So…
‘Everything you touch you change
Everything you change changes you
The only everlasting truth is change
God is change’
(Octavia Butler via Lauren Olamina)
Sometimes I need to talk to someone, to express gratitude. Like my grandfather spoke to Jesus all the time.
Octavia said earthseed would never work as a real religion because it isn’t comforting enough. But I find myself faithful, I find earthseed working for me, profoundly. It’s growing in me, a faith in change, in work as a form of prayer, in seeing what is, in shaping what will be.
And I’m noticing I’m in communication all the time, with an ever changing face of god-is-change, often looking like my grandfather, then yemaya, a murmuration, the moon, the vast cold silence of space, Siobhan deciding to do something she knows not to do, Finn understanding a new fact, Mairead pouring her celestial newness into my eyes, a new song moving up into my mouth. I don’t mind this way of experiencing god-is-change, it’s generating a peacefulness inside of me, and a sense of responsibility.
It only worries me when I fill with gratitude and the old training kicks in, to bow my head and fling my voice up the shaft of a pedestal.
If instead I let the gratitude fill me up, I realize stardust and miracles are manifestations of the same thing, detritus from great fire, the gift of the past continuing to move into the future.
And I am that sacred detritus, a gift, a consciousness both constantly changing and utterly unique. Able to believe in the universal threads of everything sacred, because there is a truth running through it; able to tune into nature as our grandest tangible temple.
Dear god-is-change…
I believe. It’s making me aware of each moment, the occasion it is to be alive, the awestriking power of creating the conditions for life versus committing to suffering. Today I will pray to you through my deeds, shaping you and letting myself be shaped. Not because I am guilty or afraid. But because you exist, and I do, and for that I am so grateful.
This gratitude attunes me to the mercurial shifting of each person I interact with today, as we shape each other.
Everything you touch
Everything you change
Is god.