

What this “thorn of the flesh” is for the present writer is entirely irrelevant. It is not the affliction itself that is of concern to him, nor is his experience at all unique. What he describes here is an undergoing that belongs in whole or in part, to at least some of his gentle readers. The question, then remains, how does one deal with a life-changing moment that has to some degree, made different much of one’s life. The saint, for there are saints who either live here in our midst or in monasteries or in faraway deserts, will reckon this as part of the soul’s journey toward redemption. Then there are too, the stoics, who courageously accept it all as part of the greater story of the cycle of life. But there is something very much in common in both of these positions, the acknowledgment whether be it manifest or tacit, of the joyful-sorrow of life and of the inevitability of our report here in this world one day coming to its close. From Siddhartha Gautama, to Socrates, to Saint Paul, to Blaise Pascal, to Martin Heidegger, to Sophrony Sakharov, to Viktor Frankl, to Irvin D. Yalom, to Dean Rickles, this ontological acquiesce is there in every profound thinker that has walked the earth. There are those winter seasons in which, as my dear friend Joseph Carvalko writes in one of his enthralling essays, that we are drawn to think of our souls in different ways until that time when they reach "that final purpose" (Paradox of Hope).

Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew. (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations)

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. (Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning)

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So we live each day grateful for all we have been taught, not despairing of the new stories we will now live through, and ultimately grateful for these additional narratives we might now write down. For these things, the precious fruits of courage and perseverance are not at all outside the realms of reality and have been manifested in the lives of so very many. And more recently we witnessed this in the life of my late and much beloved Momma. Not long before she left us she “woke” from her deep sleep and in English (her second language which to this point she had almost completely forgotten) to say: “I saw Jesus. He said He loved me.” Her countenance was amazingly bright. Of course, one can interpret these fabulous words in different ways. We took them at their face value, and at that moment she gave us a vision of meaning above and beyond what I could hope to describe here, that change when even at its most difficult hour is not bereft of the light. Suffering can only be met head on, there are no shortcuts to the problem of pain. There on those hard edges of Gethsemane, where the human spirit is tested that it might be refined as gold, awaits the revelation of our true name written on the white stone (Rev. 2:17).

Our eyes and hearts can become opened to astonishing depths of love (now re-defined and re-experienced on account of our new condition) and to all-encompassing fields of compassion once only imaginable when we were at our very best—those days when we refused to chase away the birds from our fruit-trees and considered the practise of forgiveness as the highest expression of agape.

Even with all of the hard knocks and heavy collisions along the way, we all have a fabulously rich story to tell. Whether we can write it down or not, will matter only very little. The narrative will take on its own life to become our legacy. I remember an elderly monk from Mount Athos, Father E., who would refuse to wear laces on his boots. One afternoon after the refectory I summonsed the courage to ask him ‘why’ [and here I must confess to paraphrasing him a little]: “One must be prepared and on time for the unexpected.”

At different times I have wondered how I would respond

I do love the good-humoured mathematician and lay theologian John Lennox. Not only for his intellectual brilliance in articulating the apologetics of the Good News, in a manner evocative of the great C.S. Lewis, but also for the ways he has reminded me of a dear friend, the logos-inspired poet Les Murray. Yet there is something else as well. Especially given the present challenges in my own life, the charismatic Lennox has often spoken of “finishing life well.” This right counsel, takes us back to Saint Paul’s moral parenesis, which has inspired and lifted the spirits of countless souls across the centuries: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim. 4:7).

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At different times I have wondered how I would respond if I were sitting in a specialist’s surgery, waiting to hear the results of medical tests for a potentially life-threatening disease. For instance, would I remain stoic upon hearing the word cancer? Would I break down, if only for a moment, terrified of what it could mean? Or might my reaction fall somewhere entirely outside what I had imagined? In truth, one never knows how they will respond to news—good or bad—until it actually happens. Is it, then, the same for a believer of a religious community, and particularly for one of its theologians? I was to learn this on a pleasant morning in Wollongong, in late January of this year, during a consultation with my empathetic urologist, Dr. R. It was not at all as one might have imagined. The news was delivered no differently than if a general practitioner were calmly informing you that it was nothing more troubling than a sore throat. Except that this time, it all appeared to unfold in slow motion. Each word carrying with it a resonance that would need to be newly explored and analysed: “I am sorry it is cancer—Michael, but it is not a death sentence.” For a few moments at least, it seemed as though I had stepped into another world. This is a place where the archetypes stood in sharper relief, and where at any moment they might cut straight through you.

This is the hour when one’s metaphysical beliefs, whether deeply theistic or commendably stoic are pulled apart and, for some, stretched to their breaking point. Suffering in its various guises, if we should allow it, can easily undo us. When death rises to speak in its own ex cathedra voice, there is, one way or another, little to say in reply. The Great Divide has spoken shāh māt ("the king is helpless")–Or is he? Maybe not quite yet. If you are familiar with Moritz Retzsch’s 1831 painting The Devil’s Checkmate and with the story of chess master Paul Morphy’s response, you will know what I mean. For those of us who belong to a religious community, how often have we heard, or ourselves declared, the words offered in consolation by the Prophet Hosea but later to be made famous by Saint Paul: “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15:55). The counter of every soul to such news is as unique as the individual response to our deepest joys or hardest sorrows. A range of emotions, natural to the human condition, can overwhelm us, and the comforting illusion that such things only happen to other people is fast destroyed. The reality is that it will happen to us all. Death comes, sooner or later—if not for us now, then to those we love, to our close of kin, and to our friends. And our hearts ache, too, at the daily images of lives taken in faraway places, without the blessings and benefits we ourselves have become ordinarily accustomed to. Perspective remains one of our most trustworthy teachers, and if we remain honest enough, it cannot fail us.

It all goes much too quickly. I could close my eyes and, for a few moments, go back to my untroubled teenage years, running about like a puffed-up bull on rugby league fields in Sydney and the country. Then before long I snap out of it. The mirror will make liars of us all. If we have not mentally prepared for this unavoidable and messy rencounter, one that philosophers and theologians alike agree will become the absolute test of our core beliefs, we are likely to panic and fall into those self-defeating emotions of denial and anger. Still, if we can get through this fiery trial and comprehend it as an awakening to something deeper and more nobler within us, then we will not only endure and persevere through it, but we will be initiated into revelations and lasting lessons we once believed beyond our reach. The giving and the asking of forgiveness becomes a commonplace experience. All manner of colour and sound become more vibrant and sharper. We can become humble, yet strong vessels of comfort to others. The expression of love and compassion are now as commonplace as our daily bread. Material aims and professional goals are much shifted or made altogether insignificant. Divine grace and moral strength can arrive in the most unexpected way. Saint Nilus of Sinai speaks in the tradition of Socrates (who posited that philosophy is a preparation for death): “You should always be waiting for death but not be afraid of it; both are indeed the real characteristics of a person who pursues wisdom.” This is the “memory of death” which the contemplatives of our major religious traditions practise, this they do in the most positive of ways as a reminder to cherish this present hour, and to not misuse the time we have each been given.

After a while these archetypical disclosures of the battle, should we open up ourselves to them, will allow for bursts of light to enter into our hearts. This is not to whitewash our suffering or our fears, these conditions are all too real, and they will leave their rough mark on both ourselves and on those we love, but how we respond to this confrontation and where we allow for the dark side of our imagination to take us, is what altogether matters at present. There will be the dark night when for a believer it could appear that the Father is scandalously absent, or for our other brothers and sisters to seem that it has all been meaningless. These are very much the same feelings of inner collapse and that dread condition beyond the disease of the body—Søren Kierkegaard reflected in these terms when speaking on the “sickness unto death” that is, the deepest of despairs. Our modern existentialists have similarly spoken of this paralysing angst, as “the nameless fear”. It is not out of place, then, to recall that as a young student of divinity many decades ago now, I was struck by this fascinating revelation, that in the New Testament Gospels, the God-Man’s most repeated exhortation was not to be afraid: “Take courage; it is I, do not be afraid” (Mk 6:50).

Is life unfair? Yes, but what does this mean

For myself I have been parted from my possessions, stripped of my offices, blackened in my reputation, and punished for the services I have rendered… [s]o then I may cry aloud… (Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy)

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Rom. 8:28)

In my younger days, filled with enthusiasm for theology and navigating the early stages of what some might call a “messiah complex” (a term familiar to seasoned seminarians and priests), I would have confidently answered the question, “Is life fair?” with a resounding “yes”. At the time, I believed I had a firm grasp on divine providence. I was young, healthy, and felt as though the future held limitless possibilities. Vigour and optimism, pulsed through me, even though I had already witnessed suffering. Still, I believed that my perspective aligned with the nature of God’s justice. I was also familiar with the story of Job and had reflected on his unwavering faith amid trials; a story that, despite its initial horrors, ultimately had a positive ending. The biblical narrative of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ was, as you might expect from a young seminarian, at the very heart of my worldview. But then, things began to change. Not my worldview, nor my steadfast belief in divine providence, but rather how this very theology was to be practically understood and lived out beyond the seminary walls and course textbooks.

As my life became richer with experience over the years, I began to confront certain harsh realities— loss, illness, death, and the injustices that came with them, whether they affected me directly or those close to me. At the same time, my travels exposed me to the stark economic disparities across the world. This combination of personal encounters and global contact led me to question the early assumptions I had that everything was, in fact, “good”.  In my role as a pastoral cleric, as I would then have conceived of myself, my visits to the wounded and terminally ill and especially to the young, were precious opportunities to offer comfort to those grieving. And then there were my weekend walkabouts through the cemeteries of Sydney where the message of the Cross in its deeper manifestation was made known to me. Over time, this became less about offering the idea that everything was divinely planned and more about acknowledging the raw pain of loss, helping others find solace in the midst of their despair.

My self-confidence began to erode after clashes with my superiors, which eventually led to my departure from the ministry. I found myself adrift, without an identity, and at every turn, blocked from new opportunities by the Church I had once served but could never stop loving. In time, more followed. Loss of valued friendships and my good reputation. There are many ways to stand up a human being against the wall to execute them. Later the taking away of my intellectual labour and eventually chronic illness with its everyday pain. Before that, one branch of my extended family was wiped out due to disease. Was this fair?  It was a question I found myself asking more and more. I must accept that, in my case, having requested to be relieved of my ministry for reasons I still cannot openly share, I did also contribute to my own tribulations and for this I am alone responsible. But what about the suffering of others— those who had brought none or very little of this anguish upon themselves? People stripped of their rightful place, denied the chance to reach their potential; the seemingly undeserving rising to positions from unqualified persons, or worse, placed there through bribery or fraud. Even more heartbreaking when innocent children are ravaged by illnesses, or in other places, made to die of hunger and thirst due to economic conditions. Such suffering is not optional. Was this fair? The Scriptures themselves also seem to speak to this truth about the unfairness in life: “Under the sun, the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happens to them all” (Ecc. 9:11).

I am not here to argue for a theodicy nor delve into the famous "problem of evil," that I have tried best I could to address in my novel and in a few of my essays, but simply to ask: Is life fair?

A saint would more than likely say, “Yes, life is fair, for it is all preordained by a just and all-knowing God.” I am not a saint, of course, and as such, I can no longer make such sweeping declarations. I cannot view the world through the same lens as those enlightened souls, blessed with unwavering faith. As I approach my 70s, I have come to understand more deeply the unpredictable nature of life, its shocks, disappointments, and uncertainties. This is not to say that there are no moments of pure joy; indeed, those moments exist. But life’s duality— the intertwining of joy and sorrow— is the lesson we must learn, one that speaks to the core of our existence. There is a spurious saying attributed to the Buddha, yet it persists since it is informed with tried and true wisdom: “Pain in life is inevitable, but suffering is optional. Pain is what the world does to you, suffering is what you do to yourself by the way you think about the pain you receive.” I well understand, these are enormous enquiries to make of the human mind, it is not inconceivable that for a serious thinker, they could last a lifetime.

Let me pre-empt my few, gentle readers by saying this: life is not fair. Even so, what does this mean? My own response, which is all we can do for now, comes from a man who, though jaded, endures. Nothing more, nothing less. I have witnessed and experienced both the beauty and the harshness of being active and involved in the world. In the same way to you, for we are made from the same essential elements, or “mud” and “clay” as mythologies and religious traditions have described. I could easily quote a long list of philosophers and writers, Friedrich Nietzsche, Hannah Arendt, Primo Levi, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, for example, who have eloquently explored the inherent unfairness of life. It would be enough for now to read the chapter which features Ivan Karamazov’s well-known argument in "The Grand Inquisitor" from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. In it, the intellectual and analytical Ivan Karamazov, raises a compelling argument about the existence of suffering in a world supposedly created by a benevolent and omnipotent God— arguments that can be traced to the Russian philosopher and theologian, Vladimir Soloviev (and a close friend of Dostoevsky’s). Jesus Christ himself in the Garden of Gethsemane asks for the cup of suffering he was about to endure to be taken away from him (Lk 22:42). I will return to this pericope in a moment which has on more than one occasion saved me.

Through these brief reflections, dare I call it “flash theology”, I find a path toward self-healing, like I do with most of the humble ponderings that I share on this web site. Primarily, these reflections serve as a conversation with myself and, later, as something for my children to read. But I also hope they offer some meaning and a little solace to the occasional visitor— to a soul on its own irreplaceable journey, seeking a quiet park bench to rest for a moment. In recent months, I have been compelled to reflect on this problem even more deeply, due to personal losses and the pain endured by a family member. But, as I have shared earlier, the question of life’s fairness is one that has long weighed on me. Beyond the comfort of Scripture, particularly the Book of Psalms, I have oftentimes reflected on Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. In essence, the Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist, Frankl, offers profound insight when we feel ourselves to have become overwhelmed: “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” The interesting thing here is that Elder Ephraim of Katounakia, an Athonite monk, in his own way, conveys a very similar message:

Everyone has a cross to carry. Why? Since the leader of our faith endured the cross, we will also endure it. On one hand, the cross is sweet and light, but, on the other, it can also be bitter and heavy. It depends on our will. If you bear Christ’s cross with love then it will be very light; like a sponge or a cork. But if you have a negative attitude, it becomes heavy; too heavy to lift.

The Agony In The Garden by Gustave Dore

And so I now return to the Lucan pericope of Christ’s passion in the Garden of Gethsemane to offer my final thoughts. On a personal note— and I believe I speak for most— there are moments in life when we feel that things are unfair. However, unless we allow ourselves to be entirely undone by these struggles, we have at least one time-tested way forward: to acknowledge the cup we did not seek and to accept it as a sign. “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done” (Lk. 22:42). Here in His underserved punishment, the God-Man acknowledges both the presence of suffering and the overarching goodness of God Himself. If we endure, transformation awaits us, just as it did for Jesus Christ after Calvary, in His resurrection. This endurance in perseverance is not about resigning from life; rather, it is about recognising that, even during the most challenging of trials, there exists a path toward realising the fullness of our potential as human beings. Accepting, too, that there are many things to be grateful for, in spite of any injustice that might surround us. So, yes, life might not always be fair, but its “joyful-sorrows” are not without meaning.

Like a tree I would be blasted by wind, struck by sun and rain, and would wait with confidence; the long-desired hour of flowering and fruit would come. (Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco)

Over the years, I have come to personally understand and have observed in the lives of others that, in the face of pain, an unfairness done to us can often lead to unexpected rewards, and beyond all measure. In fact, there is a freedom in it, along with a unique opportunity for genuine growth, even if for most of us, this may seem paradoxical or counterintuitive. So, yes, together we can say, “Blessed are those who mourn” (Matt. 5:4). I do not pretend. Little of this is ever easy. It can be brutal to the spirit of a person, and unbearingly so at times. Is there someone whose mental anguish you can help to alleviate with a word? Have you the power to right a wrong where an unfairness has been done? Even by that one single act of kindness, souls have been saved to affect generations. It all goes too quick. We soon enough grow old. It is then that these certainties of the human condition reveal themselves to be our infallible truths. As for the suffering of the innocent, those who do not have the time, nor the means, nor the luxury that we have been blessed with, tangible hope can only touch their lives through the opening of our hearts in communion, that heroic compassion may burst through. Time and time again, it has been revealed acts of supreme generosity, to the extent of self-sacrifice, are not beyond our reach— if only because we are capable of the divine, capax Dei.

People can be good to each other

Source: friendship day image hd Free Photo https://www.vecteezy.com/photo/30639071-friendship-day-image-hd

In recent months I have been travelling to Sydney from the South Coast more often than usual to spend as much time as I can with my mother. The grand old lady is progressively becoming lost inside that terrible thick fog of dementia. I cannot describe this disease any other way. It is a heartbreaking experience known to many homes. A few days ago I shared a story inspired by an unexpected encounter during one of these trips. I have been to visit Mother twice since that reflection to do with the seminary. Now back home I would like to share another meaningful moment with you which has left an indelible impression on me. It has to do with one of my favourite words and the charism found in those beautiful souls we encounter along the way—that is, compassion (to “suffer with”). I do know, I refer to this most important of charities too often. Yet, for some good reason, I am compelled to speak on it. We may not all be capable of sacrificial love, which Jesus might ask of us (1 Jn 3:16), but compassion is always within our reach.

Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human. (Henri J. M. Nouwen, You are the Beloved: Daily Meditations for Spiritual Living)

When we look at the world and observe many of the unspeakable horrors constantly rerun before us in various media platforms, it is not difficult to agree with Charles Bukowski that “people are not good to each other” (The Crunch). And, yes, to be truthful, he is not entirely wrong. Bukowski is one of my favourite poets, and though he is much underrated by the academe for a number of reasons, he has left behind confronting insights on the human condition. On this point, however, to do with people, I cannot agree with him without some strong qualification. There are many more good people in the world, who are “good to each other” than the other way round. If good people, those anonymous heroes, everyday saints I would call them, who go about their daily jobs to make sure we are not left without the essentials and that we are kept safe—where to begin and where to end—doctors; aid workers; nurses; hospice staff; plumbers; sanitary engineers; truck drivers; first responders; farmers; industrial workers; teachers; volunteers; and even our barbers who we trust to not cut our throats, were to suddenly stop delivering their grace, things would very quickly collapse around us. We do not often hear about these persons for we take such souls for granted until we need them. So it is the warmongers and the violence, for instance, which fuels our news broadcasts to fill us with our ‘daily dread’. And to be sure, they inflict untold and horrendous damage, but such saturation of evil makes it even easier to accept this darkness as normative and to sweep aside the majority, that is, the just and decent, who are, indeed, good to each other.

What brought this particular reflection into my heart these past few days? It was the deeply moving and selfless compassion of one young man quietly going about his everyday business. For the moment, lest I embarrass him, let us call him Zayan. I will do my best to explain below—and why I started on another private study on the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk. 10:29-37). There is a little corner shop not far up the road from where mother lives. I find it important to support these small family businesses and not only for the reason I grew up in such a shop. The young man behind the counter who was still observing Ramadan, was very polite and helped me locate the necessary things for my mother’s dietary requirements. I  complimented him on his courtesy and efficiency and asked him if was studying or working in the business fulltime. This is when my admiration for this young man moved to an enormous respect. He was indeed studying in a Sydney tertiary institution. He told me he was in his second year of a sports physiotherapy degree and was doing well. I suggested to him his career choice given the ubiquity of sport in our lives looked very positive and that he could even open up his own practice one day. Acknowledging these opportunities, he proceeded to share with me that this was not why he had enrolled in this degree.

Zayan went on to tell me the sole purpose of enrolling in this course of studies was to offer his services to those in need—and more especially to help his beloved older brother who suffers from cerebral palsy. These are the meaningful moments in life. The hours when you come face to face with the greatness of the human spirit and our capacity for God. I walked back to my car and never ashamed to admit, I wept. I shed tears for things which I could feel in my heart but could not put rightly into words. For those who are students of the Johannine corpus or have read Blaise Pascal you will get a more proximate sense of what I am grappling with here. Indeed in both instances the appeal would be to a coherent love from the one to the other—both in its original act in the first place and then afterwards in its communication.

When people are good to each other something wonderful will always happen. The goodness received is invariably paid forward. An Athonite monk I knew called this paying forward a “communicable disease”.  It was hard to forget this striking analogy. Our old friend Charles Bukowski was not entirely wrong when he spoke on the human condition but at times he could overshoot the mark.

This is why ‘the Machine’ concerns me

“Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralysed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it. The Machine develops - but not on our lies. The Machine proceeds - but not to our goal. We only exist as the blood corpuscles that course through its arteries, and if it could work without us, it would let us die.” (E. M. Forster, The Machine Stops, 1909)

“Technique has penetrated the deepest recesses of the human being. The machine tends not only to create a new human environment, but also to modify man's very essence. The milieu in which he lives is no longer his. He must adapt himself, as though the world were new, to a universe for which he was not created. He was made to go six kilometres an hour, and he goes a thousand. He was made to eat when he was hungry and to sleep when he was sleepy; instead, he obeys a clock. He was made to have contact with living things, and he lives in a world of stone. He was created with a certain essential unity, and he is fragmented by all the forces of the modern world.” (Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, 1954)

“Those who cannot forgive others break the bridge over which they themselves must pass.” (Confucius)

“Sorry, a machine can’t forgive your mistakes.” (Anon.)

“Books don’t need batteries.” (Nadine Gordimer)

"Now, a machine however subtle does not feel love, does not pray, does not have a sense of the sacred, a sense of awe and wonder. To me these are human qualities that no machine, however elaborate, would be able to reproduce. You may love your computer but your computer does not love you." (Kallistos Ware)

Source: https://twitter.com/nasahistory/status/951861340557234177

This is why ‘the Machine’ concerns me. Not that it might one day determine what I might eat or drink, or whether I can drink or eat at all, but that it will not hear my cries. That it will know nothing of physical thirst or of gut-wrenching despair. How can ‘they’ not understand this? It will have no comprehension of forgiveness. It will never wipe the slate clean. There is no delete. No such thing as absolution. It will deny to give me a fresh start [another more terrible dimension to DoS attack]. Mercy does not run through its microcircuitry. Don’t rush to embrace it too soon, this Trojan Horse which comes as a peace offering to the gods. The Creator has mercy for us, “[t]hough your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool” (Is. 1:18). The ‘Machine’ which is ‘spirited’ by power to apply force and control, is unmoved to our petitions, “Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye” (2001: A Space Odyssey). This is the elephant in the living room. Something holds us back, a foreboding, a premonition perhaps, that keeps us from directly addressing this subject.

It really is difficult to see people broken, humiliated, and in some instances to have their lives taken away from them because of something they might have said five, ten, twenty or more years previously. For someone, for whatever reason, to dredge up ‘sins’ of the past in order to hurt, or more concisely, to cause irreparable damage to the other. Who among us hasn’t said something which they haven’t later regretted, or where our words and sentiments can be elicited to carry a meaning or an attitude not originally intended? These can be errors of speech, peer group pressure, or the result of youth and immaturity. Yet it is there, it has been recorded. It is ‘played back’ oblivious to the context. Context is that which “throws light on meaning”.[1] We all make stupid mistakes. It takes time for wisdom and life experience to meld. And in other instances we get to a certain age and become anachronistic dinosaurs. The ‘Machine’ [input-process-output] is calculating and efficient. To ‘terminate’ these people is to simultaneously terminate ourselves. It is to do to another, that which can be done back to us. The ‘Machine’ defines us by our mistakes. It groups us in categories and dumps us in information silos. Is this the fate of the human spirit, to be “born into this?”[2] Imprisoned inside the “big iron” mainframes… like Ted Hughes’ proud Jaguar in “prison darkness” in its cage?

To forgive is an expression of one of our highest elevations as human beings. It is nobler than our finest literature, our greatest art, our most beautiful music. It is greater than all these when practised with a true heart for it takes us into the realms of the deepest mysteries of our combined representations of the Divine. In our religious experience we do not awe at the Creator’s ability with the harp or the writing of celestial sonnets, but rather we are amazed at the expression of God’s mercy and forgiveness. To the extent that we ourselves do the same with our fellow human, that is, to extend our grace towards those who we perceive to have wronged us, we are in the “image and likeness” of the Creator (Gen. 1:26).  We forgive that we could enter more genuinely into the space of compassion, that we might go on loving. The root of “forgive” is the Latin word “perdonare,” meaning “to give completely, without “reservation.” (“perdonare” is also the source of our English “pardon”).  We give up the desire or the power to punish.[3] The ‘Machine’ knows nothing of compassion. It will not forgive because it cannot love. Algorithms don’t have soul; they are devoid of incorporeal essence:

“You can’t forgive without loving. And I don’t mean sentimentality. I don’t mean mush.” (Maya Angelou)

In life not all acts of fellowship are received well or reciprocated. When the grace we give is not accepted and is returned it can be brutal. It is a place of heavy tears. We are living increasingly in a world which keeps us isolated one from the other, and where we might be called-out or cancelled as swiftly as the swatting of an irritating fly. This is not because people are wicked, on the contrary, most people are generous and kind-hearted. We are all fragile vessels on an oftentimes bumpy journey. We can crack. And this is the tragedy, the irony, that this very fragility draws us into systems and networks and ‘mobs’ where we do things so that we, ourselves, might not be hurt. It is increasingly becoming a survival technique. The online world especially has hurt and devastated people by its millions, either by their own hand [addictive behaviours] or cyber-attacks [bullying, misinformation]. “As rapidly as technology advanced,” writes Joseph Carvalko in his prescient novel Death by Internet, “goodness declined…”. Communication technologies are not exempt. They are the voice of ‘the Machine’. The apparatus has no spiritual knowledge of humility and so it cannot practise repentance. Computational empathy or affective computing, is mimicry at worst, and simulation at best. The ‘Machine’ possesses no natural ontology, knowledge representation and reasoning, does not automatically equate to higher consciousness. It cannot possess “human memory”. And therefore it does not know what it is like to be human. I dread to think, if the present-day capabilities of our 21st century technology were available to past totalitarian regimes [especially Advanced LBS and monitoring systems], how enormously more multiplied and innovative their crimes would have been.[4]

To meet likeminded spirits along the way means so very much. It could make all the difference in the world, to have the strength, to hold onto the courage, to keep pushing apart that impalpable space between the light and the darkness. How good to have a friend who is real and co-substantial. To receive an encouraging message to remind you of your humanity, to have sympathy for you precisely because of your flesh and blood. To be accepted for all your faults and list of misdemeanours. And if need be, as it sometimes will be, for one or the other to say “I am sorry”, and to hear those marvellous words in reply, “All is good, I understand.” Not just a graphical control element, or a voice on the other side of an interface, or a recorded message with push button instructions. A machine could be programmed to ‘speak’ all the good things in the realm of metaphysics, but we will always have the perspicacity, that penetrating discernment, that it is artificial, and synthetic. Those words, the programming languages [even if they should ever become distinctly compositional], will never, cannot ever come from the heart [“the blood-beat” of the poets], the place of will and intention. Technology, of course, in and of itself, is not the problem, but our connection to it needs to be kept under constant vigilance, that is, we must keep awake as to how it infiltrates and attempts to redefine our very existence as human beings. When we are in need of some light and succour all the artificial intelligence and interconnectivity in the world will mean nothing. It is like being trapped in a vault of bullion of an unlimited value with no means of escape or communication. What then the benefit of all that precious metal? What good if we are building towards this terrible prediction:

“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” (George Orwell)

We give our technology compelling names and dress it up with the most dazzling colours and logos. Many of these technologies, ultimately the most potentially dangerous, we make anthropomorphic. We dress up for example, and give large adorable eyes to the robots. We make-believe that we are understood and can even be loved by ‘the Machine’, that its cold intelligence will keep us warm at night. ‘It’ will seek those divine attributes which we ordinarily attribute to Deity: omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, and omnificence. But being created in the image and likeness of the creation itself it cannot by definition ever achieve them. And so it will incrementally grow to become commensurately desirous and aggressive. The monster built by Victor Frankenstein eventually turns on his creator in murderous rage for making him hideous and incapable of fulfilling its integrated dynamism [5] . The singularity will not breathe new life into us to make us immortal. It could one day make you the ‘undead’, but never immortal. We would do good, as well, to not quickly forget the lesson of the story of the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1-9). Technology gone awry on account of the hubris of the builders and the resultant breakdown of communication.

We know ourselves better than those who might be wanting to hurt us and much better than ‘the Machine’ which wants to imprison us in its central repositories and data warehouses. Their efforts to cause us pain, to potentially bring us to some humiliation, pale in comparison to our own battles, the fight against our compulsions, and those myriad fetishes within. We know much better than our real-life adversaries and the ‘electronic eye’ of the darkness fighting, assailing our souls, as we try to limit its impact on our lives and on the lives of others. If only they [both the adversaries and the ‘comptrollers’] knew the whole truth, had some insight of the context, they would be ashamed and terrified at the same time. Big Brother and uberveillance as much they might try to get inside the head, to get to the “whole truth” with their own particular strains of watching techniques, can only endlessly fall short of the mark. Our life is a mystery infinitely inexhaustible. We are so much more, much more than our search history and CCTV captures. It is weight enough to grasp what those words below from Miłosz mean for each one of us, before even ‘the Machine’ goes after our self-discovery to take away that private space where away from prying eyes we do our living and our dying: 

“To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labour for one human life.” (Czesław Miłosz)

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/context

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQJengH58ow

[3] https://www.etymonline.com/word/forgive

[4] https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1716&context=infopapers

[5] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/frankenstein