Parable Of The Talents Quotes

In order to rise From its own ashes A phoenix First Must Burn.

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.

Beware: Ignorance Protects itself. Ignorance Promotes suspicion. Suspicion Engenders fear. Fear quails, Irrational and blind, Or fear looms, Defiant and closed. Blind, closed, Suspicious, afraid, Ignorance Protects itself, And protected, Ignorance grows.

Beware: At war Or at peace, More people die Of unenlightened self-interest Than of any other disease.

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.

Kindness eases change Love quiets fear

If you want a thing--truly want it, want it so badly that you need it as you need air to breathe, then unless you die, you will have it. Why not? It has you. There is no escape. What a cruel and terrible thing escape would be if escape were possible

People do blame you for the things they do to you.

To survive, Let the past Teach you-- Past customs, Struggles, Leaders and thinkers. Let These Help you. Let them inspire you, Warn you, Give you strength. But beware: God is Change. Past is past. What was Cannot Come again. To survive, know the past. Let it touch you. Then let The past Go.

Self is. Self is body and bodily perception. Self is thought, memory, belief. Self creates. Self destroys. Self learns, discovers, becomes. Self shapes. Self adapts. Self invents its own reasons for being. To shape God, shape Self.

I have watched education become more a privilege of the rich than the basic necessity that it must be if civilized society is to survive. I have watched as convenience, profit, and inertia excused greater and more dangerous environmental degradation. I have watched poverty, hunger, and disease become inevitable for more and more people.

I found that I couldn't muster any belief in a literal heaven or hell, anyway. I thought the best we could all do was to look after one another and clean up the various hells we've made right here on earth.

          Your desires,           Whether or not you achieve them           Will determine who you become.

We go on having stupid wars that we justify and get passionate about, but in the end, all they do is kill huge numbers of people, maim others, impoverish still more, spread disease and hunger, and set the stage for the next war. And when we look at all of that in history, we just shrug our shoulders and say, well, that’s the way things are. That’s the way things always have been.

Such leaders knew that they could depend on fear, suspicion, hatred, need, and greed to arouse patriotic support for war.

To survive, know the past. Let it touch you. Then let The past Go.

We can, Each of us, Do the impossible As long as we can convince ourselves That it has been done before.

Purpose Unifies us: It focuses our dreams, Guides our plans, Strengthens our efforts. Purpose Defines us, Shapes us, And offers us Greatness.

There seem to be solid biological reasons why we are the way we are. If there weren’t, the cycles wouldn’t keep replaying. The human species is a kind of animal, of course. But we can do something no other animal species has ever had the option to do. We can choose: We can go on building and destroying until we either destroy ourselves or destroy the ability of our world to sustain us. Or we can make

I have also read that the Pox was caused by accidentally coinciding climatic, economic, and sociological crises. It would be more honest to say that the Pox was caused by our own refusal to deal with obvious problems in those areas. We caused the problems: then we sat and watched as they grew into crises.

His mistake was in seeing her as a young girl. She was already a missile, armed and targeted.

Beware: All too often, We say What we hear others say. We think What we’re told that we think. We see What we’re permitted to see. Worse! We see what we’re told that we see. Repetition and pride are the keys to this. To hear and to see Even an obvious lie Again And again and again May be to say it, Almost by reflex Then to defend it Because we’ve said it And at last to embrace it Because we’ve defended it And because we cannot admit That we’ve embraced and defended An obvious lie. … Thus, without thought, Without intent, We make Mere echoes Of ourselves— And we say What we hear others say.

The child in each of us Knows paradise. Paradise is home. Home as it was Or home as it should have been. Paradise is one’s own place, One’s own people, One’s own world, Knowing and known, Perhaps even Loving and loved. Yet every child Is cast from paradise— Into growth and destruction, Into solitude and new community, Into vast, ongoing Change.

Here we are— Energy, Mass, Life, Shaping life, Mind, Shaping Mind, God, Shaping God. Consider— We are born Not with purpose, But with potential.

How much of this nonsense does he believe, I wonder, and how much does he say just because he knows the value of dividing in order to conquer and to rule? Well,

As a country, we’ve given up our birthright for even less than bread and pottage. We’ve given it up for nothing—although I’m sure some people somewhere are richer now.

he still knows how to rouse his rabble, how to reach out to poor people, and sic them on other poor people. How much of this nonsense does he believe, I wonder, and how much does he say just because he knows the value of dividing in order to conquer and to rule?

To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies.

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.

There must be good marriages somewhere, but to me, marriage had the feel of people tolerating each other, enduring each other because they were afraid to be alone or because each was a habit that the other couldn't quite break.

These days, projecting blame is almost an art form.

We keep falling into the same ditches, you know? I mean, we learn more and more about the physical universe, more about our own bodies, more technology, but somehow, down through history, we go on building empires of one kind or another, then destroying them in one way or another. We go on having stupid wars that we justify and get passionate about, but in the end, all they do is kill huge numbers of people, maim others, impoverish still more, spread disease and hunger, and set the stage for the next war. And when we look at all of that in history, we just shrug our shoulders and say, well, that's the way things are. That's the way things always have been.

Ignorance Protects itself, And protected, Ignorance grows.

Did she struggle for life only out of habit, or because some part of her still hoped that there was something worth living for?

In small communities, she believed, people are more accountable to one another. Serious misbehavior is harder to get away with, harder even to begin when everyone who sees you knows who you are, where you live, who your family is, and whether you have any business doing what you’re doing.

We human beings seem always to have found it comforting to have someone to look down on—a bottom level of fellow creatures who are very vulnerable, but who can somehow be blamed and punished for all or any troubles. We need this lowest class as much as we need equals to team with and to compete against and superiors to look to for direction and help.

We caused the problems: then we sat and watched as they grew into crises.

Without persistence, what remains is an enthusiasm of the moment. Without adaptability, what remains may be channeled into destructive fanaticism.

Human competitiveness and territoriality were often at the root of particularly horrible fashions in oppression.

When we have no difficult, long-term purpose to strive toward, we fight each other. We destroy ourselves. We have these chaotic, apocalyptic periods of murderous craziness.

Partnership is giving, taking, learning, teaching, offering the greatest possible benefit while doing the least possible harm.

I do what I can,' I said. 'When I can do more, I will. You know that.

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

Help us to make America great again.

Consider-- We are born Not with purpose, But with potential.

To benefit your world, Your people, Your life, Consider consequences, Minimize harm Ask questions, Seek answers, Learn, Teach.

It shouldn't be so easy to nudge people toward what might be their own destruction.

Twenty-five or thirty words are supposed to be enough in a news bullet to explain either a war or an unusual set of Christmas lights.

You’re right. People do blame you for the things they do to you.

Change is the one unavoidable, irresistible, ongoing reality of the universe. To us, that makes it the most powerful reality, and just another word for God.

I mean, that guy who wants to be President, that Jarret, he would call you all heathens or pagans or something." Indeed, he would. “Yes,” I said. “He does seem to enjoy calling people things like that. Once he’s made everyone who isn’t like him sound evil, then he can blame them for problems he knows they didn’t cause. That’s easier than trying to fix the problems.

Mars is a rock - cold, empty, almost airless, dead. Yet it’s heaven in a way. We can see it in the night sky, a whole other world, but too nearby, too close within the reach of the people who’ve made such a hell of life here on Earth.

Jarret insists on being a throwback to some earlier, “simpler” time. Now does not suit him. Religious tolerance does not suit him. The current state of the country does not suit him. He wants to take us all back to some magical time when everyone believed in the same God, worshipped him in the same way, and understood that their safety in the universe depended on completing the same religious rituals and stomping anyone who was different. There was never such a time in this country. But these days when more than half the people in the country can’t read at all, history is just one more vast unknown to them.

All prayers are to Self And, in one way or another, All prayers are answered. Pray, But beware. Your desires, Whether or not you achieve them Will determine who you become.

And, of course, breaking people is much easier than putting them together again.

Worship is no good without action. With action, it's only useful if it steadies you, focuses your efforts, and eases your mind

Seize change. Use it. Adapt and grow.

Belief will not save you. Only actions Guided and shaped By belief and knowledge Will save you. Belief Initiates and guides action— Or it does nothing.

God is Change And hidden within Change Is surprise, delight, Confusion, pain, Discovery, loss, Opportunity, and growth. As always, God exists To shape And to be shaped.

          More people die           Of unenlightened self-interest           Than of any other disease.

When vision fails Direction is lost. When direction is lost Purpose may be forgotten. When purpose is forgotten Emotion rules alone. When emotion rules alone, Destruction…destruction.

There seem to be solid biological reasons why we are the way we are. If there weren’t, the cycles wouldn’t keep replaying. The human species is a kind of animal, of course. But we can do something no other animal species has ever had the option to do. We can choose: We can go on building and destroying until we either destroy ourselves or destroy the ability of our world to sustain us. Or we can make something more of ourselves.

We give lip service to acceptance, as though acceptance were enough. Then we go on to create super-people - super-parents, super-kings, and queens, super-cops - to be our gods and to look after us - to stand between us and God. Yet God has been here all along, shaping us and being shaped by us in no particular way or in too many ways at once like an amoeba - or like a cancer. Chaos.

My ancestors in this hemisphere were, by law, chattel slaves. In the U.S., they were chattel slaves for two and a half centuries—at least 10 generations. I used to think I knew what that meant. Now I realize that I can’t begin to imagine the many terrible things that it must have done to them. How did they survive it all and keep their humanity? Certainly, they were never intended to keep it, just as we weren’t.

A lot of people seem to believe in a big-daddy-God or a big-cop-God or a big-king-God. They believe in a kind of super-person. A few believe God is another word for nature. And nature turns out to mean just about anything they happen not to understand or feel in control of. Some say God is a spirit, a force, an ultimate reality. Ask seven people what all of that means and you’ll get seven different answers. So what is God? Just another name for whatever makes you feel special and protected?

Learn everything you can from these people, and bring what you learn back to the rest of us. Even the stupid, ugly things that they say and do might be important. Their lying promises might hide a truth. If we collect what we see and hear, if we stay united, work together, support one another, then the time will come when we can win our freedom or kill them or both!

Pleasure is rare, pain is plentiful, and, delusional or not, it hurts like hell.

There are times when I wish I believed in hell—other than the hells we make for one another, I mean.

Gather information. Seek weakness. Watch, wait, and do what you have to to stay alive!

If God is Change, then... then who loves us? Who cares about us? Who cares for us?" "We care for one another," I said. "We care for ourselves and one another.

Remembering wasn't safe. You could lose your mind, remembering.

Once he’s made everyone who isn’t like him sound evil, then he can blame them for problems he knows they didn’t cause. That’s easier than trying to fix the problems.

one way to make people afraid of you is to have a crazy side—a side of yourself or your organization that’s dangerous and unpredictable—willing to do any damned thing.

We’re survivors, Len. You are. I am. Most of Georgetown is. All of Acorn was. We’ve been slammed around in all kinds of ways. We’re all wounded. We’re healing as best we can. And, no, we’re not normal. Normal people wouldn’t have survived what we’ve survived. If we were normal we’d be dead.

Do not worship God Inexorable God Neither needs nor wants Your worship. Instead, Acknowledge and attend God, Learn from God, With forethought and intelligence, Imagination and industry, Shape God. When you must, Yield to God. Adapt and endure.

This was something new. Or something old. I didn’t think of what it might be until after I had let Aubrey go back to the clinic to bed down next to her child. Bankole had given him something to help him sleep. He did the same for her, so I won’t be able to ask her anything more until she wakes up later this morning. I couldn’t help wondering, though, whether these people, with their crosses, had some connection with my current least favorite presidential candidate, Texas Senator Andrew Steele Jarret. It sounds like the sort of thing his people might do—a revival of something nasty out of the past. Did the Ku Klux Klan wear crosses—as well as burn them? The Nazis wore the swastika, which is a kind of cross, but I don’t think they wore it on their chests. There were crosses all over the place during the Inquisition and before that, during the Crusades. So now we have another group that uses crosses and slaughters people. Jarret’s people could be behind it. Jarret insists on being a throwback to some earlier, “simpler” time. Now does not suit him. Religious tolerance does not suit him. The current state of the country does not suit him. He wants to take us all back to some magical time when everyone believed in the same God, worshipped him in the same way, and understood that their safety in the universe depended on completing the same religious rituals and stomping anyone who was different. There was never such a time in this country. But these days when more than half the people in the country can’t read at all, history is just one more vast unknown to them. Jarret supporters have been known, now and then, to form mobs and burn people at the stake for being witches. Witches! In 2032! A witch, in their view, tends to be a Moslem, a Jew, a Hindu, a Buddhist, or, in some parts of the country, a Mormon, a Jehovah’s Witness, or even a Catholic. A witch may also be an atheist, a “cultist,” or a well-to-do eccentric. Well-to-do eccentrics often have no protectors or much that’s worth stealing. And “cultist” is a great catchall term for anyone who fits into no other large category, and yet doesn’t quite match Jarret’s version of Christianity. Jarret’s people have been known to beat or drive out Unitarians, for goodness’ sake. Jarret condemns the burnings, but does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear. As for the beatings, the tarring and feathering, and the destruction of “heathen houses of devil-worship,” he has a simple answer: “Join us! Our doors are open to every nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again.

The truth is, preparing for interstellar travel and then sending out ships filled with colonists is bound to be a job so long, thankless, expensive, and difficult that I suspect that only a religion could do it. A lot of people will find ways to make money from it. That might get things started. But it will take something as essentially human and as essentially irrational as religion to keep them focused and keep it going—for generations if it takes generations. I suspect it will. You see, I have thought about this.

The task of an executive is not to change human beings. Rather, as the Bible tells us in the parable of the Talents, the task is to multiply performance capacity of the whole by putting to use whatever strength, whatever health, whatever aspiration there is in individuals.

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 survival, 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.

Praying does work. Praying is a very effective way of talking to yourself, of talking yourself into things, of focusing your attention on whatever it is you want to do. It can give you a feeling of control and help you to stretch yourself beyond what you thought were your limits.

Men are hard-wired for risk taking—particularly young men. The number one killer of fifteen- to twenty-four-year-old males is accidents.6 Female investors hold less risky investment portfolios than their male counterparts and generally take fewer chances with their money. Churches need men because men are natural risk takers—and they bring that orientation into the church. Congregations that do not take risks atrophy. Jesus made it clear that risk taking is necessary to please God. In the parable of the talents, the master praises two servants who risked their assets and produced more, but he curses the servant who played it safe. He who avoids all risk is, in the words of Jesus, “wicked and lazy".

Accept the reality that it might happen, and keep your eyes and ears open.

The idea of leaving children illiterate is criminal.

I still don’t know enough. But there’s no manual for this kind of thing. I suppose that I’ll be learning what to do and how to do it until the day I die.

The world is full of needy people. They don’t all need the same things, but they all need purpose. Even some of the ones with plenty of money need purpose.

Everyone needs to be part of something.

But one can’t win every battle. One must know which battles to fight.

The war began in anger, bitterness, and envy at nations who appeared to be on their way up just as our country seemed to be on a downward slide.

I was always a doubter when it came to religion. How irrational of me, then, to love a zealot. But then, both love and zealotry are irrational states of mind.

These were God’s people come to bring the true faith to the cultist heathens. I suppose if some of the heathens died of it, that wasn’t really very important.

a sweet and powerful Positive obsession

have watched education become more a privilege of the rich than the basic necessity that it must be if civilized society is to survive.

Your desires, Whether or not you achieve them Will determine who you become.

Adulthood is both sweet and sad. It terrifies. It empowers. We are men and women now.

We can grow or we can wither.

The stars are free.” She shrugs. “I’d rather have the city lights back myself, the sooner the better. But we can afford the stars.

Beware: At war Or at peace, More people die Of unenlightened self-interest Than of any other disease.

Now does not suit him. Religious tolerance does not suit him. The current state of the country does not suit him. He wants to take us all back to some magical time when everyone believed in the same God, worshipped him in the same way, and understood that their safety in the universe depended on completing the same religious rituals and stomping anyone who was different. There was never such a time in this country. But these days when more than half the people in the country can’t read at all, history is just one more vast unknown to them.

They’re good words. Not good enough to welcome a child into the world and into the community. No words are good enough to do that, and yet, somehow, words are needed. Ceremony is needed.

She and Harry may be the most loyal, least religious people in the community, but there are times when people need religion more than they need anything else—even people like Zahra and Harry.

Entropy, the idea that the natural flow of heat is from something hot to something cool - not the other way - so that the universe itself is cooling down, running down, dissipating its energy.

We have, it seems, a few people who think Jarret may be just what the country needs—apart from his religious nonsense. The thing is, you can’t separate Jarret from the “religious nonsense.” You take Jarret and you get beatings, burnings, tarrings and featherings. They’re a package. And there may be even nastier things in that package. Jarret’s supporters are more than a little seduced by Jarret’s talk of making America great again. He seems to be unhappy with certain other countries. We could wind up in a war. Nothing like a war to rally people around flag, country, and great leader.

Jarret supporters have been known, now and then, to form mobs and burn people at the stake for being witches. Witches! In 2032! A witch, in their view, tends to be a Moslem, a Jew, a Hindu, a Buddhist, or, in some parts of the country, a Mormon, a Jehovah’s Witness, or even a Catholic. A witch may also be an atheist, a “cultist,” or a well-to-do eccentric. Well-to-do eccentrics often have no protectors or much that’s worth stealing. And “cultist” is a great catchall term for anyone who fits into no other large category, and yet doesn’t quite match Jarret’s version of Christianity. Jarret’s people have been known to beat or drive out Unitarians, for goodness’ sake. Jarret condemns the burnings, but does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear. As for the beatings, the tarring and feathering, and the destruction of “heathen houses of devil-worship,” he has a simple answer: “Join us! Our doors are open to every nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again.” He’s had notable success with this carrot-and-stick approach. Join us and thrive, or whatever happens to you as a result of your own sinful stubbornness is your problem.

How many people, I wonder, can be penned up and tormented—reeducated—before it begins to matter to the majority of Americans? How does this penning people up look to other countries? Do they know? Would they care?

I know that when she talks about God, she doesn’t mean what I mean. I’m not sure that matters. If she stays with us, obeys our rules, joins in our joys, sorrows, and celebrations, works alongside us, it doesn’t matter

I think people who traveled to extrasolar worlds would be on their own—far from politicians and business people, failing economies and tortured ecologies—and far from help. Well out of the shadow of their parent world.

When we dedicate our talent to serving a neighbor, it is possibly one of the highest forms of worship; something sacred transpires when we sacrifice our time and dedicate our God-given loves and talents to one another.

There is nothing alien about nature. Nature is all that exists. It’s the earth and all that’s on it. It’s the universe and all that’s in it. It’s God, never at rest. It’s you, me, us, them, struggling upstream or drifting down.

Human competitiveness and territoriality were often at the root of particularly horrible fashions in oppression. We human beings seem always to have found it comforting to have someone to took down on—a bottom level of fellow creatures who are very vulnerable, but who can somehow be blamed and punished for all or any troubles. We need this lowest class as much as we need equals to team with and to compete against and superiors to look to for direction and help.

She lived in her virtual room—her own private fantasy universe. That room could take her anywhere, so why should she ever come out? She was getting fat and losing her physical and mental health, but her v-room was all she cared about.

Beware: Ignorance Protects itself. Ignorance Promotes suspicion. Suspicion Engenders fear. Fear quails, Irrational and blind, Or fear looms, Defiant and closed. Blind, closed, Suspicious, afraid, Ignorance Protects itself, And protected, Ignorance grows.

They say detailed news doesn’t matter. Since we can’t change the stupid, greedy, vicious things that powerful people do, they think we should try to ignore them. No matter how many times we’re forced to admit we can’t really hide, some of us still find ways to try.

To hear and to see Even an obvious lie Again And again and again May be to say it, Almost by reflex Then to defend it Because we’ve said it And at last to embrace it Because we’ve defended it And because we cannot admit That we’ve embraced and defended An obvious lie.

How many people, I wonder, can be penned up and tormented—reeducated—before it begins to matter to the majority of Americans? How does this penning people up look to other countries? Do they know? Would they care? There are worse things happening here in the States and elsewhere, I know.

It seems inevitable that people who can’t read are going to lean more toward judging candidates on the way they look and sound than on what they claim they stand for. Even people who can read and are educated are apt to pay more attention to good looks and seductive lies than they should.

We don’t believe the way your parents did, perhaps, but we do believe.” “That God is Change?” “Yes.” “I don’t even know what that means.” “It means that Change is the one unavoidable, irresistible, ongoing reality of the universe. To us, that makes it the most powerful reality, and just another word for God.

Beware: All too often, We say What we hear others say. We think What we’re told that we think. We see What we’re permitted to see. Worse! We see what we’re told that we see. Repetition and pride are the keys to this. To hear and to see Even an obvious lie Again And again and again May be to say it, Almost by reflex Then to defend it Because we’ve said it And at last to embrace it Because we’ve defended it And because we cannot admit That we’ve embraced and defended An obvious lie. Thus, without thought, Without intent, We make Mere echoes Of ourselves— And we say What we hear others say. FROM Warrior by Marcos Duran

Twenty-five or thirty words are supposed to be enough in a news bullet to explain either a war or an unusual set of Christmas lights. Bullets are cheap and full of big dramatic pictures. Some bullets are true virtuals that allow people to experience—safely—hurricanes, epidemics, fires, and mass murder. Hell of a kick.

In the parable of the talents, the three servants are called to render an account of how they have used the gifts entrusted to them. The first two used their talents boldly and resourcefully. The third, who prudently wraps his money and buries it, typifies the Christian who deposits his faith in an hermetic container and seals the lid shut. He or she limps through life on childhood memories of Sunday school and resolutely refuses the challenge of growth and spiritual maturity. Unwilling to take risks, this person loses the talent entrusted to him or her. “The master wanted his servants to take risks. He wanted them to gamble with his money.”5

They're both afraid. They look at their children--Alan has four kids, too--and they're afraid and ashamed of their fear, ashamed of their powerlessness. And they're tired. There are millions of people like them--people who are frightened and just plain tired of all the chaos. They want someone to do something. Fix things. Now!

But those dedicated to other religions, and those who are not religious at all sneer at Jarret and call him a hypocrite. They sneer, they hate him, but they also fear him. They see him for the tyrant that he is. And the thugs see him as one of them. They envy him. He is the bigger, the more successful thief, murderer, and slaver.

Jarret condemns the burnings, but does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear. As for the beatings, the tarring and feathering, and the destruction of “heathen houses of devil-worship,” he has a simple answer: “Join us! Our doors are open to every nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us

What does Jarett really think about the Crusaders? Does he control them? If he doesn't like what they're doing, he should make some effort to stop them. He shouldn't want them to make their insanity part of his political image. On the other hand, one way to make people afraid of you is to have a crazy side--a side of yourself or your organization that's dangerous and unpredictable--willing to do any damned thing.

From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.

Back when I was at home, my aunt and uncle would have felt like that,” Day said. “We walk the highways and scrounge and scavenge and ask for work, and all of that reminds people that what’s happened to us can happen to them. They don’t like to think about stuff like that, so they get mad at us. They make the cops arrest us or run us out of town. They call us names and wish somebody would do something to make us disappear. And now, somebody is doing just that!

And all without making anyone look down.” “Look down…?” “Into the abyss, Daughter.” But I wasn’t in trouble any more. Not at the moment. “You’ve just noticed the abyss,” he continued. “The adults in this community have been balancing at the edge of it for more years than you’ve been alive.” I got up, went over to him and took his hand. “It’s getting worse, Dad.” “I know.” “Maybe it’s time to look down. Time to look for some hand and foot holds before we just get pushed in.

Jesus’ parable of the talents recorded in Matthew 25:14–30 was a warning that it is possible for us to misjudge our capacities. This parable has nothing to do with natural gifts and abilities, but relates to the gift of the Holy Spirit as He was first given at Pentecost. We must never measure our spiritual capacity on the basis of our education or our intellect; our capacity in spiritual things is measured on the basis of the promises of God. If we get less than God wants us to have, we will falsely accuse Him as the servant falsely accused his master when he said, “You expect more of me than you gave me the power to do. You demand too much of me, and I cannot stand true to you here where you have placed me.” When it is a question of God’s Almighty Spirit, never say, “I can’t.” Never allow the limitation of your own natural ability to enter into the matter. If we have received the Holy Spirit, God expects the work of the Holy Spirit to be exhibited in us.

Jarret’s people have been known to beat or drive out Unitarians, for goodness’ sake. Jarret condemns the burnings, but does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear. As for the beatings, the tarring and feathering, and the destruction of “heathen houses of devil-worship,” he has a simple answer: “Join us! Our doors are open to every nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again.

The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments—the ones abolishing slavery and guaranteeing citizenship rights—still exist, but they’ve been so weakened by custom, by Congress and the various state legislatures, and by recent Supreme Court decisions that they don’t much matter. Indenturing indigents is supposed to keep them employed, teach them a trade, feed them, house them, and keep them out of trouble. In fact, it’s just one more way of getting people to work for nothing or almost nothing.

In our exhaustion, fear, and pain, we came to treasure those moments when we could just lie down and forget, when no one was hurting us, when we had something to eat. Such animal comforts were all we could afford. Remembering wasn’t safe. You could lose your mind, remembering. My ancestors in this hemisphere were, by law, chattel slaves. In the U.S., they were chattel slaves for two and a half centuries—at least 10 generations. I used to think I knew what that meant. Now I realize that I can’t begin to imagine the many terrible things that it must have done to them. How did they survive it all and keep their humanity? Certainly, they were never intended to keep it, just as we weren’t.

What must we do to protect ourselves and our children? What can we do to regain our stolen nation?" Nasty. Very nasty. Jarret was the junior senator from Texas when he preached the sermon that contained those lnes. He never answered the questions he asked. He left that to his listeners. And yet he says he's against the witch burnings. His speeches during the campaign have been somewhat less inflammatory than his sermons. He's had to distance himself from the worst of his followers. But he still knows how to rouse his rabble, how to reach out to poor people, and sic them on other poor people. How much of this nonsense does he believe, I wonder, and how much does he say just because he knows the value of dividing in order to conquer and to rule? Well, now he's conquered. In January of next year, he'll be sworn in, and he'll rule. Then, I suppose we'll see just how much of his own propaganda he believes.

The Law of Activity Many times we have boundary problems because we lack initiative - the God-given ability to propel ourselves into life. We respond to invitations and push ourselves into life. The best boundaries are formed when a child is pushing against the world naturally, and the outside world sets its limits on the child. In this way, the aggressive child has learned limits without losing his or her spirit. Our spiritual and emotional well-being depends on our having this spirit. Consider the contrast in the parable of the talents. The ones who succeeded were ACTIVE and assertive. They initiated and pushed. The one who lost out was PASSIVE and inactive. The sad thing is that many people who are passive are not inherently evil or bad people. But evil is an active force and passivity can become an ally of evil by NOT pushing against it. Passivity never pays off. God will match our effort, but he will never do our work for us. That would be an invasion of our boundaries. He wants us to be assertive and active, seeking and knocking on the door of life. We know that God is not mean to people who are afraid; the Scriptures is full of examples of his compassion. But he will not enable passivity. The wicked and lazy servant was passive. He did not try. God's grace covers failure but it cannot makeup for passivity. We have to do our part. The sin God rebukes is not trying and failing, but failing to try. Trying, failing, and trying again is called learning. Failing to try will have no good result; evil will triumph. HEBREWS 10:38-39 … do not shrink back. Passive shrinking back is intolerable to God, and when we understand how destructive it is to the soul, we can see why God does not tolerate it. God wants us to preserve our souls. That is the role of boundaries; they define and preserve our property, our soul. p. 99

ten thousand talents. It is hard to estimate exactly what that was worth, and it may in fact only mean the largest debt conceivable, “ten thousand” being one of the largest common numbers and a “talent” being the largest denomination of currency. However, if we do estimate it in dollars, we derive some interesting results. A talent was seventy-five pounds, so ten thousand talents would be 750,000 pounds. We do not know whether they were talents of gold or silver. But since Jesus is trying to exaggerate the contrast between this great debt and the relatively small debt of verse 28, we may suppose that He was thinking of the greater of the two talents, namely, gold. In troy weight there are twelve ounces to a pound. So we are now dealing with 750,000 times 12, or 9 million ounces of gold. Assuming that gold is selling at about $400 an ounce, we come to a figure of $3,600 million (three trillion six hundred million dollars). That is beyond our comprehension, which is precisely Christ’s point. It is an astronomical debt, entirely beyond this servant’s or anybody else’s capacity to pay.

We keep falling into the same ditches, you know? I mean, we learn more and more about the physical universe, more about our own bodies, more technology, but somehow, down through history, we go on building empires of one kind or another, then destroying them in one way or another. We go on having stupid wars that we justify and get passionate about, but in the end, all they do is kill huge numbers of people, maim others, impoverish still more, spread disease and hunger, and set the stage for the next war. And when we look at all of that in history, we just shrug our shoulders and say, well, that’s the way things are. That’s the way things always have been.” “It is,” Len said. “It is,” I repeated. “There seem to be solid biological reasons why we are the way we are. If there weren’t, the cycles wouldn’t keep replaying. The human species is a kind of animal, of course. But we can do something no other animal species has ever had the option to do. We can choose: We can go on building and destroying until we either destroy ourselves or destroy the ability of our world to sustain us. Or we can make something more of ourselves. We can grow up. We can leave the nest. We can fulfill the Destiny, make homes for ourselves among the stars, and become some combination of what we want to become and whatever our new environments challenge us to become. Our new worlds will remake us as we remake them. And some of the new people who emerge from all this will develop new ways to cope. They’ll have to. That will break the old cycle, even if it’s only to begin a new one, a different one.

To every one Jesus has left a work to do, there is no one who can plead that he is excused. Every Christian is to be a worker with Christ; but those to whom he has intrusted large means and abilities have the greater responsibilities. … The Master has given directions, “Occupy till I come.” He is the great proprietor, and has a right to investigate every transaction, and approve or condemn; he has a right to rebuke, to encourage, to counsel, or to expel. The Lord’s work requires careful thought and the highest intellect. He will not inquire how successful you have been in gathering means to hoard, or that you may excel your neighbors in property, and gather attention to yourself while excluding God from your hearts and homes. He will inquire, What have you done to advance my cause with the talents I lent you? What have you done for me in the person of the poor, the afflicted, the orphan, and the fatherless? I was sick, poor, hungry, and destitute of clothing; what did you do for me with my intrusted means? How was the time I lent you employed? How did you use your pen, your voice, your money, your influence? I made you the depositary of a precious trust by opening before you the thrilling truths heralding my second coming. What have you done with the light and knowledge I gave you to make men wise unto salvation? Our Lord has gone away to receive his kingdom; but he will prepare mansions for us, and then will come to take us to himself. In his absence he has given us the privilege of being co-laborers with him in the work of preparing souls to enter those mansions of light and glory. It was not that we might lead a life of worldly pleasure and extravagance that he left the royal courts of Heaven, clothing his divinity with humanity, and becoming poor that we through his poverty might be made rich. He did this that we might follow his example of self-denial for others. Each one of us is building upon the true foundation, wood, hay, and stubble, to be consumed in the last great conflagration, and our life-work be lost, or we are building upon that foundation, gold, silver, and precious stones, which will never perish, but shine the brighter amid the devouring elements that will try every man’s work. Any unfaithfulness in spiritual and eternal things here will result in loss throughout endless ages. Those who lead a Christless life, who exclude Jesus from heart, home, and business, who leave him out of their counsels, and trust to their own heart, and rely on their own judgment, are unfaithful servants, and will receive the reward which their works have merited. At his coming the Master will call his servants, and reckon with them. The parable certainly teaches that good works will be rewarded according to the motive that prompted them; that skill and intellect used in the service of God will prove a success, and will be rewarded according to the fidelity of the worker. Those who have had an eye single to the glory of God will have the richest reward. -ST 11-20-84

In order for me to understand who I am, I must begin to understand who she was. That is my reason for writing and assembling this book. It has always been my way to sort through my feelings by writing.

People who are intelligent, ambitious, and at the same time, in the grip of odd obsessions can be dangerous. When they occur, they inevitably upset things.

They say detailed news doesn’t matter. Since we can’t change the stupid, greedy, vicious things that powerful people do, they think we should try to ignore them. No matter how many times we’re forced to admit we can’t really hide, some of us still find ways to try. Well, we can’t hide. So it’s best to pay attention to what goes on. The more we know, the better able we’ll be to survive.

I HAVE READ THAT the period of upheaval that journalists have begun to refer to as “the Apocalypse” or more commonly, more bitterly, “the Pox” lasted from 2015 through 2030—a decade and a half of chaos. This is untrue. The Pox has been a much longer torment. It began well before 2015, perhaps even before the turn of the millennium. It has not ended. I have also read that the Pox was caused by accidentally coinciding climatic, economic, and sociological crises. It would be more honest to say that the Pox was caused by our own refusal to deal with obvious problems in those areas. We caused the problems: then we sat and watched as they grew into crises. I have heard people deny this, but I was born in 1970. I have seen enough to know that it is true. I have watched education become more a privilege of the rich than the basic necessity that it must be if civilized society is to survive. I have watched as convenience, profit, and inertia excused greater and more dangerous environmental degradation. I have watched poverty, hunger, and disease become inevitable for more and more people.

Jarret condemns the burnings, but does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear. As for the beatings, the tarring and feathering, and the destruction of “heathen houses of devil-worship,” he has a simple answer: “Join us! Our doors are open to every nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again.” He’s had notable success with this carrot-and-stick approach. Join us and thrive, or whatever happens to you as a result of your own sinful stubbornness is your problem.

Jarret’s supporters are more than a little seduced by Jarret’s talk of making America great again. He seems to be unhappy with certain other countries.

My father, perhaps because of his age, seems to have been a loving pessimist. He saw little good in our future. According to his writing, our greatness as a country, perhaps even the greatness of the human species, was in the past. His greatest desire seems to have been to protect my mother and later, to protect me—to somehow keep us safe. My mother, on the other hand, was a somewhat reluctant optimist. Greatness for her, for Earthseed, for humanity always seemed to run just ahead of her. Only she saw it, but that was enough to entice her on, seducing her as she seduced others.

It’s hard to believe that kind of thing happened here, in the United States in the twenty-first century, but it did.

Do you think anyone expects you to know everything?" I smiled. "Of course they do. They don't believe I know it all, and they wouldn't like me much if I did, but somehow, they do expect it. Logic isn't involved in feelings like that.

change, and with Jarret, who with his war and his Crusaders, has slowed it even more.

Politicians, on the other hand, are short-term thinkers, opportunists, sometimes with consciences, but opportunists nevertheless.

It’s about learning to live in partnership with one another in small communities, and at the same time, working out a sustainable partnership with our environment. It’s about treating education and adaptability as the absolute essentials that they are.

It would be more honest to say that the Pox was caused by our own refusal to deal with obvious problems in those areas. We caused the problems: then we sat and watched as they grew into crises. I have heard people deny this, but I was born in 1970. I have seen enough to know that it is true. I have watched education become more a privilege of the rich than the basic necessity that it must be if civilized society is to survive. I have watched as convenience, profit, and inertia excused greater and more dangerous environmental degradation. I have watched poverty, hunger, and disease become inevitable for more and more people.

Partnership is giving, taking, learning, teaching, offering the greatest possible benefit while doing the least possible harm. Partnership is mutualistic symbiosis. Partnership is life. Any entity, any process that cannot or should not be resisted or avoided must somehow be partnered. Partner one another. Partner diverse communities. Partner life. Partner any world that is your home. Partner God. Only in partnership can we thrive, grow, Change. Only in partnership can we live.

Stupid faith was good. Thinking and questioning were bad.

It bothered me very much that they took both women away. The fat crazy woman had been permitted to go about her business until someone resisted. Then both victim and victimizer were treated as equally guilty.

Jarret condemns the burnings, but does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear.

Amid all this, somehow, the United States of America suffered a major nonmilitary defeat. It lost no important war, yet it did not survive the Pox. Perhaps it simply lost sight of what it once intended to be, then blundered aimlessly until it exhausted itself.

Poor doesn’t matter as much if you can make a place for yourself and be respected.

You know the kind of shit men say to one another when they want to stop other men from listening to a woman.

There’s nothing wrong with being stoic when you have to be, but there’s enough unavoidable suffering in the world. Why endure it when you don’t have to?

It’s one thing to know that there are children on the roads and in the towns being made to suffer for someone else’s pleasure. It’s another to know that the two sisters of children you know and like are being made to suffer.

Look what the poor woman had stepped into.

We give our dead To the orchards And the groves. We give our dead To life.

We have lived before. We will live again.

There are times when people need religion more than they need anything else.

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire.” You’re worthless. God hates you. All you deserve is pain and death. What a believable theology that would have been for the children of the Pox. No wonder, some of them found comfort in my mother’s God. If it didn’t love them, at least it offered them some chance to live.

Others, whether we thought of them as friends or not, would be all too willing to join the mob and to stomp us and rob us if stomping and robbing became a test of courage or a test of loyalty to country, religion, or race.

The only way to make more good friends is to make more friends period.

People always think that. You know, like you’re trying to be nice to them and they just think everybody’s a liar and a thief but them.

He didn’t let self-doubt or the doubts of his family or the laughter of his friends stop him from going to college, and then medical school, surviving by way of a combination of scholarships, jobs, and huge debts. He began as a quietly arrogant Black boy of no particular distinction, and he ended as a physician.

Things won’t get back to what he calls normal. We’ll settle into some new norm someday—for a while.

Flattering or begging God isn’t useful. Learn what God does. Learn to shape that to your needs. Learn to use it, or at least, learn to adapt to it so that you won’t get squashed by it. That’s useful.

I felt his tears, wet on my shoulder, then felt his arms go around me, hugging back, still shaking, silent, desperate, hanging on.

Human competitiveness and territoriality were often at the root of particularly horrible fashions in oppression. We human beings seem always to have found it comforting to have someone to took down on.

But insult by insult, expediency by expediency, cease-fire violation by cease-fire violation, most of the peace talks broke down. It’s always been much easier to make war than to make peace.

We’re sliding into undirected negative change.

All too often, we shape ourselves and our futures in such stupid ways.

I don’t know what to say about this. I don’t know how to deal with it. Writing about it helps. Somehow, writing always helps.

To make peace with others, make peace with yourself: shape God with generosity and compassion. Minimize harm. Shield the weak. Treasure the innocent. Be true to the Destiny. Forgive your enemies. Forgive yourself.

Most of them were good people—just poor. They deserved so much better than they got.

Poor doesn’t matter as much if you can make a place for yourself and be respected. I know that now, but I didn’t then.

A collar, my brother was saying, makes you turn traitor against your kind, against your freedom, against yourself.

The sea is beautiful. I stood there in the buffeting wind, staring out at the whitecaps and enjoying the sheer vastness of the water.

Every time any god is accepted by a new group of people, that god changes.

God is always God, always there for us, always dependable that way. And, of course, it means that God and God’s word will never die.

Any entity, any process that cannot or should not be resisted or avoided must somehow be partnered. Partner one another. Partner diverse communities. Partner life. Partner any world that is your home. Partner God. Only in partnership can we thrive, grow, Change. Only in partnership can we live.

All religions are ultimately cargo cults. Adherents perform required rituals, follow specific rules, and expect to be supernaturally gifted with desired rewards—long life, honor, wisdom, children, good health, wealth, victory over opponents, immortality after death, any desired rewards.

People said things like that because they were ignorant, but that I had to respect even the ignorant because they were older.

It seems that I can only stand myself when I’m moving, working, searching for Larkin. I’ve got to get out of here.

We do what we have to do to live.

We’ve been slammed around in all kinds of ways. We’re all wounded. We’re healing as best we can. And, no, we’re not normal. Normal people wouldn’t have survived what we’ve survived. If we were normal we’d be dead.

If God is Change, then…then who loves us? Who cares about us? Who cares for us? “We care for one another,” I said. “We care for ourselves and one another.

I don’t know what else to do, where else to go.

People were willing to use her and discard her, but she mattered to no one. Not even to herself. Yet she had kept herself alive through hell.

Politicians, on the other hand, are short-term thinkers, opportunists, sometimes with consciences, but opportunists nevertheless. Business people are hungry for profit, short- and long-term.

I need to write now more than ever because I have no one to talk to, but writing is cold work on nights like this.

Over the past several months, I’ve learned to eat whatever was put in front of me, and be glad of it. If I could keep it down, and there was enough of it to fill my stomach, I considered myself lucky.

Walking, like writing, helps.

They just keep charging you more to live than they pay you for your labor, and you never get out of debt.

Better, I decided after much thought and much reading of history, to live a decent life and behave well toward other people. Better not to worry about the Christian Americans, the Catholics, the Lutherans, or whatever. Each denomination seemed to think that it had the truth and the only truth and its people were going to bliss in heaven while everyone else went to eternal torment in hell.

The best we could all do was to look after one another and clean up the various hells we’ve made right here on earth.

When they see what she can do with a few sticks of wood and simple tools, they’ll be glad to have her.

Depression and exhaustion together were too much to fight against.

Sometimes I barely wanted to be alive.