Thank You Nick Cave
Chat GPT is the official name for a computer program that can generate essays with just a few suggestive words.
The following quote is from a letter by Nick Cave about Chat GPT. It was read by Stephen Fry on a YouTube series called ‘Live Letters’
“In the story of creation, God makes the world and everything in it in 6 days and on the 7th day, he rests. The 7th day is significant because it suggests that the creation required a certain amount of effort on God’s part. That some sort of artistic struggle had taken place.
This struggle is the validating impulse that gives God’s world its intrinsic meaning.
The world becomes more than just an object full of other objects rather it is imbued with the vital spirit, the essence of its creator.”
There is much to draw out of this. Like… the very serious matter of keeping a day off. Clergy are notorious for not doing this properly, always to their own detriment and thus to their families' angst, sadness and unravelling.
Secondly, we often think that God just clapped his hands, muttered a few well-chosen words and in a puff of smoke, everything was created with no effort at all. What if it really was like Nick Cave suggests? What if things did not come that easily to God… That there was a struggle? Wouldn’t that mean a more approachable, sympathetic, understanding, compassionate God? A God who could quite genuinely say ‘I know the work of creating is a striving and difficult.’
Finally, just as a potter imbues the pot with something of himself, so too does creation throb with the heartbeat of God. His signature, his thumbprint and his joy are all around and within.
Thank you Nick Cave for reminding us to look and listen afresh.