When we consider what is offered through the submissions that come through at the end of each session we find that they are truly something that comes from outside ourselves, like the animals coming into Noah’s Ark. In this sense, the group is like the ark, a structure into which we bring what our work with the Text reveals. It reveals the clean and the unclean. This work requires us to be in touch with both. As witnesses to each other, it is up to each of us to ensure that whatever people bring to the group is protected from being infested from the lower level proprial stuff that floods out from the hells. In this role as witness to another’s experience of the Word working in their life, as you read or listen to what others have to offer, try to be in what’s higher to maintain an awareness of the quality of your responses, always looking to protect the sanctity of the gift of life being offered.

As an ark, we should be aware of making the group space different from the ordinary spaces we inhabit; we should expect to make a level of effort not necessarily required outside such a setting. We have a responsibility toward the gift others in the group have brought. We can remind ourselves that in this work what is offered through people’s submissions is their experience of the Lord as the Word, what the Lord has provided for our lives as individuals and for the life of the group as a whole. Our responsibility extends to the attitudes we bring to reading submissions online and hearing them shared in Face to Face and Online Life Groups. Speaking, reading, and listening, with attention takes a special kind of effort. When the right effort is applied then these activities become spiritual tasks that lift the quality of our contact with each other. When you read or listen to other people’s submissions remember to lift your level of attention, then you will better appreciate the suffering, the difficulties, and struggle people have to pass through to bring you the gift of the Lord as the Word working in their life.

The group can be an ark only insofar as we are willing to hold it as a sacred space into which we come and are obliged to act from our understanding of spiritual principles. Acting from these principles forms the basis for connecting with each other from the Lord as the Word.