I’m on your side, oh, when times get rough
And friends just can’t be found
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down

                             ~ Paul Simon

 We are building a bridge over troubled waters to our collective future. There is a story in the Book of Joshua of the Children of Israel crossing the Jordan River. As the story goes, the priests took the Ark of the Covenant into the river. The presence of the Ark allowed for the safe passage of the people. And so it is today. We are called to create safe passage into our future. We are called to be a bridge over troubled waters.

The symbology of the Ark is useful in many respects. Within the Ark were the Ten Commandments: a code to live by. And so, as a universal priesthood today, we bring the code of life with us and hold it precious. We are not a priesthood of any particular sect. If we are a true priesthood, we are a universal priesthood—a priesthood of the world and a priesthood that connects the world with the Invisible.

That brings us to another quality of the Ark. I’m not sure exactly what they had with them as they crossed the Jordan, but the Ark was built with a mercy seat upon it and there were two cherubim, one on each side. And so, the mercy seat represented a place of mercy in between the two cherubim, and a place of communion with the Invisible Source of all Love. So here was another quality of the Ark: it was a place of communion with the Divine. The communion with the Divine allows for communion with other people.

The Ark was a place of mercy and forgiveness. Without that, there is no communion with each other. And when there is no mercy and forgiveness in our hearts toward each other, there is no communion with the Divine.

The Divine isn’t holding grudges. The Divine isn’t keeping track and then withholding life energy from any human being. And so, if we are to bring the Divine to the world in which we live, in our hearts there must be forgiveness and there must be mercy.

Mercy is not a passive virtue. We don’t witness human suffering and, in a casual way, just wish mercy upon those individuals. Mercy is an active stance of a human being that intercedes in the downward-spiraling human experience. Mercy and forgiveness are qualities brought by the priesthood in the turbulent waters of the world in which we live.

This, too, is relevant to the Ark. The Ark was a place of spiritual centering, and therefore Attunement with the Divine. Attunement implies that a person’s centering is not here, there, and everywhere. They are not distracted by the static of the world in which we live, and by all kinds of voices. The Ark implies a place of centering and Attunement; a place of deep listening to a soundless voice—One Voice. And when we hear that One Voice in ourselves and begin to give it expression, we hear it in each other too. It is a voice as of many waters, but still One Voice speaking beautifully and harmoniously through us all. We tune in to that One Voice in our spiritual centering.

The Ark was built out of wood, gold and other precious materials. It was carefully constructed. If you go look at the biblical record, it gets very specific. It was helpful for human beings of the day to have a physical symbology that depicted something of a spiritual nature. It made it very plain and made it very real. There are stone tablets here. There is a box that holds the stone tablets. There is a representation of cherubim and there is a mercy seat. Do you get it?

For us as human beings, it’s helpful to have visible physical things that remind us of invisible spiritual things. But while spiritual things are not necessarily visible to the physical eyes, that doesn’t mean they are far away. It is just that they may be transpiring at a vibrational level that is of a higher frequency than physical light. So it can be helpful to have a shrine and physical objects that embody something spiritual and put us in touch with them. Today, we are that shrine. Our physical bodies and the heart-filled field of conscious awareness we share is the shrine. Our association is a place of living communion.

There was something else about the Ark and the Holy of Holies where it was laid. The Holy of Holies was a physical shrine designed as a place of spiritual generation. That is a reality that we know when we share an Attunement. The very fact of being spiritually centered and listening to the One Voice allows us to receive something. We hear the One Voice and something begins to download into heart and mind that is connected with our physicality, and there are changes that occur in our physicality. The resonance of the Divine begins to vibrate within us. There is a moving and a shaking in the physical body. There is a moving and a shaking in the heart and in the mind. The spirit of the Divine is filling us.

We hear the calling of the presence of the Divine in the sanctuary. And we are called upon to lift up our hands, to allow the vibration to not only move within us but to move out through us. The sanctuary begins to be filled with an energy and a power and a light. It fills with the substance of mercy.

The sanctuary is a merciful place. We learn to sit upon the mercy seat and to receive forgiveness. We learn to be filled from above and, as we are, we have the opportunity to fill each other with the Holy Spirit, all from one source. And then we have mercy to offer to the world.

Martin Cecil spoke of a vibrational ark. This is the space we share that vibrates with the Highest Love and the Highest Truth we know. Our communion together in this time of a global pandemic emphasizes to us that, while a physical place can hold the atmosphere and the energy of a vibrational ark, in truth that ark is not defined by a physical place. It’s defined by the constellation of our connection with each other and by our collective openness to the Most High. This is the cord of divine connection that we hold in common with all of humankind.

This vibrational ark and the atmosphere of it is the bridge over troubled waters. It is a bridge across the space that divides us. This vibration resonating in the atmosphere that we are sharing is a bridge across the waters of the Atlantic. It reaches to the United Kingdom and Europe. It reaches to you in Africa. It reaches across the Pacific to Australia and Asia and around the world. The ark is a bridge, close-binding all humankind. Without the ark, there is no bridge between us. There is cacophony and there is static, there are many human voices, but not the One Voice. We’re learning to tune in to the One Voice that allows for the harmony of all our voices: One Voice as of many waters.

The vibration in the atmosphere of this ark is calling across the continents and across the oceans to our brothers and sisters everywhere. It moves with the power that is resonating in this body of auric substance that we are sharing. But the ark is not only a bridge in space reaching around the world, connecting us all. It is also a bridge to our future. What we are sharing is calling to us the most brilliant future possible.

We are welcoming the appearance, out of that future, of those things that manifest the Most High. We are calling in from our future, into this present moment, the potential of humankind in harmony and in love. We’re calling in an experience for humankind of knowing one love, a compassion for our brothers and sisters, a surround and a future for our children. We are calling in the thriving of our planet in the most beautiful way possible, with us as humanity, as stewards of the garden, not as a destructive force that has to be cast off by nature but as keepers of Planet Earth. We are calling in a future in which what is wounded and damaged in the human heart has been released in the vulnerability of all humankind to healing from above; a world in which we each take responsibility for our own healing as we are open to the Great Healer of all; a future in which we have let the Great Healer heal us, and so we are sharing that healing with people around the globe.

This ark is full of prayer, night and day; full of that longing of the human heart for the highest potential and the highest spirit. It is this ark that is the bridge to our future. No ark, no bridge, no future.

We find ourselves at home in this place. We are called home, and we are calling the world home to this place of communion and generation. In the arcing between us, there is a love generation that creates the auric substance of home. We find that what is resonating in that substance calls us to a constant harmonization with the Highest Love, with the highest frequency that resonates in this ark.

We have a name for that resonance. It is a name for the fire of love that burns in this home, the light of truth that shines here, and for the glory of life that’s known here. We call it Shekinah, the presence of the One Who Dwells, known through the evidence of that presence in the ark of our covenant with the Most High, and therefore our covenant with each other.

Our covenant brings mercy to one another. I will not cast you off. I will not leave you hanging. And while there are rhythms to our togetherness, and proximities that are right in the passage of time that have us living across oceans and continents from one another, we could well say, I never left you. I am here with you now. That is the mercy we extend to all people.

Let us consciously extend that mercy together in Attunement. I invite you to lift up your hands in this sanctuary. We invite the world into this sanctuary. We invite all people into the sanctuary, wherever they may be, whatever their beliefs, whatever their wounds, whatever their needs, whatever their state of consciousness has been in the past. We invite all men, all women, all people, all children, into the sanctuary, that they might find the mercy of life, the all-forgiving nature of love, made evident now through this universal priesthood. We call out to people of all lands, all countries, all races, all faiths, all ethnicities and all cultures. We call all people into the sanctuary. We call all people Home.

Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down.