“We couldn’t make it without you,” Cory was saying.
She wasn’t shouting now. “That could have been you out there, facing criminals. Next time it might be you. You could be shot, protecting the neighbors’
rabbits.”
“Did you notice,” Dad said, “that every off-duty watcher answered the whistles last night? They came out to defend their community.”
“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.” He paused. “I’ve got plenty of insurance. You and the kids should be able to make it all right if— ”
“No!” Cory said. “Do you think that’s all it is? Money?
Do you think— ?”
“No, Babe. No.” Pause. “I know what it is to be left alone. This is no world to be alone in.”
There was a long silence, and I didn’t think they would say any more. I lay on my bed, wondering if I should get up and shut my door so I could turn on my lamp and write. But there was a little more.
“What are we supposed to do if you die?” she demanded, and I think she was crying. “What do we do if they shoot you over some damn rabbits?”
“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.”
That was the end of their talk. I lay in the dark for a long time, thinking about what they had said. Cory was right again. Dad might get hurt. He might get killed. I don’t know how to think about that. I can write about it, but I don’t feel it. On some deep level, I don’t believe it. I guess I’m as good at denial as anyone.
So Cory is right, but it doesn’t matter. And Dad is right, but he doesn’t go far enough. God is Change, and in the end, God prevails. But God exists to be shaped. It isn’t enough for us to just survive, limping along, playing business as usual while things get worse and worse. If that’s the shape we give to God, then someday we must become too weak— too poor, too hungry, too sick— to defend ourselves. Then we’ll be wiped out.
There has to be more that we can do, a better destiny that we can shape. Another place. Another way. Something!
7
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 BOOKS OF THE LIVING
SATURDAY, APRIL 26, 2025
Sometimes naming a thing— giving it a name or discovering its name— helps one to begin to understand it. Knowing the name of a thing and knowing what that thing is for gives me even more of a handle on it.
The particular God-is-Change belief system that seems right to me will be called Earthseed. I’ve tried to name it before. Failing that, I’ve tried to leave it unnamed. Neither effort has made me comfortable.
Name plus purpose equals focus for me.
Well, today, I found the name, found it while I was weeding the back garden and thinking about the way plants seed themselves, windborne, animalborne, waterborne, far from their parent plants. They have no ability at all to travel great distances under their own power, and yet, they do travel. Even they don’t have to just sit in one place and wait to be wiped out. There are islands thousands of miles from anywhere— the Hawaiian Islands, for example, and Easter Island— where plants seeded themselves and grew long before any humans arrived.
Earthseed.
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.
I’ve never felt that I was making any of this up— not the name, Earthseed, not any of it. I mean, I’ve never felt that it was anything other than real: discovery rather than invention, exploration rather than creation. I wish I could believe it was all supernatural, and that I’m getting messages from God. But then, I don’t believe in that kind of God. All I do is observe and take notes, trying to put things down in ways that are as powerful, as simple, and as direct as I feel them. I can never do that. I keep trying, but I can’t. I’m not good enough as a writer or poet or whatever it is I need to be. I don’t know what to do about that. It drives me frantic sometimes. I’m getting better, but so slowly.
The thing is, even with my writing problems, every time I understand a little more, I wonder why it’s taken me so long— why there was ever a time when I didn’t understand a thing so obvious and real and true.
Here’s the only puzzle in it all, the only paradox, or bit of illogic or circular reasoning or whatever it should be called:
Why is the universe?
To shape God.
Why is God?
To shape the universe.
I can’t get rid of it. I’ve tried to change it or dump it, but I can’t. I cannot. It feels like the truest thing I’ve ever written. It’s as mysterious and as obvious as any other explanation of God or the universe that I’ve ever read, except that to me the others feel inadequate, at best.
All the rest of Earthseed is explanation— what God is, what God does, what we are, what we should do, what we can’t help doing… . Consider: Whether you’re a human being, an insect, a microbe, or a stone, this verse is true.
All that you touch,
