A New Liturgical Year

Our friends at Soul Matters have given UU ministers, religious educators, and worship teams an inspiring list of themes around which to develop Sunday services, small-group discussions, and RE classes in 2023-24.

Heritage is our theme for October, and so we’ve produced this package, which includes our Unitarian Universalist Interpretation of Ayudha Puja on Sunday, October 22.

In November, we’ll explore Generosity. In December, Mystery.

You’ll see we’re employing ChatGPT to help us think through our messaging. This Large Language Model has learned patterns, structures, and relationships within language to the point where it can make highly informed predictions of what should come next after whatever prompt we give it.

But ChatGPT doesn’t know what we want to say. It doesn’t know what’s in our hearts or drives our interests and passions. That’s still for humans to figure out, with all of our hopes, dreams and aspirations, not to mention our fears, appetites, and anxieties. We’re discovering where human begins and artificial ends — and vice versa.

In AI for UUs, we’re going to go as deeply into the science of AI and the Brain/Computer Interface as deeply as our community of interpretation cares to go. At some point, we’ll have to get into Integrated Information Theory, but that’s a ways off, I promise.

This much we know for sure: We’re living in an awesome, sci-fi mash-up of a world, the meaning of which will forever be mystifying to us.

There’s rich terrain here for reflection, a space in which Unitarian Universalists are prepared to journey because we say proudly that we have no creed. We have Principles, but no imposed orthodoxy. No single book is held up as any more holy than any other. Our imaginations roam in pursuit of truth, love, justice, and beauty.

We offer interviews here. And here’s our vision of the future unfolding.