Eric, I very much enjoyed your reflection. I always learn a lot from your essays, and I like that you follow the Lectionary. But I must say that my most emotional response to your essay this week was the accompanying AI-generated image.
Looking at your image, I immediately thought of my mother. She was a quilter. One of her quilts is in our guest room, a beautiful bedspread dominated by abstract yellow and green patterns of flowers and vines. She took up quilting later in life, after all of her sons left home. Unlike her needlepoint, which I witnessed growing up, I never saw her in the process of making quilts. I only saw the finished products, something that reflected the beauty and awe of nature. Each of her quilts took many hours of tedious work. They were really quite good. Despite my dad’s encouragement, she never showed any of them at the county fair and, God forbid, never entered any in a competition. I think she was too shy or maybe she made them for herself and her family, closely guarding the intimacy of her creativity. I am saddened that I never asked her about her motivations and emotions. What did she like about it? What prompted her to take this up in the latter part of her life?
I’m not sure what Mother would think about an AI-generated quilt. I’m guessing that she’d be unhappy that a robot could generate in seconds something that took her months to create. But more than that, I like to think she’d be insistent that God inspires creative expression and that is one of the best parts of being a human, something that AI cannot grasp. Perhaps you experience some of that with your creative writing.
My mother died eight years ago. I still miss her a lot. I felt her absence more poignantly when I saw the AI-generated quilt with your essay. But that’s a good thing. I felt especially attached to her in that moment. So much of her is still a mystery to me, gone from this part of life, but still here in special ways, poking at me when I least expect it.
Ah, but an AI-generated quilt cannot keep you warm, so AI could never replicate in seconds what your mother could do. My grandmother was a quilter; that will be a post for another day.
Eric, I very much enjoyed your reflection. I always learn a lot from your essays, and I like that you follow the Lectionary. But I must say that my most emotional response to your essay this week was the accompanying AI-generated image.
Looking at your image, I immediately thought of my mother. She was a quilter. One of her quilts is in our guest room, a beautiful bedspread dominated by abstract yellow and green patterns of flowers and vines. She took up quilting later in life, after all of her sons left home. Unlike her needlepoint, which I witnessed growing up, I never saw her in the process of making quilts. I only saw the finished products, something that reflected the beauty and awe of nature. Each of her quilts took many hours of tedious work. They were really quite good. Despite my dad’s encouragement, she never showed any of them at the county fair and, God forbid, never entered any in a competition. I think she was too shy or maybe she made them for herself and her family, closely guarding the intimacy of her creativity. I am saddened that I never asked her about her motivations and emotions. What did she like about it? What prompted her to take this up in the latter part of her life?
I’m not sure what Mother would think about an AI-generated quilt. I’m guessing that she’d be unhappy that a robot could generate in seconds something that took her months to create. But more than that, I like to think she’d be insistent that God inspires creative expression and that is one of the best parts of being a human, something that AI cannot grasp. Perhaps you experience some of that with your creative writing.
My mother died eight years ago. I still miss her a lot. I felt her absence more poignantly when I saw the AI-generated quilt with your essay. But that’s a good thing. I felt especially attached to her in that moment. So much of her is still a mystery to me, gone from this part of life, but still here in special ways, poking at me when I least expect it.
Ah, but an AI-generated quilt cannot keep you warm, so AI could never replicate in seconds what your mother could do. My grandmother was a quilter; that will be a post for another day.