Pontifexers .....pontifex, ( Latin: “bridge builder”: )

“Men build too many walls and not enough bridges.”
― Isaac Newton


THe Roman's worshiped bridges and they were great bridge builders too; ( getting create and stitching to gather various ideas ) anyways, consider all the symbology of bridges and bridge building.

. What a great metaphor for life, something that crosses the river and or void; reflecting further, people had to build these things, physically get out in that stream with boulders and start placing them as the end process of so much planing and engineering.

IF you have ever had to work with rocks and bricks for long, it conjures up the story of Sisyphus real fast. Or perhaps, Atlas, one piece of Earth at a time. Funny about stone and mountains, they are so certain, the only thing that never seem to change and so poetically contrast your staring heart and body.

In modern times, who might have been these Bridge builders?

I know one.

“But today our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change. The large house in which we live demands that we transform this world-wide neighborhood into a world – wide brotherhood. Together we must learn to live as brothers or together we will be forced to perish as fools.

We must work passionately and indefatigably to bridge the gulf between our scientific progress and our moral progress. One of the great problems of mankind is that we suffer from a poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“One of the grat tragedies of life is that men seldom bridge the gulf between practice and profession, between doing and saying. A persistent schizophrenia leaves so many of us tragically divided against ourselves. On the one hand, we proudly profess certain sublime and noble principles, but on the other hand, we sadly practise the very antithesis of these principles. How often are our lives characterised by a high blood pressure of creeds and an anaemia of deeds! We talk eloquently about our commitment to the principles of Christianity, and yet our lives are saturated with the practices of paganism. We proclaim our devotion to democracy, but we sadly practise the very opposite of the democratic creed. We talk passionately about peace, and at the same time we assiduously prepare for war. We make our fervent pleas for the high road of justice, and then we tread unflinchingly the low road of injustice. This strange dichotomy, this agonising gulf between the ought and the is, represents the tragic theme of man's earthly pilgrimage.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love

What comes to mind are two things....first for bridges to be built, doors must open in those walls. The second is that bridges can keep us high and dry out of the stream of life....sometimes it is better to plunge in than remain above.