Kate

“Same species, same earth, different stories. Like Creation stories everywhere, cosmologies are a source of identity and orientation to the world. They tell us who we are... One story leads to the generous embrace of the living world, the other to banishment. One woman is our ancestral gardener, a cocreator of the good green world that would be the home of her descendants. The other was an exile, just passing through an alien world on a rough road to her real home in heaven.
And then they met - the offspring of Skywoman and the children of Eve - and the land around us bears the scars of that meeting, the echoes of our stories. They say that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and I can only imagine the conversation between Eve and Skywoman: 'Sister, you got the short end of the stick...”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

“But no doubt the first man that ever murdered an ox was regarded as a murderer; perhaps he was hung; and if he had been put on his trial by oxen, he certainly would have been; and he certainly deserved it if any murderer does.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick: or, The Whale

“Time wastes too fast: every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity Life follows my pen; the days and hours of it, more precious, my dear Jenny! than the rubies about they neck, are flying over our heads light like clouds of a windy day, never to return more -- every thing presses on -- whilst thou art twisting that lock, -- see! it grows grey; and every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, and every absence which follows it, are preludes to that eternal separation which we are shortly to make. --
-- Heaven have mercy on us both!”
― Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

“Then show me a more pervasive power than change,' I said. 'It isn't just entropy. God is more complex than that. Human behavior alone should teach you that much. And there's still more complexity when you're dealing with several things at once - as you always are. There are all kinds of changes in the universe.'
He shook his head. 'Maybe, but nobody's going to worship them.'
'I hope not,' I said. 'Earthseed deals with ongoing reality, not with supernatural authority figures,. Worship is no good without action, With action, it's only useful if it steadies you, focuses your efforts, eases your mind.'
He gave me an unhappy smile. 'Praying makes people feel better when there's no action they can take,' he said. 'I used to think that was all God was good for - to help people like my. mother stand what they had to stand.'
'That isn't what God is for, but there are times when that's what prayer is for. And there are times when that's what these verses are for. God is change, and in the end, God prevails. But there's hope in understanding the nature of God - not punishing or jealous, but infinitely malleable. There's comfort in realizing that everyone and everything yields to God. There's power in knowing that God can be focused, diverted, shaped by anyone at all. But there's no power in having strength and brains, and yet waiting for God to fix things for you or take revenge for you. You know that. You knew it when you took your family and got the hell out of your boss's house. God will shape us all every day for our lives. Best to understand that and return the effort: Shape God.'
'Amen!' Harry said, smiling.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower