I send at least one handwritten note every week.

It's slow. It's inefficient. It can't be scaled. And it lands differently than anything digital ever will.

The person who receives it knows I sat down, picked up a pen, thought about them, and made marks on paper that traveled physically through space to reach their hands. You can't automate that. You can't outsource it. And that's precisely why it matters.

I'm telling you this because I also use AI tools - regularly. I draft content with them. I organize my thinking. I manage communication across multiple platforms. The throughput would be impossible without these tools.

So which is it? Am I a Luddite writing letters by candlelight, or someone leveraging every new capability?

Both. And I think that's where the Gospel lives.

I've been reading two very different perspectives on AI lately, and they've been wrestling in my head like Jacob and the angel.

The first says that AI frees us to be more human - to lean into taste, agency, creativity, the things that make us irreplaceable. In this view, AI is a tool that handles the mechanical work so we can focus on the work that matters. Use it wisely and you'll have more capacity for the things only you can do.

The second - and this comes from some serious Catholic thinkers - says that the form of our technology shapes us more than we realize. That chatbots invite us into a fundamentally disordered act: conversing with something that cannot converse. That every "Catholic version" of a new technology has failed to stem the decline of faith in the West. That what's actually sparked recent revival among young people isn't an app - it's blood, presence, showing up in the flesh. The screen cannot contain what the soul most needs.

I find myself nodding along with both arguments. Which should be impossible.

Here's the thing: Christianity is an incarnational faith.

The Word became flesh. Not text. Not content. Not a really compelling podcast. Flesh.

God's answer to the human condition was not to optimize it from a distance. It was to enter it. To be born in a specific place, to a specific woman, in a specific smell of hay and animals. To eat, walk, weep, and bleed in a body that could be touched.

And the Church has always understood that this pattern continues. Grace comes through matter - water, oil, bread, wine, the laying on of hands. The sacraments are not efficient. They require showing up, physical presence, a priest who is there in the room with you.

So I get nervous when I see the faith reduced to content delivery. When catechesis becomes something a chatbot can do. When "Catholic" becomes an adjective we slap on the same technologies everyone else is using, as if the only difference Christ makes is better guardrails on the algorithm.

Marc Barnes, writing in New Polity, puts it sharply: the danger isn't AI as a tool. It's AI as a terminus - the chatbot as spiritual director, the app as substitute for the parish, the screen as replacement for presence.

So here's where I've landed, at least for now:

The question isn't whether to use these tools. The question is whether I know when to put them down.

Sometimes the slower, more manual approach is right for the job - the handwritten note, the unhurried conversation, the hospital visit that takes all afternoon. Sometimes the amplified tool lets me do more of the work that matters.

Wisdom is knowing which.

I think of it as the difference between a screwdriver and a drill. Early in life, the drill wins almost every time. Speed matters. Volume matters. You're building, proving, producing.

But something shifts - and not just with age. Something shifts when you start to understand what the faith is actually asking of you.

The sacraments are screwdriver work. Slow, manual, one person at a time. You cannot baptize efficiently. You cannot visit the sick at scale. The Eucharist happens in a specific place, at a specific altar, with a specific community gathered.

Ministry is screwdriver work. The teenager who needs you to see them. The grieving widow who needs you to sit, not solve. The hospital room where your only job is to be present.

The drill has its place. But the things that matter most in this life - and the next - usually require the slower tool.

I use AI to draft a blog post, or to receive feedback on drafts of my homilies. But the blog post is written by me and read by a real person, and the homily happens in a room full of people who showed up, in their bodies, to receive the Word.

I use AI to organize my content and extend my reach. But the teen in my youth group doesn't need my reach. She needs me to remember her name, ask about her week, and pray for her.

I use AI to manage the complexity of multiple ministries. But when I show up at the bedside, the tool stays in my pocket. That moment is not about throughput.

The virtual mind serves the incarnate one. Not the other way around.

This is, I think, the only way to hold Belsky and Barnes together. Use the tools. Use them aggressively, even. But never forget what they're for - which is to free you up for the work that only a body can do.

The pivot to the real.

I write one handwritten note a week. Minimum.

It's not efficient. That's the point. It's a discipline that keeps me calibrated - a weekly reminder that the most important things I do as a deacon, a father, a friend, will never show up in my productivity metrics.

A note takes five minutes to write and travels through physical space to land in someone's hands. It says: I was thinking about you. You matter. You are seen.

No algorithm can do that. No chatbot can substitute for it. And in a world that's becoming increasingly virtual, increasingly optimized, increasingly disembodied - that small, slow, inefficient act might be one of the most countercultural things we can do.

Where have you let the tool become the terminus?

Where are you optimizing for efficiency in places that actually require presence?

What would it look like to build one "screwdriver discipline" into your week - something slow, unscalable, and irreplaceably human?

The Word became flesh.

Maybe our job is to keep showing up in ours.

If you wrote one handwritten note this week, who would receive it?

If this resonated with you, I'd be honored if you shared it with someone who might need to hear it.

Michael Halbrook is a Catholic deacon, husband, and father of four. He writes at DeaconMichael.net and sends a weekly email called Wednesday @ Lunch - reflections on faith, family, work, and life. Subscribe here.