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August 14 - September 28, 2020
We would win if we could just keep out of the fighting.
The Self must create Its own reasons for being. To shape God, Shape Self.
“Stumbling across the truth isn’t the same as making things
He nodded. “All right. But tell me, what do people have to do to be good members of an Earthseed Community?” A nice, door-opening question. “The essentials,” I answered, “are to learn to shape God with forethought, care, and work; to educate and benefit their community, their families, and themselves; and to contribute to the fulfillment of the Destiny.”
“And why should people bother about the Destiny, farfetched as it is? What’s in it for them?” “A unifying, purposeful life here on Earth, and the hope of heaven for themselves and their children. A real heaven, not mythology or philosophy. A heaven that will be theirs to shape.” “Or a hell,” he said. His mouth twitched. “Human beings are good at creating hells for themselves even out of richness.” He thought for a moment. “It sounds too simple, you know.”
“It sounds overwhelming to some people.” “I mean it’s too … straightforward. If you get people to accept it, they’ll make it more complicated, more open to interpretation, more mystical, and more comforting.”
All religions change. Think about the big ones. What do you think Christ would be these days? A Baptist? A Methodist? A Catholic? And the Buddha—do you think he’d be a Buddhist now? What kind of Buddhism would he practice?” He smiled. “After all, if ‘God is Change,’ surely Earthseed can change, and if it lasts, it will.”
“No one can stop Change, but we all shape Change whether we mean to or not.
The world is full of painful stories. Sometimes it seems as though there aren’t any other kind and yet I found myself thinking how beautiful that glint of water was through the trees.
As wind, As water, As fire, As life, God Is both creative and destructive, Demanding and yielding, Sculptor and clay. God is Infinite Potential: God is Change.
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.
Respect God: Pray working. Pray learning, planning, doing. Pray creating, teaching, reaching. Pray working. Pray to focus your thoughts, still your fears, strengthen your purpose. Respect God. Shape God. Pray working.
Create no images of God. Accept the images that God has provided. They are everywhere, in everything. God is Change— Seed to tree, tree to forest; Rain to river, river to sea; Grubs to bees, bees to swarm. From one, many; from many, one; Forever uniting, growing, dissolving— forever Changing. The universe is God’s self-portrait.
A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the way side; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. And some fell upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. And others fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bore fruit an hundredfold.
Here we are— Energy, Mass, Life, Shaping life, Mind, Shaping Mind, God, Shaping God. Consider— We are born Not with purpose, But with potential.
All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change. God Is Change. The words are harmless, I suppose, and metaphorically true. At least she began with some species of truth. And now she’s touched me one last time with her memories, her life, and her damned Earthseed.
We give our dead To the orchards And the groves. We give our dead To life.
Darkness Gives shape to the light As light Shapes the darkness. Death Gives shape to life As life Shapes death. The universe And God Share this wholeness, Each Defining the other. God Gives shape to the universe As the universe Shapes God. FROM Memories of Other Worlds BY TAYLOR FRANKLIN BANKOLE
I have also read that the Pox was caused by accidentally coinciding climatic, economic, and sociological crises. It would be more honest to say that the Pox was caused by our own refusal to deal with obvious problems in those areas. We caused the problems: then we sat and watched as they grew into crises. I have heard people deny this, but I was born in 1970. I have seen enough to know that it is true. I have watched education become more a privilege of the rich than the basic necessity that it must be if civilized society is to survive. I have watched as convenience, profit, and inertia
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‘For the kingdom of Heaven is as a man traveling into a far country who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. And unto One he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey’
‘Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same and made them another five talents. And likewise he that had received two, he also gained another two. But he that had received one went out and digged in the earth, and hid his lord’s money.’
“Those are our talents,” he would say as my brothers’ eyes glazed over and even I tried not to sigh. “God has given them to us, and he’ll judge us according to how we use them.”
To each of the two servants who had traded well and made profit for their lord, the lord said, “ ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.’
But to the servant who had done nothing with his silver talent except bury it in the ground to keep it safe, the lord said harsher words. “ ‘Thou wicked and slothful servant …’ ” he began. And he ordered his men to, “ ‘Take therefore the talent from him and give it unto him which hath ten talents. For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shal...
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Jarret condemns the burnings, but does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear. As for the beatings, the tarring and feathering, and the destruction of “heathen houses of devil-worship,” he has a simple answer: “Join us! Our doors are open to every nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again.”
Chaos Is God’s most dangerous face— Amorphous, roiling, hungry. Shape Chaos— Shape God. Act. Alter the speed Or the direction of Change. Vary the scope of Change. Recombine the seeds of Change. Transmute the impact of Change. Seize Change. Use it. Adapt and grow.
Jarret’s supporters are more than a little seduced by Jarret’s talk of making America great again. He seems to be unhappy with certain other countries. We could wind up in a war. Nothing like a war to rally people around flag, country, and great leader.
God is Change, And in the end, God prevails. But meanwhile… Kindness eases Change. Love quiets fear. And a sweet and powerful Positive obsession Blunts pain, Diverts rage, And engages each of us In the greatest, The most intense Of our chosen struggles
In fact, her god is a process or a combination of processes, not an entity. It is not consciously aware of her—or of anything. It is not conscious at all. “God is Change,” she says and means it. Some of the faces of her god are biological evolution, chaos theory, relativity theory, the uncertainty principle, and, of course, the second law of thermodynamics. “God is Change, and, in the end, God prevails.” Yet Earthseed is not a fatalistic belief system. God can be directed, focused, speeded, slowed, shaped. All things change, but all things need not change in all ways. God is inexorable, yet
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As far as I’m concerned, that’s what she was doing when she created her Earthseed Destiny and her Earthseed verses: dreaming. We all need dreams—our fantasies—to sustain us through hard times. There’s no harm in that as long as we don’t begin to mistake our fantasies for reality as she did.
“We give our dead To the orchards And the groves. We give our dead To life.”
“Death Is a great Change— Is life’s greatest Change. We honor our beloved dead. As we mix their essence with the earth, We remember them, And within us, They live.”
“Darkness Gives shape to the light As light Shapes the darkness. Death Gives shape to life As life Shapes death. God And the universe Share this wholeness Each Defining the other: God Gives shape to the universe As the universe Shapes God.”
“We have lived before We will live again We will be silk, Stone, Mind, Star, We will be scattered, Gathered, Molded, Probed. We will live, And we will serve life. We will shape God And God will shape us Again, Always again Forevermore.”
“God is Change, And in the end God prevails.”
To shape God With wisdom and forethought, To benefit your world, Your people, Your life, Consider consequences, Minimize harm Ask questions, Seek answers, Learn, Teach.
We, your people Welcome you. We are Earthseed. You are Earthseed— One of many One unique, One small seed, One great promise. Tenacious of life, Shaper of God, Water, Fire, Sculptor, Clay, You are Earthseed! And your Destiny, The Destiny of Earthseed, Is to take root Among the stars.”
“Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. Civilization provides ways of combining the information, experience, and creativity of the many to achieve ongoing group adaptability.”
“Any Change may bear seeds of benefit. Seek them out. Any Change may bear seeds of harm. Beware. God is infinitely malleable. God is Change.”
Change is the one unavoidable, irresistible, ongoing reality of the universe. To us, that makes it the most powerful reality, and just another word for God.”
“But…what can you do with a God like that? I mean…it isn’t even a person. It doesn’t love you or protect you. It doesn’t know anything. What’s the point?” “The point is, it’s the truth,” I said. “It’s a hard truth. Too hard for some people to take, but that doesn’t make it any less true.”
“Do not worship God Inexorable God Neither needs nor wants Your worship. Instead, Acknowledge and attend God, Learn from God, With forethought and intelligence, Imagination and industry, Shape God. When you must, Yield to God. Adapt and endure. For you are Earthseed, And God is Change.”
Praying does work. Praying is a very effective way of talking to yourself, of talking yourself into things, of focusing your attention on whatever it is you want to do. It can give you a feeling of control and help you to stretch yourself beyond what you thought were your limits.”
“It doesn’t always work the way we want it to,” I said. “But it’s always worth the effort.” “Even if when I pray, I ask God to help me?” he asked. “Even so,” I said. “You’re the one your words reach and strengthen. You can think of it as praying to that part of God that’s within you.”
Beware: At war Or at peace, More people die Of unenlightened self-interest Than of any other disease.
We human beings seem always to have found it comforting to have someone to took down on—a bottom level of fellow creatures who are very vulnerable, but who can somehow be blamed and punished for all or any troubles. We need this lowest class as much as we need equals to team with and to compete against and superiors to look to for direction and help.
No matter how many times we’re forced to admit we can’t really hide, some of us still find ways to try.
It’s always been much easier to make war than to make peace.
boy. We’re becoming more and more isolated as a people. We’re sliding into undirected negative change, and what’s worse, we’re getting used to it. All too often, we shape ourselves and our futures in such stupid ways.
even a man without an idea in his head is better than a man who means to lash us all back to his particular God the way Jesus lashed the money changers out of the temple.
