The blank screen. It’s where the work begins, where creativity and emotion collide, and it’s hard. So many are looking for shortcuts and a way around it. But six weeks ago one man in Rome told a room full of priests shortcuts would cost them their faith and parishioners.

It took me a minute to understand what he meant. I put down my phone, went outside, puzzled. In a few minutes I saw what I was missing, the dots connected by nature. Not my iPhone.

Outside I saw a frog jumping down the driveway. I jumped from frogs to lizards, thinking about how hot the pavement must be for that frog.

Lizards crawl, scurry, and eat bugs, taking their time to process sensory imagery all around them, measuring and making the most of their environment.

Rocks don’t do much. Leave one in the sun and it gets hot. Leave it in winter and it freezes. Its environment doesn’t change it. Static. Stable. An honest, inanimate object that stays put.

The lizard seeks out the rock. It makes it feel good. Warmed by the sun, sleepy, comfortable, refusing to move.

If the lizard stays on the rock, it will become like the rock. Stationary and comfortable, forgetting it has feelings or blood pumping through its body. Its sharp reflexes will dull, making it an easy target for predators.

That right there? That’s the dangerous part about artificial intelligence.

Right now there are jobs eagerly seeking creative writers, those with solid English and writing credentials, to help AI figure out how to convey and write emotions. Patterns and logic are not how humans love and hate one another.

Pope Leo XIV stood in a closed room full of priests in Rome six weeks ago and said a true homily is sharing your faith. And there is nothing inside a machine that can replicate sharing faith. He was drawing a line standing against the slow replacement of our ability to think and feel.

AI cannot communicate the emotional content human beings carry. It replicates patterns. It smooths the rough edges. It is clean and competent and warm, the way a rock is warm.

But it will never bleed.

The lizard will, if it never moves.

So do yourself a favor.

Write your own story. Tell it how you want to. We write incomplete thoughts. Ideas not quite finished. Articulation is something we strive for. But it’s okay if we land far away from the target. We can start over, learn from our mistakes, and capture emotions that no machine will fully comprehend.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​