Change is the restless bedrock on which we’re founded. Lauren Olamina, the heroine of Octavia E. Butler’s Earthseed series, makes a god out of change itself, “the only lasting truth in the world.” For her, the sacred is found in adaptation. Perhaps this is what I’m seeking, too, the ability to step into the world’s flux, to travel with it rather than rasping against it, to let my own form dance across it. “We do not worship God,” Lauren writes in verse. “We perceive and attend to God / We learn from God . . . We shape God.” It’s as good a truth as any, as holy a space in which to rest our
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