Shape god
Getting laughed at, being held
Girl, Forest speaks to me in my AirPods as I bike to Bridgeport. God is change, he says. It is day three of my new job and I am whining about how it’s drowning me.
All that you touch, you change, right? He deadpans into the phone, used to me at this point.
All that you change, changes you, right? Get up girl, he implies. You got this, he implies.
Yeah, yeah, I reply. Shape change. I know, I know.
Not an hour later, T hugs me on her couch as I cry again. She is so strong. It’s tender, but there is a firmness there, an earth, a ground floor.
It’s imposter syndrome, she says.
No, I say.
Then what? she asks.
It’s knowing how much my life is going to change.
Girl, Forest’s voice resounds in my near-memory. I hear it, I hear it.
I saw a Voodoo priestess in New Orleans and she told me to stop taking everything so seriously. I walked through the door and she looked me up and down.
Look what the cat dragged in. What do you do?
I teach teachers, I said.
No you don’t, she replied. You’re far too young for that.
I’m 34! Indignant.
Her eyes glittered, mischief caught in the corners of her mouth, as she prepared to read me into the ground.
Why is your generation so obsessed with micromanaging everything?
Then she laughed at me, oh how she laughed, and her eyes sparkled, and she invited me to laugh at myself, too.
It is true that she laughed at me the whole time I was there, the wrinkles dancing across her 80 year old face, daring me. She wanted to play. She wanted me to play.
Enough, she said. Stop micromanaging, stop asking for things when nothing is wrong, stop trying to be so holy and go play some Bingo. Just say in the mirror everyday I am healthy, wealthy, and well, she said. That’s it.
Everybody wants to be so holy, and nobody wants to manifest, she said. She begins an extended metaphor about shaping an iron pot, how difficult it is. She reaches her epiphany, another read. Now, you wrought this beautiful iron pot. For what? You got nothing to put in it. Her laughter cascades around the room, getting between the statues and altars and offerings and magic, which are laughing too. Her words had wrinkles— 80 years of them.
Octavia Butler via Earthseed in The Parable of the Sower says, We do not worship God. We perceive and attend God. We learn from God. With forethought and work, we shape God. In the end, we yield to God.
She said we do not worship, we collaborate. Stop trying to win the approval of Daddy God and get to work. Notice, observe, shape, yield. Everybody wants to be so holy, everybody wants a little pat on the head from the same God that created this mess, but nobody wants to be a part of the making, to participate in the work of collaborating with the forces that exist (after careful study and attention.) And not alone, either, but together. Not my will, but ours.
We micromanage, we hold ourselves separate, we try to do the right thing to stay above reproach, when reality is ripe and yearning for our labor. We attend, we learn, we shape, we yield. We are in this together, all of us here, seen and unseen. Let’s get our hands dirty.
I hear these elders. I hear them. Yeah, yeah. I reply, letting their words get to work inside of me, reshaping my reality with their intervention. I yield to God. Okay, okay. Let’s get to work, I guess.
I want stuff to put into my iron pot. Delicious stuff. I want to manifest. I want to collaborate with God as she unfolds all around us. There is so much desire in me, so much that wants to contact this life, and the others around me are like this too. I feel it. I feel all of us turning towards our destinies, turning into the dance life is doing with us. I can hear it in the conversations and the waiting, the stuckness and the movement. We are all becoming, attending, shaping, growing. Because you know what else Octavia Butler said?
All successful life is
Adaptable
Tenacious
Interconnected
Opportunistic
Fecund.
A list that definitely gets us things in the pot. Together we are making the stone soup. While, for the love of it all, trying to take ourselves a little more lightly. Getting laughed at by a 90 year old Voodoo Priestess is a good start. I’d recommend it.
Girl. God is change. Accept this. Use it. Shape change.
