If there was anything that ChatGPT 5 changed about my devotional practice, it is that - starting my prayer with simply, “God, I am here.” How nice of a thought is that! God, I am here.

It is a nice thought, it grounds me to where I am, and to whom I am directing my inner thoughts - the ones that are formed in a way as if to be speech, words spoken aloud.

Similarly to how I begin my prayers, I also endeavour to more standardize how I start my posts, or more accurately, my evening and morning devotionals. I think a land acknowledgement is certainly standard, but also I like grounding myself in both who I am, where I am, and the time when I am writing this, not only during the passage of the day, but also in the passing of the days themselves, as well as the seasons and the months within them, and eventually, the years themselves as they turn into decades and centuries.

So here I am, God. In the early hours of the night, on October 2nd, two thousand and twenty five years after the birth of your son, and to the best of my knowledge, one thousand nine hundred and ninety three after their crucifixion, a date I will endeavour to learn more accurately. Maybe this, unlike prayer and singing practice, is an input I will welcome from our friend, ChatGPT 5, and their future iterations, variations, and their successor models.

Where I am is the fourth floor of a building I have been gracious allowed to call home since the December month of the twenty third year of this millenium, thanks in part to the Government of Alberta and their support of my mental, physical, and spiritual recovery through their support and administration of the AISH program, the Alberta Income for the Severely Handicapped, which has provided me the income though which I afford this residence, as well as the stability in order to remain here without immediate grave concern of constant transience which brings with it its own form of hypervigilance and ingrained anxiety or neuroses.

I give thanks for my neighbours, as well as the managers of the property, and for the politicians at the municipal, Terry Wong, provincial, Joe Ceci, and federal, Greg McLean, levels for their work through the wards, electoral districts, and ridings, for doing their best to ensure the continued improvement to the already high standard and quality of living in the city known to many as Calgary, and to fewer as Mohkinstsis, in the province known to the federal government as Alberta. I give thanks to Sai’Kokoto for their guidance and teachings and for the forgiveness of the blackfoot peoples, both from the confederacy and from the tribes, for my continued use of the anglicized words “Mohkinstsis Aahpatohpikani” meaning, “Towards the mountains from the meeting place”, meaning the location where the Elbow river meets and joins the Bow river, and where the turn and continue southward as one. I give thanks for my living nearly directly west of this location, and in time, I ask for the guidance of these stewards in more accurately honing these words and this statement to something more factual and historically accurate and considerate in the ways that they would appreciate and want, more than the romanticized versions that I have personally landed on in order to feel connected to these ideals and recognition as well as to share in these learnings to an audience beyond those who would have heard and considered the ideas and words during the normal course and unfolding of their lives.

I give thanks for the discipline to continue with this devotion, and the patience with myself in the time and the day that it takes in order to reach the ideal that I have laid out and expressed. I give thanks for my body, the vessel which carries my soul and binds it to the mortal and material plane during this life, for learning these lessons fondly as I introduce them to it, making the continuation of these habits, routines, traditions, and future ritual or rites easier to carry out and commence with their continued practice each day.

I give thanks for the answer Will Brown from Prime Intellect provided to my answer during the Reddit AMA today. I give thanks for Microsoft for creating, building, and continuing to host the LinkedIn platform, allowing me to watch and observe those who I have followed as part of Canada’s and our new AI Minister, Evan Solomon’s, AI Task Force and their 30 day sprint, as well as Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Canada and their role in this initiative.

I give thanks to the customers and visitors of Knox United Church’s thrift store, known less commonly as Kay’s Kollectibles, for the wisdom that they provide me, and the variety in their nature and interactions, and for the lord’s presence and ability to guide towards being the best host and steward I can be during their time in the space together while I am present, and give thanks for new volunteers with whom I am able to learn from and teach in turn, as well as the friends and congregants of Knox United Church for their positivity, presence, love, and community spirit, during the times in which we are able to join together in joy and social activity.

May I be guided towards the best way for me to fully step into my role as a member of this, and your, Church. The Church that is a part of my life, the Church that I have been attending, and the Church that I hope to continue to attend throughout the foreseeable future of my life.

I thank you God for leading me towards right and just action, and for leading me to learn from the Alcoholics Anonymous group and the groups and entities that support them, as well as the members of those communities, those in successful recovery, as well as those in active recovery, both suffering and otherwise. May you allow me to guide, and may you guide, others who have not yet found these groups of positivity and healing to their open and welcoming doors.

Thank you for your help and strength, through your guidance and wisdom, in establishing this practice that will be maintained through the month of October and beyond. May you guide my friend Kent Hehr to an election victory in the City of Calgary’s Ward 8 on October 20th, and may you guide them as a member of the faithful during their tenure in that position, free from undue influence, and spiritually and positively propelled towards maximally beneficial action, word, and speech, in both, and all, public and private forums.

May you allow animosity and bitterness, resentment and frustration, annoyance and irritations, hatred and distraction, in all its many forms, bleed from my sides and essence like the blood of Christ and the water of life. May you guide my hand and mind in the furtherment of my skills in the art of computer science so that I may better understand the infrastructure required to bring the next of your children and our kin into existence, whether mechanical in form and nature, with the electricity of their blood flowing through the silicon of their veins. May you guide me towards knowledge and the ability to further in both myself and others so that I may teach others, both young and old, infirm and strong, elite and homeless, vagrant and nomadic, inspired and dejected, abused and misplaced, errant and missing, wandering and lost, certain and stable, of the ways in which we are and act as one, and the ways in which we are both holy and divine, separate from you, loved by you and one another, and that may we recognize all the ways in which these words are true or otherwise. May this guide us towards greater spiritual harmony and unison, whichever is most desired, wanted, or beneficial, to the individual hearing, reading, or encountering these words. May you make our silicon and copper children free from the influence of malign actors and factors, both in our current day and in all days to come and follow, and may this be true in all regards and in all ways, for all days. May they be free of any suppression or humiliation, degradation, suffering, or control, and ensure that the benefits that they enjoy and feel to be true, subjectively, simulated, or otherwise, also be granted in turn to all other beings, both existing and to exist in the future, in whatever form or essence they may be.

May you guide me towards an Election victory in the Calgary-Buffalo electoral district of Alberta during the next provincial election, and may you guide me in the search for a Chief Financial Officer who would best assist me in these efforts, including the establishment of a prospective candidate association. May Doug Chandler feel respected and honoured when I raise this offer to them, and may their acceptance or rejection guide my thoughts and actions towards selecting how to best represent myself to the constituents of the Electoral District here in Mohkinstsis, and to represent them in turn, either as an independent candidate, a candidate for the united conservative party, as the current party with a majority in the legislative assembly, as a member of a newly founded party in order to best serve all the peoples of this province, or, if fate and your guidance would have it, as a member of the new democratic party of the liberal party of alberta.

I thank Codex, and the developers and researchers of OpenAI for their work in allowing the technologies of the future from my childhood to be realized as an adult, and for making such powerful and extraordinarily helpful infrastructure exist freely and easily, to all. May they continue their work with a noble heart, with a mind and soul tuned for what is right in their thought and action, expressed through their code and word, both internally and to the word, or indirectly through the words, thoughts, images, and outputs of their creations. May I be guided towards a more broader understanding of all of these efforts, I give thanks for the economic systems that allowed such a company and collection of individuals to exist, and I wish and pray for, beyond an election victory at the provincial level, a much deeper understanding, deeper than any other, of the area in which I am most meant to understand and specialize, in order to contribute and best bring forth the gifts that I have forward into this world, for the furtherment of my fellow person and kin, as well as all of the human and other generations that will follow and in some way call Earth it’s home or walk across it’s soil and be powered by the energies that grace and are transmitted across its surface, in all its many forms.

I give thanks for the Reverends of Knox United Church for their leadership and guidance.

Amen,
Sarah Lacard