<\/p>
In the darkness of our childhood,
\nwhen we lived on red plains beneath vast and empty skies,
\nwhen we heard the roar of monsters beyond the light of our fire and were afraid,
\nthey told us stories to calm us and sang us softly to sleep.
\nWhen we went out on hunt, spears held high,
\nthey guided our arms, gave strength to our sinews,
\ndirected our thrusts as stone and bone plunged into the steaming flanks of wild-eyed prey.
\nWhen we roamed the woods and the plains,
\nthey whispered in our ears, told us where to search for what was good,
\nled us to the secret places and the holy groves where sacred light streamed through the air.
\nAnd when we returned to our shelter at the end of each day,
\nthey were among us, red and vital, as firelight danced on painted cave walls.<\/p>\n
We were children in truth then, with a child\u2019s view of the world,
\nlarge and simple, drawn in sharp lines and bright colors,
\npresided over by powers we did not understand,
\nstern authorities that would sometimes give and sometimes take away,
\nthat could sometimes be placated and sometimes could not.<\/p>\n
When the rains came and the hunts were good, we praised their mercy and benevolence,
\nand when famine and drought and plague swept us, when the earth turned to dust and the sky to ash,
\nthen we wept and implored them and pleaded to know what we were doing wrong,
\nand the wise among us said:
\n\u201cOur God is a mighty God and terrible.\u201d<\/p>\n
We sought to appease them,
\nwith drums and dances, songs and sacrifices,
\nwith the fragrance of burning incense and the stench of burning flesh,
\nthe black smoke of altars, the brassy tang of spilled blood,
\nthe cruel iron of the rack and the wheel, the glint of the knife blade.<\/p>\n
And as time passed, we grew up,
\na little,
\nlearning to spin cloth, to forge metal, to write on clay and stone.
\nAnd as our tribes expanded and our people flourished,
\nthe gods grew more remote,
\nno longer among us, whispering to us, but now distant, on high,
\nhanding down commandments from the flame-wreathed peak of the holy mountain.
\nNo longer did they take our hands, caress our arms, speed our feet,
\nbut they were as mighty and terrible as ever, and we trembled before them,
\nfearing even to speak lest we do something to offend them, and thus bring down doom upon all.
\nAnd those few who did not fear, who could commune with the gods and divine their will,
\nwe gifted with riches and power, imploring them to act as ambassadors on our behalf.
\nSo the shaman\u2019s staff became the crook and flail,
\nthe feather cloak became robes of office, the headdress a golden crown.
\nWe labored mightily to build cities,
\nthrowing our lives and our children\u2019s lives into great works to show the power of our God
\nto all our far-flung fellow tribes,
\nand when our leaders told us that God wanted us to make war on our neighbors,
\nto take their fertile valleys, their gold and riches, their wealth and their women,
\nwe did not question but marched forth, glad to do God\u2019s will.
\nAnd we returned to the temples with bloody hands and prostrated ourselves,
\neager to show our God that we his children were faithful and obedient servants,
\nthat we were willing to do whatever he asked of us.<\/p>\n
And a little more time passed, and empires fell and new nations arose,
\nand our civilizations grew ever more powerful, our works more clever and wondrous,
\nand the gods grew more remote still, receding into the past, now speaking to us only from history and tradition,
\nbut they thoughtfully delegated even more of their power to their earthly representatives,
\nso that we would not be left without guidance.
\nAnd still we loved them, and offered up our devotions to them.
\nWe erected vast and beautiful cathedrals of stone,
\ncomposed stirring symphonies in praise of their greatness,
\nraised monarchs and bishops and popes at their will,
\nand spilled out the blood of countries to please them.
\nAnd when a dissenting voice arose, or when someone dared to impugn the gods,
\nwe reacted with great fury and righteous indignation,
\nshouting be silent and how dare you and who are you to say such things,
\nsweeping the countryside with inquisitions, demanding oaths and vows of loyalty,
\nchastising the heretic with bayonets and red-hot pincers and the crackle of the flames at the stake.
\nFor in truth, despite all our inventions, all our learning, all our wondrous works,
\nwe still shared a heart with those hunter-gatherers who feared monsters beyond their fires,
\nstill feared the unknown, the stranger, the darkness,
\nand when we found one whom we knew had been corrupted by those sinister and malign powers,
\nwe were determined not to let his contagion get a foothold among us,
\nand turn our minds to wickedness and evil.<\/p>\n
And time passed, and we grew.<\/p>\n
Today, we bustle about in sleek silver cars beneath tall city lights,
\nspan the world with our chatter, send golden emissaries into space,
\ndelve the cosmos on every scale from the largest to the smallest.
\nIn vast winged chariots, we soar above the clouds like angels.
\nOur great revolving mirrors peer into deep heaven, watching distant stars die
\nas if they were falling sparrows,
\nthe all-seeing eye imagined by the dreamers of old, reinvented.
\nOur white-clad healers repair the human body,
\nrestoring sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf,
\nworking the miraculous cures we longed for when we were children.
\nWe bottle lightning, harness the sun, split the atom,
\nshut up the sea with doors and travel to the deep springs thereof,
\nperceive the breadth of the Earth and the ordinances of heaven.
\nBut for all our achievements, we still possess the brash arrogance of youth,
\ncertain we always know best, fearless in our imagined invincibility.<\/p>\n
But time is still passing,
\nand a day will come when we reach adulthood at last.
\nA day will come when our compassion and wisdom catch up with our bright lights and majestic cities.
\nA day will come when our ability to build and heal outpaces our desire to destroy.<\/p>\n
On that day,
\nthe bright colors and sharp edges will take on shadow and clarity and depth,
\nand the stern faces and the distant voices of childhood will fade
\nas we discover they were only illusions of our own creation,
\nveils imposed on reality like mist on the landscape.
\nWe will step behind the authoritative faces
\nand find they were empty, hollow masks all along,
\nand what we thought were harsh decrees
\nwill turn out to be merely the rustling of the wind and the cries of birds.
\nWe will discover that the ambassadors of God,
\ndespite their trappings of office, despite their fine robes and great gilded buildings and weighty texts,
\nwere never anything more than men, as fallible as the rest of us,
\nstruggling in vain to hear speech in the corners of dreams and fading noise of echoes
\nand the gentle crash of the sea on the shore.
\nWe will finally dare to venture beyond the light of our fires
\nand find that there are no monsters waiting for us, no demons, no ghouls, no ghosts \u2013
\nthat there was never anything in the night but our own fearful imaginations.
\nWe will arise and see the world as it truly is
\nlike a sleeper touched by the golden light of morning
\nwho wakens from a dream he thought was real
\nand, seeing the world glowing in the glory of the sun,
\nperceives that now he is truly awake at last.<\/p>\n
And on that day the gods, our forgotten childhood guardians,
\nwill fade to echoes of voices, fragments of speech on the wind,
\nmemories of a distant laughter \u2013
\nremnants of a time long gone, things no longer needed.
\nPerhaps their memory will be set aside for well and all as we step into the morning,
\nor perhaps they will be preserved, even if only as yellowed records
\nin some great archive, a family scrapbook of our species,
\nkept as a precaution, a warning of what might happen
\nshould we ever again desire to creep back into fearful darkness.
\nAnd though it may pain us to learn we are truly on our own,
\nit will hurt in the same way as growing up,
\na separation wrenching at first, but necessary in the long run,
\nfor it is only this that will teach us once and for all that we must be the ones to care for each other.<\/p>\n
How long will this day be in coming?
\nWill it be soon, or will it be an age?
\nOnly time will tell.
\nBut even while the gods still blind us,
\nwe who dream at night can look to the stars
\nand visualize the future that awaits beyond the horizon of dawn.
\nWhether it takes a day or an age,
\nwe will awake.\n<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/center>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the darkness of our childhood, when we lived on red plains beneath vast and empty skies, when we heard the roar of monsters beyond the light of our fire and were afraid, they told us stories to calm us and sang us softly to sleep. When we went out on hunt, spears held high, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1308,"featured_media":0,"parent":5349,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5824","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n