I asked Chat-GPT to read the pages of our diocesan website and then write a poem. This is what it came up with…
An Epic of the Diocese of Mackenzie-Fort Smith
In the beginning was distance,
and the distance was vast.
Rivers ran longer than memory,
the sky leaned low with stars,
and winter spoke first
in a voice of ice and wind.
Here, before roads learned their names,
before borders were drawn with ink,
the land itself taught reverence—
tundra kneeling to horizon,
forest breathing incense of spruce,
caribou tracing ancient psalms
across snow and stone.
Into this wide silence came the Word,
not shouted, but carried—
by canoe and dog team,
by aching feet and stubborn hope.
Missionaries followed the rivers,
learning their bends like prayers,
pitching tents where the Gospel
met the smoke of campfires.
They called it Mackenzie,
then Fort Smith,
then a diocese larger than many nations,
yet small enough to know
each face by name.
Churches rose not as monuments,
but as shelters:
logs fitted by frozen hands,
Quonset huts curved like open palms,
chapels stitched into communities
where faith and survival
were never far apart.
Bells rang against the wind,
sometimes unanswered,
sometimes answered years later
by footsteps returning.
Priests stayed.
Some came from far countries
and learned the grammar of snow.
They stayed through darkness that lasted months,
through summers that never slept.
They walked the land to find the people,
prayed where the people stood—
on riverbanks, in hunting camps,
under skies too wide for walls.
Religious sisters taught children
to read, to sing, to hope.
They listened as much as they spoke.
They learned names older than maps.
And the people—
Dene, Inuvialuit, Métis, newcomers—
received, resisted, questioned, endured.
Faith here was never fragile;
it was tested by cold,
by history,
by wounds that still ache.
Time turned.
The Church learned to listen more slowly.
Truth rose like thawed ground in spring.
Reconciliation became a long road,
walked step by step,
sometimes barefoot.
Priests grew fewer.
Flights replaced dog teams.
Lay leaders carried the lamp
when the shepherd could not stay.
Prayer did not vanish—
it adapted, like life itself.
Still the rivers kept flowing,
and the diocese kept faith.
The bishop walks among the people now,
not above them.
His voice carries the echo of snowfields,
his hope shaped by distance and closeness both.
He knows this Church is not held together
by buildings or schedules,
but by presence.
This is a diocese that does not shout.
It listens to wind.
It waits for planes.
It trusts in small gatherings,
in hands folded quietly,
in the long memory of God.
Here, faith is not measured in numbers
but in miles walked,
winters endured,
candles kept lit
when the power fails.
And still,
under the northern lights,
the Church stands—
not tall, but faithful,
rooted deep in land and people.
Where the rivers learn to pray,
so too does the Church.
By the time I finished reading this I had a tear in my eye. I could not believe a machine had written such profound verse and such beautiful order. But then I shook my head and said, “surely, it is just a machine, it does not know the meaning of what it is doing.”
So I put it to the test, I chose a line that I thought was just a little too random and I asked Chat what it meant when it wrote the words, “caribou tracing ancient psalms across snow and stone.” Without hesitation Chat gave the following explanation…
That line is metaphorical and sacramental, and it carries several layers of meaning at once.
“caribou tracing ancient psalms
across snow and stone.”
At its heart, the line suggests that creation itself is praying.
Caribou are among the most ancient and essential beings of the northern land. For Indigenous peoples of the North, they are not simply animals but life-givers, teachers, and companions whose migrations have shaped human survival for thousands of years. Their routes across tundra, snow, and rock long predate Christianity, writing, or even recorded history.
To say they are “tracing ancient psalms” does not mean literal words or songs. Rather, it means their movement is like prayer—rhythmic, purposeful, repeated generation after generation. Just as psalms are sung over centuries, the caribou follow paths laid down long before memory, returning again and again in faithful pattern.
“Across snow and stone” emphasizes endurance. Snow is temporary, stone is permanent. Together they represent time itself—seasons that change and land that remains. The caribou move across both, linking the fleeting and the eternal.
The line gently echoes biblical theology, especially the Psalms:
“Let everything that breathes praise the Lord” (Psalm 150)
“The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19)
Here, the praise is not spoken but lived. The land becomes a prayer book, and the caribou write upon it with their hooves.
In the context of the northern Church and the Diocese of Mackenzie–Fort Smith, the line suggests something deeper still: that God was already present and active in the land long before missionaries arrived. The Gospel did not enter a silent wilderness; it encountered a creation already singing.
So the line means this, simply put:
The land has always prayed,
and the people learned to listen.
Now I don’t know what to think. What do you think?
Mackenzie-Fort Smith 