Daily Digital Life Litany for Protection, Direction and Stewardship: Dawkins meets Ojibwe Wisdom

 Caveat emptier: This post was drafted with help from an AI assistant (Perplexity)— but ideated and edited extensively by the human, Bill Acton. It is one of about a dozen that will be appearing on the blog, including Evangelical, Anglican,Unitarian, Orthodox, Shinto,Aboriginal, Hip hop, Gregorian, Dawkins meets Ojibwe wisdom, Hindu, and Klingon! These were all created to be experienced as read aloud, not to be simply read silently. The twin purposes for the project are to (a) provide at least a framework for a daily time of preparation, in the form of prayer or a meditation, and (b) more interestingly, to observe how AI navigates the the intersection of faith, prayer and AI!

Source  

This little experiment began with a simple digital life litany—language addressed to a Creator, asking for help to live sanely and kindly in a world of screens, scrolls, and notifications. (Daily (Evangelical Christian/Scriptual) Digital Life Litany for Protection, Direction and Stewardship, v1.0) From there it has moved through several versions: Anglican, Unitarian and several more to appear on the blog (Shinto, Muslim, Australian Aborigines, Hindu, Hip Hop, Gregorian and Celtic). i

This is the first to go from a new version, Ojibwe, shaped by Ojibwe images of land, water, and kinship, to a derivative verions, in this case a Dawkins-like lens. Along the way, an obvious question surfaced: what would this look like for someone who cannot in good conscience pray at all? How might a convinced contemporary atheist, in the spirit of Richard Dawkins, affirm the ethical and ecological insights of Ojibwe thought without invoking spirits or a personal God?

The result is the litany below. It tries to honor Ojibwe rhythm and imagery—mino‑bimaadiziwin, “the good life,” and the sense of being related to the more‑than‑human world—while staying completely within a secular, scientific frame. It assumes no Creator, only a shared, fragile planet and a long evolutionary story. It’s not written *for* Ojibwe communities and certainly doesn’t speak on their behalf; rather, it’s a thought experiment about how a Dawkins‑shaped conscience might try to listen to, and be informed by, Indigenous wisdom in the digital age.

You might read it devotionally, skeptically, or simply as a reflective exercise in “digital ethics with Ojibwe cadence.” However you approach it, the aim is the same: to help us notice how we are actually living online, and whether our digital habits draw us toward or away from something that could honestly be called a good life.

Digital Life Litany  (Ojibwe, through a Dawkins‑style lens)

You are invited to read this slowly, as a reflective litany. It borrows Ojibwe patterns of speaking about land, water, and relatives, while grounding everything in a secular, scientific view of the world.

Leader: I begin by acknowledging the only world for which we have evidence: this earth of forests and lakes, stones and cedar, insects and stars.  

All: We stand in a vast kinship, shaped by evolution and deep time, not by decree from any supernatural throne.

Leader: Long before wires crossed continents and satellites circled above, the pines were already breathing, the rivers already flowing, and human feet were already walking these paths.  

All: We remember that screens arrived very late; our bodies and minds still belong first to soil, air, and living communities.

Leader: Ojibwe speech calls the beings around us relatives—tree‑people, bird‑people, four‑legged and finned. It is a poetic way of pointing to a biological fact: we share ancestry with them all.  

All: Let our digital words show respect for this shared lineage; may we speak online as if we really are related to everything that breathes.

Leader: Many of us now wake to a rectangle of light before we greet the dawn sky. Our first gesture is a thumb swiping a screen, not a hand feeling the day’s weather at the door.  

All: We recognize that our nervous systems did not evolve for infinite scrolls and constant alerts. They evolved for forests, lakes, faces, and firelight.

Leader: When we forget this, we feel it in our bones: the twitchy restlessness, the hollow after a long night of scrolling, the sense that we have been grazing on shadows instead of food.  

All: We commit to small acts of remembrance: a moment outside before the phone, bare feet on the ground, a glance at the sky before the inbox.

Leader: These are not rituals to please a deity, but experiments in living well.  

All: We are willing to test them in our own lives and observe the results with the same honesty we bring to science.

Leader: The digital world amplifies our cleverness, but also our weaknesses. Outrage travels faster than nuance. Conspiracy travels faster than correction.  

All: We accept that our brains are prone to bias, pattern‑seeking, and tribal loyalty. Knowing this is the first step in resisting manipulation.

Leader: When a post confirms what we already believe, we will pause. When a story perfectly flatters our side and demonizes the other, we will ask for evidence.  

All: We will remember that “I want this to be true” is not the same as “This is well‑supported by data.”

Leader: Ojibwe elders remind their communities to listen to the old stories, because those stories encode generations of observation: of animal habits, seasons, and human behavior.  

All: We, too, have evidence‑based stories—about climate, disease, psychology, and technology. We will treat them as treasures, not as optional opinions.

Leader: We admit that we have used phones and computers to gossip, to mock, to dehumanize. We have forwarded without checking, shamed without listening, and spoken in ways we would hesitate to use in person.  

All: We resolve to use these same tools differently: to inform, to understand, to expand rather than shrink our circle of concern.

Leader: There is no cosmic judge to tally our posts, no divine ledger to balance our likes against our lies.  

All: That makes our responsibility greater, not smaller. We are the ones who bear the consequences of the worlds we create with our words.

Leader: Ojibwe languages, ceremonies, and teachings have survived centuries of pressure—disease, displacement, erasure. In them are carried fragile cultural “memes”: patterns of thought and practice that replicate from mind to mind.  

All: We commit to treating such cultural patterns with care: not as content to be strip‑mined for spectacle, but as living knowledge that belongs in communities, with consent and context.

Leader: Our devices are not magic. They are built from metals dug from somewhere, often from lands where Indigenous peoples still live close to their ancestors’ graves and stories.  

All: Each upgrade has a cost to land and people. We will remember that when we crave the newest model.

Leader: Science offers no evidence of a cosmic plan that guarantees justice, no assurance that truth will always defeat falsehood or kindness always overcome cruelty.  

All: This is sobering, but it is also clarifying. If we want a more humane world—on‑screen and off—we must build it ourselves.

Leader: Ojibwe tradition speaks of mino‑bimaadiziwin, the good life: walking in balance with community and with the more‑than‑human world.  

All: We translate that into a secular promise: to live in ways that support human flourishing and a thriving biosphere, guided by evidence and empathy.

Leader: In this brief, improbable life, emerging from billions of years of evolution, we find ourselves holding tools our ancestors could not imagine, with reach that spans the globe.  

All: We choose to use that reach for clarity instead of confusion, for curiosity instead of dogma, for solidarity instead of contempt.

Leader: No spirit compels us, no divine hand steers our fingers across the keyboard.  

All: That is precisely why our choices matter. In every click, message, and shared idea, we leave a trace in the minds of others and in the culture we pass on.

wracton@gmail.com
williamacton.legalshieldassociate.com