#higher power

Many

MANY OF US FEEL THE SAME

You are not

and never will be

Alone.

If nothing else- trust that there is a power greater than you that is and WANTS TO look after you.

They say “higher power” like it is supposed to feel safe.

Like the word should soften something in me

instead of tightening everything inside my chest.

But it doesn’t soften anything.

It makes everything come back louder.

My father used God like instruction.

Like authority. Like permission to do anything and still call it righteous.

He said it was in the Bible.

So it became law in our house.

And I learned law there meant pain you were not allowed to question.

I learned early that scripture could be used like a weapon and still be called love.

I learned obedience meant silence.

I learned silence meant survival.

I learned survival meant disappearing inside myself so no one could see what it was doing to me.

I was made to kneel on a broomstick in the corner. Small room. Smaller me.

Like I was something that needed to be pressed down into place.

Arms held straight out to my sides until they shook so hard I stopped feeling like they belonged to me. Textbooks and phone books placed into my palms until pain became the point and not the warning.

When my arms dropped

the whip came down.

No hesitation. No softness. No confusion about what would happen next.

Just impact.

Just fear learning my body better than I ever got to.

I was sexually abused in that same house where they talked about God like He was watching over us.

Like He was protecting something.

Like He was not also in the room being used as justification.

And I still don’t know how to hear “higher power” without my body going cold first. Without something in me bracing like I’m about to be punished for existing again.

This has followed me into adulthood in ways I don’t always have language for. There have been times it has driven me to the edge of wanting to disappear.

Times I have been suicidal.

Times I made an attempt on my own life and still woke up inside the same mind that remembers everything.

Sometimes in AA rooms I sit there and feel like I’m splitting in half. One part trying to stay present. One part already back there, waiting for the next thing to happen.

My body hears it and thinks of control.

Not comfort.

Not safety.

Not surrender.

Just control disguised as something holy.

Some days I feel anger so strong it makes me want to tear something apart just to prove I still can. Some days I feel grief so heavy it feels like it’s sitting on my ribs. Some days I feel nothing at all and that feels worse than both

because it means I am not even reacting anymore.

And still I stay alive in it.

Still I show up.

Still I sit in rooms where words land on me like they don’t know what they are touching.

If there is something higher, I don’t know its name. And I don’t trust names that have ever been used to hurt me.

But I notice what does not ask for belief in order to exist.

Trees continuing to grow anyway even when nobody is watching. Air filling my lungs without asking permission or offering comfort. My body surviving things it was never meant to carry and still not fully giving up on me.

And something in me that keeps choosing to stay anyway even when nothing about my history makes that choice make sense.

Maybe that is not God.

Maybe it is just survival that never learned how to stop becoming something more.

I don’t know.

But I am still here.

Steve Brodner :: A.I. takes its first real hit from a higher power

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Here are some quotes from the document:

1. “Like the natural environment, the ‘digital ecosystem’ can be preserved or exploited, shared or monopolized. Solidarity demands that decisions regarding data, algorithms, platforms and artificial intelligence take into account not only the immediate benefit for a few, but also the impact on all peoples and on future generations” (paragraph 76).

2. “In one sense, technological innovation can represent human participation in the divine act of creation. Developers, therefore, bear a particular ethical and spiritual responsibility, for every design choice reflects a vision of humanity” (paragraph 111).

3. “For an algorithm, an error is a flaw to be corrected; for a person, however, an error can be a catalyst for profound change” (paragraph 128).

4. “Those who control digital platforms and means of communication have a considerable ability to affect the collective imagination and to present a particular vision of reality as desirable. Such power should be constantly guided by the pursuit of truth and respect for human dignity, so that the culture fostered on the internet does not become an instrument of excessive distraction, homogenization or dominance, but rather a setting in which inner freedom and critical thought can mature” (paragraph 136).

5. “Our first task is neither to demonize nor idolize technological tools, but to utilize them on the basis of a fundamental principle, namely that truth is a common good and not the property of those with power or influence. We must therefore promote an ecology of communication” (paragraph 137).

6. “We must learn, then, how to exercise restraint in the use of AI and to protect our young people from the promise of the perfect machine, from that subtle temptation which renders human thought seemingly superfluous precisely when it is most needed” (paragraph 140).

7. “In the short term, it may seem advantageous to reduce labor costs or maximize financial efficiency, but in the long term this undermines the very foundations of social coexistence. While technological successes are celebrated, the social fabric is progressively eroded, as if by a silent virus” (paragraph 166).

8. “No algorithm can make war morally acceptable. AI does not remove the intrinsic inhumanity of conflict; indeed it can only bring about conflict more quickly and render it more impersonal, lowering the threshold for resorting to violence, transforming defense into threat prediction and thus reducing victims to data” (paragraph 198).

9. “Even in the darkest nights, the Lord raises up men and women who refuse to give up, who persevere in doing good, who protect the vulnerable and open pathways to reconciliation. The memory of the saints, righteous people and the oft-forgotten peacemakers, show us that grace does not magically eliminate conflict, but instead it inspires active resistance to evil and an astonishing creativity in doing good” (paragraph 211).

oh, to play at god