God Is Change: Trust, Impermanence, and Learning to Stay Present
The Inner Compass Podcast with Vanessa BennettShow Notes
What if trusting life doesn’t mean trusting that everything will become stable, coherent, or reassuring? In this episode, Vanessa explores change as both a spiritual and psychological problem: why we confuse trust with continuity, why change can feel like abandonment, and what it means to stay in relationship with reality as it keeps moving. Through Octavia Butler’s “God is Change,” Heraclitus, Buddhist impermanence, process theology, attachment theory, meaning-making research, and Jungian transformation, we look at the grief and freedom of releasing the fantasy that life’s job is to preserve the forms we love. Trust is not certainty that everything will work out; it is the willingness to remain present with what is real as it changes form.
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Reference Links: Octavia Butler — Parable of the Sower / Earthseed Use for: “God is Change,” Earthseed, and the idea that change is the central theological principle in Parable of the Sower. Link: https://www.octaviabutler.com/the-books Note: Use this as the primary author/book reference for Octavia Butler and Parable of the Sower.
Earthseed / “God Is Change” Use for: Earthseed’s core principle that God is Change and the related idea that God can be shaped. Link: https://godischange.org/shape-god/ Note: Useful accessible reference for the Earthseed language. If quoting directly, confirm wording against the text of Parable of the Sower.
Heraclitus — Flux / River Fragment Use for: Heraclitus’s idea that reality is in flux, often summarized through the river fragment. Link: https://iep.utm.edu/heraclit/ Note: The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a reliable philosophy reference for Heraclitus and the doctrine of flux.
Attachment Theory Overview Use for: Secure attachment as a reliable base for exploration, regulation, and return. Link: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4085672/ Note: Broad overview of attachment theory, including Bowlby and Ainsworth. Intolerance of Uncertainty
Use for: Uncertainty as a transdiagnostic process associated with anxiety, worry, rigidity, avoidance, and distress. Link: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4204511/ Note: Useful research review on intolerance of uncertainty and its role across anxiety and related conditions.
Crystal Park — Meaning-Making After Stressful Events Use for: Stressful events disrupting global beliefs/goals and the process of meaning-making after rupture. Link: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20192563/ Note: Crystal L. Park’s 2010 review on meaning-making and adjustment to stressful life events.
Buddhist Impermanence / Anicca Use for: Impermanence as one of the three marks of existence in Buddhist philosophy. Link: https://www.bps.lk/olib/wh/wh186_Nyanaponika-etal_Three-Basic-Facts-of-Existence--I-Anicca.html Note: Buddhist Publication Society resource on anicca / impermanence.
Three Marks of Existence Use for: Impermanence, suffering/unsatisfactoriness, and non-self as core Buddhist teachings. Link: https://www.britannica.com/topic/anicca Note: Accessible reference for anicca as impermanence in Buddhist thought.
Alfred North Whitehead — Process Theology / “Fellow-Sufferer Who Understands” Use for: Process theology and God as relationally present within the becoming of the world. Link: https://processandfaith.org/becoming-christ-like-heathens/ Note: This page quotes Whitehead’s famous phrase from Process and Reality: “God is the great companion—the fellow-sufferer who understands.”
Process Theology Overview Use for: General overview of process theology and Whitehead’s influence. Link: https://iep.utm.edu/processp/ Note: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy overview of process philosophy/theology.
C. G. Jung — Symbols of Transformation Use for: Jungian transformation, symbolic death, dissolution, renewal, and the psychological meaning of transformation symbols. Link: https://iaap.org/resources/academi
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