What’s Real

I find myself ending a lot of my days this summer sitting on the screened porch out back. It is a relief to sit there, after each day spent on my computer building websites and helping solve problems for clients. Problems that exist somewhere in the middle of pixels and algorithms - in a space that none of us has ever really seen. The actual problems I have been tackling over the last few weeks have included fighting Russian Bots and Online Trolls. I think not too many years ago most of us would have thought that was something from a fairy tale.

As deep fake AI images and videos begin to roll into our everyday, I can’t even imagine what fairy tales will seem to really come to life…and take us from the fake news world of wondering what is true, to wondering what is actually real - or even possible within our realm of existence.

The fact that Meta says that they will make no attempt to verify the reality of anything that anyone shares on Facebook and Instagram should be reminders to us all that the social media we engage in daily is NOT real. Maybe the silver lining of the AI phenomena as it gets more fantastical, will be a realization that what is real is in front of us. Not on a screen.

And so, at the end of each day, sitting outside here in the twilight, I try to throw off the bots and random pixels of the day and sink more deeply into the real:

Watching the sun get low in the sky as the shadows wrap around the sinuous curves of the little hills out back.

Watching my sweet Labrador sleep, sprawled out across the soft pine planks of my porch floor.

Watching the fireflies begin to sparkle in the night.

Maybe we should each take some time this week to consciously draw a line between the two. The real, and the screen. And to savor the even greater value of real community. Those who stand beside us, work with us, and worship with us. Those who can be witnesses with us - to the real all around us.

Thank you, God, for this world you made. Help us to celebrate the place you have made for us within it, and the community you have given us to share it with. Amen.

Diana is a founding member of Peace Church.