I think I have an epigraph for the new iteration of "Religion and the Anthropocene," and a text.
“Books aren’t going to save us.”
“Nothing is going to save us. If we don’t save ourselves, we’re dead. Now use your imagination. Is there anything on your family bookshelves that might help you if you were stuck outside?”
“No.”
“You answer too fast. Go home and look again. And like I said, use your imagination. Any kind of survival information from encyclopedias, biographies, anything that helps you learn to live off the land and defend ourselves. Even some fiction might be useful.”
This hails from Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower (55), a brilliant and prescient piece of "realist" science fiction from 1993. I read it years ago but didn't have the chance to return to it when people recommended it for "Religion and the Anthropocene" last time. Now it seems even more clairvoyant. The beauty of it, if beauty it is, is that this was written before the "Anthropocene" discussion arrived, a reminder that people have been sensing our fatal soiling of our earthly nest for a long time. It's like one of those old books on our family bookshelves. Even some fiction might be useful. And it's all about religion! Indeed, her protagonist's "favorite book of the Bible is Job" (14)! But the book is full of citations from a work of scripture the heroine writes called Earthseed: The Books of the Living (which has become the basis for its own online religion!).
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.
“Books aren’t going to save us.”
“Nothing is going to save us. If we don’t save ourselves, we’re dead. Now use your imagination. Is there anything on your family bookshelves that might help you if you were stuck outside?”
“No.”
“You answer too fast. Go home and look again. And like I said, use your imagination. Any kind of survival information from encyclopedias, biographies, anything that helps you learn to live off the land and defend ourselves. Even some fiction might be useful.”
This hails from Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower (55), a brilliant and prescient piece of "realist" science fiction from 1993. I read it years ago but didn't have the chance to return to it when people recommended it for "Religion and the Anthropocene" last time. Now it seems even more clairvoyant. The beauty of it, if beauty it is, is that this was written before the "Anthropocene" discussion arrived, a reminder that people have been sensing our fatal soiling of our earthly nest for a long time. It's like one of those old books on our family bookshelves. Even some fiction might be useful. And it's all about religion! Indeed, her protagonist's "favorite book of the Bible is Job" (14)! But the book is full of citations from a work of scripture the heroine writes called Earthseed: The Books of the Living (which has become the basis for its own online religion!).
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.
(72-73)
