Earthseed 46-50

46. Do not worship God

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.
For you are Earthseed,
And God is Change.

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47. Unenlightened Self-Interest

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

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48. Hidden within Change

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.

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49. Paradise

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.

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50. Partnership

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.

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