Parable of the Talents (Earthseed, #2)

by Octavia E. Butler

“Listen,” he said. “Do you really think you can spend your life—your life, girl!—struggling and risking yourself, maybe risking our child for a…a cause whose fulfillment you…probably won’t live to see? Should you do such a thing?”

How many people, I wonder, can be penned up and tormented—reeducated—before it begins to matter to the majority of Americans? How does this penning people up look to other countries? Do they know? Would they care? There are worse things happening here in the States and elsewhere, I know. There’s war, for instance.

Christian America was, at first, much more a refuge for the ignorant and the intolerant than it should have been. Even people who would never beat or burn another person could treat suddenly orphaned or abducted children with cold, self-righteous cruelty.

If he doesn’t like what they’re doing, he should make some effort to stop them. He shouldn’t want them to make their insanity part of his political image. On the other hand, one way to make people afraid of you is to have a crazy side—a side of yourself or your organization that’s dangerous and unpredictable—willing to do any damned thing.

To survive, Let the past Teach you— Past customs, Struggles, Leaders and thinkers. Let These Help you. Let them inspire you, Warn you, Give you strength. But beware: God is Change. Past is past. What was Cannot Come again. To survive, Know the past. Let it touch you. Then let The past Go.