All successful life is

All successful life is

Adaptable,

Opportunistic,

Tenacious,

Interconnected, and

Fecund.

Understand this.

Use it.

Shape God.

—Earthseed: The Books of the Living

Any Change may bear seeds of benefit

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.

—Earthseed: The Books of the Living

When apparent stability disintegrates

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 surgical, 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.

—Earthseed: The Books of the Living

Civilization

Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing adaptation. 

Civilization, like intelligence, may serve well, serve adequately, or fail to serve its adaptive function. When civilization fails to serve, it must disintegrate unless it is acted upon by unifying internal or external forces.

—Earthseed: The Books of the Living

All struggles

All struggles

Are essentially 

power struggles.

Who will rule,

Who will lead,

Who will define,

refine,

confine,

design,

Who will dominate.

All struggles

Are essentially

power struggles,

And most

are no more intellectual

than two rams

knocking their heads together.

—Earthseed: The Books of the Living

To get along with God

To get along with God, 

Consider the consequences of your behavior.

—Earthseed: the Books of the Living 

Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler

The Destiny of Earthseed

The Destiny of Earthseed

Is to take root among the stars.

—Earthseed: the Books of the Living 

Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler

Growth in the Shadows

A tree

Cannot grow

In its parents' shadows.

—Earthseed: the Books of the Living 

Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler

A tree

A tree

Cannot grow

In its parents’ shadows.

—Earthseed: The Books of the Living

Godseed

We are all Godseed, but no more or less so than any other aspect of the universe, Godseed is all there is—all that Changes. Earthseed is all that spreads Earthlife to new earths. The universe is Godseed. Only we are Earthseed. And the Destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars.

Earthseed: The Book of the Living 

Why is the universe?
To shape God.

Why is God?

To shape the universe.

Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler 

Why is the universe

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.

—Earthseed: The Books of the Living

Fighting Their Rescuers

Drowning people 

Sometimes die

Fighting their rescuers.

—Earthseed: the Books of the Living 

Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler

Belief

Belief

Initiates and guides action--

Or it does nothing.

—Earthseed: the Books of the Living 

Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler

A Victim of God

A victim of God may,

Through learning and adaption,

Become a partner of God,

A victim of God may,

Through forethought and planning, 

Become a shaper of God.

Or a victim of God may,

Through shortsightedness and fear,

Remain God's victim,

God's plaything,

God's prey.

—Earthseed: the Books of the Living 

Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler

Intelligence

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.

—Earthseed: the Books of the Living 

Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler

Trickster, Teacher, Chaos, Clay

God is Power—

Infinite,

Irresistible,

Inexorable,

Indifferent.

And yet God is Pliable —

Trickster,

Teacher,

Chaos,

Clay.

God exists to be shaped.

God is Change.

Earthseed: the Books of the Living 

Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler

Adapt and Endure

We do not worship God 

We perceive and attend God.

We learn from God.

With forethought and work,

We shape God.

In the end, we yield to God.

We adapt and Endure,

For we are Earthseed 

And God is Change.

Earthseed: the Books of the Living 

Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler 

Unready Fingers

A gift of God

May sear unready fingers.

—Earthseed: the Books of the Living 

Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler

I got thrown back off the TBI cliff again. Grief has won the day, and most of last night, and looks to be the prime contender for the foreseeable however long. I do not love this, and at the same time I do not trust myself to make big decisions right now. Grief makes a whole meal out of helplessness, and to dine at that table is to party with Despair, something I have no interest in. 

I miss Georgia. 

I miss talking with her, and I miss seeing her, and I miss reading with her nearby.

I can’t get the words on a Philosophy page to weave into concepts. They just sit there, being words, silently wondering if I’ve figured out how to pick the lock yet. I haven’t, of course. I can digest the news headlines after a few minutes of thinking about them, and then wish I hadn’t; it seems like a waste of effort.

I feel useless.

And so I make tea and walk the dog.

I chop up the cooled chicken and add avocado and red onion and tarragon, then take a nap because I’m too tired to eat, and I didn’t have any appetite really anyway.

The air is muggy with a not-yet storm and I wish it would either rain or move on.

Even the climate feels helpless.

Only baths and tea make sense.

Some an Hundredfold, Some Sixty, Some Thirty

All that you touch

You change.

All that you Change

Changes you.

The only lasting truth

Is Change.

God

Is Change.

—Earthseed: The Books of the Living

The Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler

There’s a break in the rain this morning, and the day is warm with a cool breeze. The furnace blast of the heat wave seems to have been washed away by the storms.

My Disability Days seem to be nearing an endpoint; it’s been a long time since I lost nearly a week to neurological issues and suffering. The suffering ended yesterday, and today I seem more able to think and read and write, even though only for short periods at a time with naps and meditation in between. I’ll take it.

The CrowdStrike outage on Friday didn’t impact me personally as much as the neurological chaos; I was already scheduled to leave after scrum in the morning, and so the Blue Screen of Death on my laptop didn’t impact much of my work. The outage seems to have been a wake-up call to the industry, though I’m not sure they have enough of the necessary perspective to be able to implement any new-found sanity. We’ve been living by the motto of “moving fast and breaking things” for so long that the treadmill’s whiplash pace seems to have run away with us. 

I’m dogsitting again for the coming week, and I have all my tools — food and books and electronics, oh my. I don’t know that I will be able to do much Philosophical reading before the meeting on Tuesday morning; I’m still having trouble getting the phrases to match up into a concept and engage with the meaning of the text. For some reason it’s still easier to work with data, which feels like building a lego as opposed to oil painting. 

Politics feels like a chapter in a near-future science fiction novel, and when I sleep I wake up wondering if I dreamed the latest headline. 

Prodigy

Prodigy is, at its essence, adaptability and persistent, positive obsession. Without persistence, what remains is an enthusiasm of the moment. Without adaptability, what remains may be channeled into destructive fanaticism. Without positive obsession, there is nothing at all.

—Earthseed: The Books of the Living