"Preach, then."
"What's the catch?"
"You should know. You've been to our services. You choose the topic. You say what you want. But afterward there will be questions and discussion."
"I'm not out to teach a class. I want to preach a sermon."
"That's not our way, Marc. If you speak, you have to face questions and discussion. You need to be ready for that. Besides, no matter what you call it, a good sermon is just a lesson that you're trying to teach."
"But... you won't try to get in the way of my preaching at the Gathering if I take questions afterward?"
"That's right."
"Then I'll do it."
"It's no joke, Marc."
"I know. It's no joke to me either."
"I mean we're as serious about the discussion as you are about the sermon. Some of our people might probe and dissect in ways you won't like."
"Okay, I can handle it."
No, I didn't think he could. But an unpleasant thing should be done quickly if it must be done at all. My brother had a sermon ready. He'd been working on it in his spare moments. Since I was scheduled to speak at the Gathering this morning, I was able to step aside for him, let him speak at once.
He didn't pull his punches. He confronted us, challenged us directly from the Bible—first from Isaiah again, "The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; but the word of our God will stand for ever." Then later from Malachi, "For I am the Lord. I change not" And then from Hebrews, "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and for ever. Be not carried about with diverse and strange doctrines."
Marc doesn't have our father's impressive voice, and he knows it. He uses what he has skillfully, and, of course, it helps that he's so good-looking. But once he had preached his sermon on the changelessness of God, Jorge Cho spoke up. Jorge was next to Diamond Scott as usual. He has told me he intends to marry Di, but Di has been looking at my brother in a way that Jorge doesn't like at all. There's a rivalry between Marc and Jorge anyway. They're both young and competitive.
"We believe that all things change," Jorge said, "even though all things don't necessarily change in all ways. Why do you believe God doesn't change?"
My brother smiled. "But even you believe that your God doesn't change. Your God promotes change, but he stays the same."
That surprised me. Marc shouldn't have made such avoidable mistakes. He's had plenty of time to read, talk, and hear about Earthseed, but somehow, he's misunderstood.
Travis was the first to point out the error. "God is Change," he said. "God promotes nothing. Nothing at all."
And Zahra, of all people, said, "Our God isn't male. Change has no sex. Marc, you don't know enough about us yet even to criticize us."
Jorge began repeating his question before Zahra had finished. "Why do you think your God doesn't change? How can you prove it?"
"I have faith that it's true," Marc said. "Belief must be based on faith as much as on proofs."
"But there must be some test," Jorge said. "You must have a way to know when your faith is sensible and when it makes no sense."
"The test is the Bible, of course. When the Bible tells us something—in this case, it tells us several times—we can believe it. We can have faith that it is true."
Antonio Cortez, Lucio's oldest nephew, jumped in. "Look," he said, "in the Bible, God does things. Things happen and he reacts. He makes things. He gets angry. He destroys things...."
"But he, himself, doesn't change," my brother said.
"Oh, come on," Tori Mora shouted in open disgust. 'To take action is to change. It's to go from action to inaction. And he goes from calmness to anger—he gets angry a lot And—"
"And in Genesis," her stepsister Doe said, "he lets some of his favorite men have children with their sisters or daughters. Then in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, he says anyone who does that should be killed."
"Right," Jorge said. "I was just reading that last week. It is no good to say that something is true because the Bible says it is true and then forget that a few pages later, the Bible says—or shows—something completely different."
"Every time any god is accepted by a new group of people, that god changes," Harry Balter said.
"I think," Marta Figueroa Castro said in her gentlest voice, "that the verses you read, Marc, mean that 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."
"Yes, so much of the Bible is metaphor," Diamond Scott said. She, too, spoke very gently. "I remember that my mother used to try to take it absolutely literally, but it just meant she had to ignore some things and twist others." Beside her, Jorge smiled.
The discussion went on for a while longer. Then other people began to take pity on Marc. They let him end the discussion. They had never been out to humiliate him. Well, maybe Jorge had, but even Jorge had been polite. Things would have gone better for Marc if he had done his homework, and things would have been more interesting and involving for his audience. He might even have won over a Faircloth or a Peralta. I had worried about that
The truth is, I let him speak today because I wanted him to speak before he was truly ready. I wish I hadn't had to do that I wish he had wanted to do something else—anything else—to get his self-respect back and begin to rebuild himself. I have tried to interest him in the several kinds of work we do here. He isn't lazy. He pulls his weight. But he doesn't like fieldwork or working with animals or trading or teaching or salvaging or carpentry. He tried repairing salvaged tools, but it bothered him that he had so much to learn even about simple things. He all but ruined a pair of heavy-duty shears that he was supposed to be sharpening. He tried to grind their almost square edges to thin, sharp blades, and Travis gave him the chewing out he deserved.
"If you don't know, ask," Travis had shouted. "Nobody expects you to know everything. Just ask! This shit is easy to do if you just take the trouble to learn a few basics. Work with me for a while. Don't try to go off on your own."
But my brother needed to "go off on his own," to have his own turf where he was the one who said yes or no, and where everyone respected him. He needed that more than he needed anything, and he meant to have it all at once.
But now, instead of feeling important and proud, he feels angry and embarrassed. I had to let him inflict those feelings on himself. I couldn't let him begin to divide Acorn. More important—much more important—I couldn't let him begin to divide Earthseed.
Chapter 9
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From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
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.
MY MOTHER WAS QUITE OPEN in her journal about the fact that she didn't know what she was doing, and that this was a terrible frustration to her. She meant to make Earthseed a nationwide movement, but she had no idea how to do this. She seemed to have vague plans to someday send out Earthseed missionaries, to use Acorn as a kind of school for such missionaries. Perhaps this is what she would have done if she'd had the chance. It might even have worked. It's worked for other cults. It might have gained her a larger following, more recognition.
But she didn't want simple recognition. She wanted people to believe. She had a truth that she wanted to teach and an outer-space Destiny that she wanted taken seriously and someday fulfilled. And it's obvious from her treatment of Uncle Marc that she was very territorial about the whole thing. I don't know whether Uncle Marc ever realized how she set him up to fail and to make a bad first impression with her people. Such a simple, subtle thing. He imagined that she had done something much more obvious and complicated.