Pieta

RAYMUND FERNANDEZ

A lecture inside a workshop, a photoshoot I need to be in. The rush of life, an appointed time and place, time growing shorter by the second. The place, still far away. Traffic grinds to a halt. Only a small miracle can save me now. And so a prayer:

Maghimaya ka, Maria

Puno ka sa grasya

Ang Ginoo Diyos maanaa kanimo

Bulahan ka sa mga babaye nga tanan

Ug bulahan ang bunga sa tiyan mo

nga si Hesus…

A bit slower and perhaps more heartfelt in Rudy Villanueva’s Binisaya. But stuck in traffic this way, time is luxury. Does one have too much or too little of it? The question is superseded by the fact of distance. Einstein’s continuum of time and space. How far am I from where I am going? Too far. Time becomes a function of fate. Late. But I make the appointment just in time. Later on that afternoon my friend Jason and I exchange a question between us: When a person speaks to God, does the person get a reply? Not in the language of small miracles but in real words?

I wonder about that. But even so, an interesting event in that afternoon’s workshop came when the speaker put forward the notion of technological singularity. Dr. Luis Maria Calingo’s topic was management. He was excellent at it. But the man’s genius is best revealed by his distractions.

Technological singularity comes with the development of artificial intelligence leading to an era of unimaginable global transformation, the advent of super intelligence. Computers start thinking like humans. But if computers start thinking like humans, wouldn’t they end up as confused as we are?

And if you teach a computer to appreciate art, wouldn’t she, he, or it, end up watching art instead of doing its job? Wouldn’t it devote most of its time posing questions to itself that obviously could have no possible answers? Confusion. And would not super-intelligence engage in the attempt to resolve irresolvable paradoxes? And in time conclude: Paradoxes are the most beautiful things of all. They preoccupy intelligence with the beauty of imperfection, the paradoxes of math — the elegant thought of a point which comes ever closer and closer to a line but never gets there — the bewildering contradiction of imperfect intelligence, which makes intelligence perfect. Can we program that into a computer just so the computer begins to approximate us? Wouldn’t the computer start talking to God? Would the computer get a reply?

Driving home after everything, perfectly confused, imperfect I am, once again, stuck in traffic. Hungry. Is it hunger, hypoglycemia, which makes me think now that Mary, the mother of God, is riding with me in my Lite Ace van? She sits in the seat behind me. I cannot see her. Really? Seriously? Are you riding with me as if there are no others in the world needing your help more than I? She replies: I am here to rest, not help. Do you know how few people are praying in this instance in time? Oh, don’t mind me, you will be stuck here for a very long time. No pressing need for you nor me to help.

Let’s just enjoy the ride. I smile even as she confesses the grief of watching the baby inside her die crucified to a cross. I remember there is a lady roasting fresh piyaya over a charcoal grill two corners from here…

Santa Maria, inahan sa Diyos

Iampo mo kami mga makasasala

Karon ug sa takna sa kamatayon

Amen