A lot has been happening this past week. Several friends have reported to me that people in their lives are facing major issues, some of which are a matter of life or death. There is certainly a lot up in the news. It has not been an ordinary week, if there is such a thing.

Amid this sometimes-daunting world, we are giving birth to a new nation. We are manifesting a new world.

Jesus of Nazareth, perhaps the greatest spiritual teacher to ever walk the earth, said this about collective manifestation:

If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my father, which is in heaven.

Matthew 18:19,20

Agree on earth… This saying of Jesus’ has been meaningful to me. But the word agree has always slightly irked me. Surely, there must be more to what Jesus was saying than what is typically thought of as agreement.

Though there are differing opinions on the matter, it is generally thought that the gospels were first written down in Greek. Greek was the universal language of the Roman Empire. In any event, the people who translated the gospels into English primarily relied on early Greek versions.

Yesterday, I looked up the Greek word that they translated as “agree.” The original Greek word used was a form of the word sýmphōnos. Sound familiar? It is the origin of the word symphony, and it means “harmonious, agreeing in sound.”

What happens if we retranslate Jesus’ saying using that meaning?

If two of you shall become a living symphony on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my father, which is in heaven.

Yes, let’s agree. But agreement alone—as it is generally understood—is not enough. This is far more than a contract, or just saying yes. You can’t just devise a plan for it and agree to it. You have to become a living symphony with other people to give birth to a new reality and form the new nation. To give birth to anything of the Father takes harmony between two people at all levels of human experience.

A naïve view of human harmony is that there is never a ruffled feather. Harmonious human relations are always calm and serene. Co-creation is always sublime.

Is that really the way it is? In what world? That’s not my experience of human relationship or community. It may be serene, like ducks gliding across the water. But it takes all the turbulence of paddling web feet for ducks to move to the other side of the pond or for us to create.

The study of harmony is essential for anyone learning musical composition, and many books are written on the subject. Harmony has consonance—a sweet and pleasant resonance we associate with a sense of arrival, resolution, and rest. But harmony also includes dissonance. Dissonant tones create tension and movement. They can express sadness or conflict.

At any given moment, the sound of two or more tones creates harmony. Those tones can resonate within the range of human hearing. Or they could be infrasound—a low-frequency sound that rumbles beyond the range of human hearing. Tones can also be ultrasound—high enough to be above the realm of human hearing.

So it is in the symphony we share. There’s what we are aware of that’s resonating now through the field of consciousness and energy we share. Can you hear it? Then, there are frequencies higher than the immediate range of our perception. And there are lower frequencies that move into the subconscious layers of human experience.

But harmony doesn’t just exist in one moment of time. Harmony unfolds over time in a song, a symphony, or some other musical form. There is a harmonic progression, usually moving from consonance through dissonance and then back to consonance.

In essence, the person performing the song or the symphony is saying, Guess what, folks? We’re going on a journey. And there’s going to be some adventure. In that adventure, there is tension among the notes. There’s an unfoldment of it all, and typically, it comes around to a point of resolution and a final consonance.

And so it is in life. There is the consonance and dissonance of Creation. Did you have any dissonance this week?

The typical response to dissonance is to try to eradicate it—especially when it appears in other people. Where are those who can allow the dissonance to be there and allow it to come around right, to a place of fulfillment that manifests the things of God in the world? That takes being present without being taken off your centering by the dissonance of the world in which you live, whether it’s the immediate dissonance of the people around you or the dissonance of what’s on the evening news.

Where is there someone who’s spiritually centered in the middle of all that and unmoved? So that in the middle of all that is changing and all that is dissonant, there is the consonance present that allows the whole cycle to come around right?

If we are spiritually ambitious, we might sign up for that task. I’ll be the one. I’ll be unmoving. But guess what? It is impossible in human strength. We don’t have that ability. We’re not made to have that ability all by our lonesome. None of us are.

So, if you are failing at that, good on you. You’re right with all the rest of us. Because none of us can do that based just on human strength. We’re not made that way as a human being. But here’s the good news. The one Jesus referred to as his Father does that all the time anyway. And we can be with that reality.

This is what the universe is doing, surrounding all that we as human beings get up to on this planet. Do you think the universe is bothered? Do you think the sun is bothered? It just keeps shining.

The universe is holding all the dissonance on Planet Earth within itself, unchanged by it—all the tyranny, the global warming, all the war, all the destruction of species on the planet. The universe is holding it all, waiting for it all to come around right in its time.

The Father is not bothered. The Father is the ultimate consonance, the ultimate reference point. The way that we manifest a new world on earth is by opening to that reality.

If two of you shall become a living symphony on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my father, which is in heaven.

Our creative manifestation is based on this principle. We have the opportunity to bring what is unchanging in the middle of all that is. As the hymn says, Changeless in heaven over earthly changes.

One of the hardest things to do as a singer is to hold a dissonant note as part of a choir or a singing group. You can be tempted to join the person next to you, who is singing a different note and resolve the dissonance. It takes musical discipline to hold that dissonant note and not resolve it prematurely, knowing there is power at work through the dissonance.

I have led improvisational chant in the Little Chapel at Sunrise Ranch for many years. We have new people joining us all the time, and we don’t give them extensive instruction on how to chant. I simply hold the root tone and let them find a sound to sing and feel its relationship to the root tone. You would be surprised what people sometimes get up to! Whatever it is, I sustain the root tone, and there are others that do, too. Almost always, discordance resolves over time, and a profoundly resonant chord fills the space.

In the best of those experiences, we are aware that there is something beyond us, as human beings, chanting as us. We are not making up those notes! Divine will is working through human will, and divine guidance is at work. We move through dissonance to a majestic resolution. It’s ecstasy.

Any kind of creative manifestation is like that. Any project has to move through dissonance to be completed. To lead a group of people in any way requires symphonious sounding together. This includes specificity in the world of form. But a group of people doesn’t take off until higher ranges of resonance move through the mind, and through the emotional and spiritual layers of human experience. That’s when our creative manifestation becomes fun.

Our harmonious sounding together reanimates our human experience and creates a symphony of holy power that re-creates the world.

If two of you shall become a living symphony on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my father, which is in heaven.

So good to be doing this with you.