Looking Forward to Ayudha Puja

Each spring at UU Saratoga’s Goods and Services Auction, Rev. Joe Cleveland puts a sermon up for bid. Whoever is willing to make the most generous contribution to the congregation earns the right to say: “Illuminate us on this.”

That happened to be me. I was a determined bidder because I wanted to hear Rev. Joe talk about Artificial Intelligence, the Brain/Computer Interface, and where our technologies leading us. I wanted him to open the “AI conversation” at UU Saratoga in the spirit of Ayudha Puja.

Since then, Rev Joe, Murray Penney, and I have had many conversation about the Ayudha Puja service we’re hosting tomorrow. That conversation has extended to Ron Roth and the Rev. Kathy Tew Rickey at UU Boca Raton, and the Editorial Team at AI and Faith, including Board Chair David Brenner.

At UUA’s General Assembly in June, Ron and I issued this video invitation to UU congregations to join us.

And Rev. Scott Tayler, Team Leader of the UU Soul Matters Sharing Circle, joined us in hosting this conversation with Manhattan College’s Robert Geraci, with whom we started planning our Ayudha Puja service a year ago.

You’ll find the link to our Ayudha Puja service here. Rev. Joe has titled it “Machined Soul” and he introduces it this way:

The Hindu holiday of Ayudha Puja is Monday, October 23 this year.  It is a day for expressing gratitude, and even reverence, for the tools that help us to live our lives.  We will honor the wisdom in this tradition by considering the tools and the technology that so woven in and ubiquitous in the way we live today.  How does our relationship with all these machines affect our spirits as well as our material well-being? 

We considered asking everyone to forward photos of the tools, machines, and instruments they most wish to honor in connection with this great festival, which was started about a thousand years ago by Hindu warriors as a war to honor their weapons and establish a regimen for maintaining them well. Instead, we’ve decided to offer everyone a lens wipe and encourage them to give the screens of their smartphones a good cleaning.