Tell Me Like I’m 5 (About Miracles, Truth, Religion, God)
Even if I were 5 years old
I would really want to know the difference between what
- can’t be known
- or, as some say, can only be “known” (through experience, as in, “if you have to ask, you will never know”).
Children should be seen and not heard
A five-year-old learns to be afraid to ask about what is taboo, what is prohibited or restricted to initiates.
A five-year-old is not ready to think of the universals of human or animal behavior–such things as reproducing and dying–on a personal level, much less a cosmic level.
A five-year-old can only guess at unknown things that he or she is not ready to believe.
You’ve got to be carefully taught
Explain it to me like I am five:
what are miracles?
what do we mean when we say “God”?
what is religion?
Tell me like I am a five year old. The teachings on religion in the world make a great, discordant sound like a symphony warming up, everyone making their own noise in one out-of-tune, blaring cacophony.
We could use a tune-up, a tone that sets the pitch just right.
A shift of perspective
If we open the aperture of our scope of vision wider to our surroundings,
if we could view our sector of the universe as highly inhabited,
and our own small and fragile piece of real estate in it as highly contested,
this unifying purpose among all humans (the value of a shared enemy, as Ronald Reagan famously pointed out) would harmonize all of our highest aspirations and achievements in one great miracle: cohesive agreement and unity of intention.
It is time for humanity now to learn what spirituality means within a Greater Community of intelligent life in the universe. Instead of being an isolated and tribal emphasis, it now must become more universal and complete. It is time for humanity to learn of its life and destiny within this Greater Community, and have a greater understanding of the real nature of human spirituality, and the power of redemption and renewal that lives within you at this moment, waiting to be discovered.
Marshall Vian Summers, The Pure Religion, p. 132
