Parable of the Sower

by Octavia E. Butler

SUNDAY, JULY 21, 2024

Intelligence is ongoing, individual adaptability. Adaptations that an intelligent species may make in a single generation, other species make over many generations of selective breeding and selective dying. Yet intelligence is demanding. If it is misdirected by accident or by intent, it can foster its own orgies of breeding and dying.

Nehemiah, chapter four, Verse 14: “And I looked and rose up and said unto the nobles, and to the rulers, and to the rest of the people, be not afraid of them: remember the Lord which is great and terrible, and fight for your brethren, your sons, and your daughters, your wives and your houses.” Interesting. Interesting that Dad had that verse ready, and that Cory recognized it. Maybe they’ve had this conversation before.

The particular God-is-Change belief system that seems right to me will be called Earthseed.

I’ve never felt that it was anything other than real: discovery rather than invention, exploration rather than creation.

All that you touch, You Change. All that you Change, Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change. God Is Change.

What does this one mean if you live in a cul-de-sac with a wall around it? What does it mean if you’re damned lucky to live in a cul-de-sac with a wall around it?

I like Curtis Talcott a lot. Maybe I love him. Sometimes I think I do. He says he loves me. But if all I had to look forward to was marriage to him and babies and poverty that just keeps getting worse, I think I’d kill myself.

When civilization fails to serve, it must disintegrate unless it is acted upon by unifying internal or external forces.

Today, my parents had to go downtown to identify the body of my brother Keith.

L

There is no end To what a living world Will demand of you.

People are setting fires because they’re frustrated, angry, hopeless. They have no power to improve their lives, but they have the power to make others even more miserable. And the only way to prove to yourself that you have power is to use it.

little relevant I'd say

We’ve never been rich, but to the desperate, we looked rich. We were surviving and we had our wall. Did our community die so that addicts could make a help-the-poor political statement?

Embrace diversity. Unite— Or be divided, robbed, ruled, killed By those who see you as prey. Embrace diversity Or be destroyed.

“Change is ongoing. Everything changes in some way—size, position, composition, frequency, velocity, thinking, whatever. Every living thing, every bit of matter, all the energy in the universe changes in some way. I don’t claim that everything changes in every way, but everything changes in some way.”

What the hell. We’re all men and women now, not kids anymore. Shit.

Same

The gun turned out to be an empty, dirty Beretta nine millimeter.

The earthquake had done a lot of damage in Hollister, but the people hadn’t gone animal. They seemed to be helping one another with repairs and looking after their own destitute. Imagine that.

Strange how normal it’s become for us to lie on the ground and listen while nearby, people try to kill each other.

ouch

Your teachers Are all around you. All that you perceive, All that you experience, All that is given to you or taken from you, All that you love or hate, need or fear Will teach you— If you will learn. God is your first and your last teacher. God is your harshest teacher: subtle, demanding. Learn or die.

The trees were to have her, but the dogs and the cannibals were not.