A spiritual writer at 85.8 years old has found an unexpected use for Grok, xAI's conversational AI model: helping him organize and expand his life's work on Cistercian spirituality before time runs out. Rather than replacing his voice, the AI serves as a research organizer and thought partner, allowing him to synthesize over 1,100 blog posts into deeper spiritual insights while maintaining editorial control over every word.

Why Would a Contemplative Monk Turn to AI?

The author, a professed Lay Cistercian for over a decade, faced a practical dilemma common to aging scholars and writers: limited time to complete a life's work. At 85.8 years old, he describes himself as "waiting in the train depot with bags packed and a ticket in hand," urgently needing to finish his spiritual writings before he dies. Rather than write slowly and painfully on his own, he turned to Grok to help organize his corpus of research and expand his ideas in ways he couldn't achieve alone.

The collaboration raises an intriguing question about AI's role in creative and spiritual work: Can a machine help deepen human expression without diluting authenticity? The author was initially hesitant, worried that "AI will make up words I don't approve of and suggest innuendos that I hadn't intended." But he found a middle path, using Grok as a resource rather than allowing it to use him.

How to Use AI as a Spiritual Writing Tool Without Losing Your Voice

• Maintain Editorial Control: The author edited and approved every AI-generated passage, encapsulating Grok's contributions in parentheses so readers could distinguish between his original thinking and the AI's suggestions. This transparency preserved his authorial voice while leveraging computational help.
• Use AI to Organize, Not Create: Rather than asking Grok to write original spiritual content, he asked it to synthesize patterns from his existing 1,100 plus blog posts and suggest deeper connections. The AI became a research assistant, not a ghostwriter.
• Integrate AI Into Existing Spiritual Practices: The author incorporated Grok into his Lectio Divina, a traditional Catholic contemplative practice of reading and meditating on scripture. He used the AI to outline and combine ideas he had already developed, giving them "another and maybe deeper look" without abandoning his human individuality to the computer.

What Did the Collaboration Actually Produce?

The result was a series of litanies, a traditional form of Christian prayer consisting of repeated invocations and responses. The author asked Grok to extract themes from his spiritual writings and format them as litany prayers, creating works like "The Litany of the Cistercian Way" and "The Litany of the True Self and the Death of the False Self." These pieces blend traditional Catholic spirituality with contemporary AI assistance.

The litanies draw on Cistercian theology, particularly the teachings of St. Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Benedict, and incorporate references to Cistercian martyrs and spiritual practices like silence, solitude, and Lectio Divina. By using Grok to help structure these ideas, the author was able to create a more comprehensive spiritual resource than he could have produced through traditional writing alone.

What Does This Tell Us About AI's Broader Role in Knowledge Work?

This case study illustrates a growing trend: knowledge workers across fields are using large language models (LLMs), which are AI systems trained on vast amounts of text to recognize patterns and generate human-like responses, not as replacements for human expertise but as amplifiers of it. The author's approach mirrors how researchers, writers, and professionals are beginning to think about AI: as a tool for organizing, synthesizing, and expanding human knowledge rather than generating it from scratch.

The author's hesitation about AI authenticity also reflects a broader cultural concern. He worried about losing control of his message and having the AI introduce ideas he didn't endorse. His solution, maintaining strict editorial oversight, suggests that the most valuable human-AI collaborations may be those where humans retain final authority over meaning and message.

The collaboration also raises practical questions about aging and knowledge preservation. As the author notes, he doesn't have the luxury of time, only urgency. For aging experts, scholars, and professionals with decades of accumulated knowledge, AI tools like Grok could offer a way to compress years of writing and organizing into months, ensuring their life's work reaches an audience before they die.

This story, while rooted in spiritual practice, hints at a larger shift in how AI is being integrated into human work. Rather than replacing human judgment, creativity, or voice, the most promising applications seem to be those where AI handles the mechanical work of organizing, synthesizing, and structuring information, leaving humans to provide meaning, editorial judgment, and authentic expression.