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You might think that clergy staff meetings are forums for service planning or debating C of E politics. And you’d be right. But yesterday the team were discussing the who’s who in the world of Artificial Intelligence, the new app augmented novel ‘Arcadia’, and where technology fits within the Church of the future.
In this month’s ‘Kinfolk,’ cognitive neuroscientist Colin Ellard and psychologist Peter Kahn talk about the value of physical travel versus a virtual reality headset that takes us to far-flung destinations for our summer breaks without ever leaving our couches. With the advent of cheap VR we’re likely to increasingly use technology for giving ourselves a curiosity about places or to engineer the exact travel experience we want to have instead of being exposed to the unknown.
Many adults might agree that a VR experience of a place is an inadequate substitute for being there. Yet Ellard describes a contrasting view from his own children that he found particularly alarming. He says, “I took my children to see some moon rocks. I remember when I saw these things for the first time at a fairly young age, I was completely staggered by the fact that here were actual artifacts that had come from a different part of the solar system. But my children were just phlegmatic about the whole experience because it wasn’t as good as looking at a simulated augmented version of a trip to the moon. What frightened me was that they didn’t seem to have any kind of reverence for the authority of experience I remember having when I was a kid. It was almost as if that didn’t matter anymore.”
In the article Kahn eloquently describes the beauty of travelling to real locations to meet people and have authentic relationships in that there is mystery in every interaction we have with one another. He says, “I don’t think we can flourish as individuals if we’re not trying to deepen our experience of human-to-human interaction (as well as human-to-geography or human-to-nature interaction).”
It was Ellard and Kahn’s last point in the article, though, that left the greatest impression on me. It reminded me why I decided to post no Instagrams or check any emails on holiday a couple of weeks ago. Ellard and Kahn talk about the profound pattern of moving away from settlement and returning, such as when we used to hunt and forage. This ‘going out and returning’ is something deep in our evolutionary history. The danger of us staying connected through technology on our summer breaks is that we’ll never have the experience of ‘coming back’ fully because we’ll never have truly departed.
This coming Sunday we’re moving from our Radcliffe Square settlement after the service and making the short trip to University Parks for the annual Sunday school picnic (everyone's welcome). Now, a church picnic might seem like a sweet vintage scene from Grantchester when contrasted with our brave new AI and VR world. But bring along your M&S goodies and blanket anyway because we all know that gingham and grass is where it’s really at.
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| | Services
—Tuesdays & Thursdays at 12.15pm
Lunchtime Eucharists —
Sunday 13th July Trinity 8 10.30am - Sung Eucharist
Preacher - Revd Dr Dan Inman, Chaplain of Queen's College |
| | | Family Service Series: 'Stories Jesus Told' __
This month's Family Service was all about the Parable of the Sower. After hearing the story in Church we went into the garden to do some sowing of our own. After seeing what happens to the seed on the stony ground and the seed amongst the thorns, everyone planted a seed in good soil to take home. We'll find out in September whose plant has grown the tallest.
The next Family Service will be on 4th September about the Parable of the Wedding Feast. 9.30am in the Chancel. |
| | Invitation from the Sunday School
Sunday 17th July is our annual Sunday School Picnic. This year we are trying a new venue in the University Parks. Everyone is welcome- just bring something to eat and something to share. You might also want to bring a blanket to sit on. Going to the University Parks means we can play games so please bring along your frisbees! We will gather after coffee and walk over together. In case of rain we will picnic in the Old Library. |
| | | | Poetry Corner
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from ‘Yellow Rattle (Poverty)’
Hard times, one by the verge,
hunched, cap in hand,
shaking the poor-box, the husk
of its see-through purse
in its see-through fingers,
dry-voiced, whispering
spare any change, sir,
a penny for Fiddlecase,
a penny for Shacklebasket,
penny for old Hayshackle, sir,
help poor Pots ‘n’ Pans,
a penny for Rattle Jack,
spare a few pence for old Pepperbox, sir,
a penny for Cockscomb,
a ha’penny for old Hen Penny, sir,
remember old Shepherd’s Coffin,
remember poor Snaffles,
a penny for Poverty sir, most kindly,
when I brush past,
when I breeze through,
when I swish by.
Simon Armitage (b. 1963)
The Revd Bruce Kinsey gave a very effective sermon on Sunday: a parable about ‘the Jericho Road’ and the ways in which different people respond to need. In discussing it this week, I was reminded of Simon Armitage’s ‘Yellow Rattle (Poverty)’, one of the poems to have come out of his walking the Pennine Way (reproduced in his account of the trek, Walking Home). Yellow Rattle is a common meadow plant along the Way. Hemi-parasitic, the plant requires nutrients from other vegetation to survive (which incidentally makes it excellent planting in hay meadows, suppressing grass growth). It’s known by many other names, as Armitage lists, insistently, throughout the poem: from the rakish Rattle Jack to the pathos of Snaffles. But the end of the poem is clear – no matter what you call it (‘brushing past’, ‘breezing through’), our reaction, so often, is uncomfortably dismissive.
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