Seeds and Bullets

As a long-time student of religion, I understand how closely entwined religion is with suffering, whether religion prompts its acceptance or promotes its avoidance. Lauren’s vision for Earthseed emerges from a desperate alchemy of exigency and empathy, a never perfect balance between the needs of the self and the ‘sacrifices’ one is willing to make for others. Personal reflections spur Lauren to redefine God, such that divinity is not some immortal person, issuing immutable commands, but an impersonal process, whose only essence is Change. The universe’s Becoming is simultaneously indifferent to our desires while being malleable to our efforts, with the overarching question being: what actions promote human flourishing?   

As a gardener, I recognize Lauren’s begrudging admiration for weeds - - tenacious, opportunistic, irritatingly abundant - - as they outpace the plants I intended to grow. The parables of Jesus employ very familiar images, like shepherding or sowing seeds. This latter image blossoms into an organic metaphor for our human story writ large: the dissemination of ideas, the global dispersion of practices, the cross-pollination of cultures. Yet what flowers in our own society? Which tools or technologies contribute most to the goal of flourishing?       

In Butler’s brilliant novel, seeds are carefully inventoried - - just as are guns. As a U.S. citizen, I recoil from the almost constant attention the narrative pays to weapons. For me, reading Parable of the Sower was a grim reminder that gun violence is not only dystopian fiction but constant reality in this country. Again, we touch upon a raw nerve of suffering, aggravated by the aura of reverence in which so many of my fellow Americans swaddle their guns.        

So I confess that I was troubled by the repeated appearance of the word “destiny” in the book. Because while Destiny invests actions with higher purpose, it can also whitewash ignoble pursuits, being a term favored for conquest and colonial expansion. All too human agendas are gilded with transcendence, dazzling us with radiant success. Destiny speaks the language of inevitability, such that harmful actions, like the exercise of lethal power, are more easily excused. 

To bring together these reflections, I suggest it matters less how God gets defined; what matters more with religion is how community gets built. Perhaps “trusting in God” translates into trusting in God’s people, but the result must be mutual support. I see the promise of Earthseed as sponsoring fruitful exchanges between people, as sentient agents of Change united by their pursuit of a common good, whether or not they accept the same version of God. 

Seeds and bullets are valued by the community coalescing around Earthseed, and so, too, are books. Writing is an old technology for encoding information and, when properly cultivated, for encouraging empathy. Certainly, books can be weaponized, so if writing is to offer us any path around the dystopia Butler has so plausibly rendered, then our reading must not be complacent. Rather, we have to be active readers, critically engaging a range of texts, because Parable of the Sower makes clear how much is at stake in better understanding the world we collectively construct: either we come to recognize suffering, and work to remedy it, or we perish together.