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“Politicians and big corporations get the bread, and we get the circuses.”
But what the hell? They’re dead. They aren’t suffering, and if you didn’t like them when they were alive, why get so upset about their being dead?
Cory gets upset. She jumps on me for sharing pain with the living, but she tries to share it with the dead.
maybe she just went crazy because her God was demanding too much of her. She was no Job. In real life, how many people are?
God exists to be shaped. God is Change.
But we can rig the game in our own favor if we understand that God exists to be shaped, and will be shaped, with or without our forethought, with or without our intent.
I watched her leave the house. She looks so trustworthy—tall and straight and serious and intelligent—I still feel inclined to trust her. But I can’t. I don’t. She has no idea how much she could have hurt me if I had given her just a few more words to use against me. I don’t think I’ll ever trust her again, and I hate that. She was my best friend. Now she isn’t.
“I don’t care about them! It’s you I’m worried about!” “No,” he said. “We can’t think that way any more. Cory, there’s nobody to help us but God and ourselves. I protect Moss’s place in spite of what I think of him, and he protects mine, no matter what he thinks of me. We all look out for one another.”
“I know what it is to be left alone. This is no world to be alone in.”
“Live!” Dad said. “That’s all anybody can do right now. Live. Hold out. Survive. I don’t know whether good times are coming back again. But I know that won’t matter if we don’t survive these times.”
Name plus purpose equals focus
I am Earthseed. Anyone can be. Someday, I think there will be a lot of us. And I think we’ll have to seed ourselves farther and farther from this dying place.
Why is the universe? To shape God. Why is God? To shape the universe.
All that you touch, You Change. All that you Change, Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change. God Is Change.
A tree Cannot grow In its parents’ shadows.
When apparent stability disintegrates, As it must— God is Change— People tend to give in To fear and depression, To need and greed. When no influence is strong enough To unify people They divide. They struggle, One against one, Group against group, For survival, position, power. They remember old hates and generate new ones, They create chaos and nurture it. They kill and kill and kill, Until they are exhausted and destroyed, Until they are conquered by outside forces, Or until one of them becomes A leader Most will follow, Or a tyrant Most fear.
“When it comes to strangers with guns,” I told her, “I think suspicion is more likely to keep you alive than trust.”
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.
Embrace diversity. Unite— Or be divided, robbed, ruled, killed By those who see you as prey. Embrace diversity Or be destroyed.
Worship is no good without action. With action, it’s only useful if it steadies you, focuses your efforts, eases your mind.”
But there’s no power in having strength and brains, and yet waiting for God to fix things for you or take revenge for you.
God isn’t good or evil, doesn’t favor you or hate you, and yet God is better partnered than fought.”
God is neither good nor evil, neither loving nor hating. God is Power. God is Change. We must find the rest of what we need within ourselves, in one another, in our Destiny.
The Self must create Its own reasons for being. To shape God, Shape Self.
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.
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 universe is God’s self-portrait.
