From Earthseed: The Books of the Living

"All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth is Change.

God is change."

"Olamina believes in a god that does not in the least love her. 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 malleable.  Odd.  Hardly religious at all.   


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. 


Parable of the Sower
and
Parable of the Talents
Octavia E. Butler
(c) 1993 and (c) 1998