“How will you make yourselves ready for the times to come?
“When you come to the edge of a great river where there are no bridges to traverse or vessels to make safe your passage, you realize that you have reached a limit. What lies before you is an impossible crossing.
“You may think at such moments that you have no choice but to turn back the way you came. But in this case that would mean repeating the same mistakes that led you to this impasse in the first place. This often happened to people in past ages. They came upon a great river which they could neither cross nor retreat from. Nevertheless, they found their way.
“I have set a riddle before you. It appears on all sides. There is no retreat, and there is no going forward. There is no rapture to lift you up into the heavens. There is no descent into a protected place where you can hide from the changes to come. And yet, this riddle has been solved again and again throughout your history.
“You are good at impossible things, just not the ones you imagine. The limits you have pushed through over the last few hundred years—through discovery, innovation, or invention—these are not the real limits. The real limits are the ones you are now approaching and soon will reach.
“Only when you stand before that river will you know what it means to be alive and to be human. You have forgotten what these mean, but you are about to remember, and I will be at your side when you do.”