What's in the Ark?

I got at an email one time asking me what was in the Ark of the Covenant.  The thing that the Israelites carried around with them.  That was the presence of God.  I knew from Indiana Jones that there was dust in there.  Of the Ten Commandment Tablets.  And that you shouldn't mess with it.   Unless you wanted to get your face melted off.  But according to this email, there was something else in there.  The budded staff of Aaron.  You got me.  

According to Rabbi Harold Kushner in his book, Overcoming Life's Disappointments, there is, or was, something else in there: the remains of the first set of tablets.  The ones that God alone wrote.  The ones that slipped through Moses' hands upon his coming down from the mountain and finding the people of God worshipping the golden calf.  The ones that were replaced with tablets of a joint human-divine effort.  What?  Why would that be (I don't think there is scriptural basis for such nonsense).  We want to make sure no one knows of our broken dreams and ideas about what God wants, right?

Why in the world would we carry them around with us?  According to Rabbi Kushner, it's to remind us that it's OK to set high standards for our theology, for our idea of "good enough", and right thinking, but that we must be prepared to fall short of these high standards that we were quite sure were from God.

According to Estelle Frankel, a therapist who combines Jewish mystic wisdom with modern therapy:

" The first tablets, like the initial visions we have for our lives, frequently shatter, especially when they are based on naively idealistic assumptions..."

How in the world do we carry around with us the great celebration of God's commands and our failed understanding of it?

Probably best with one another and the failed ideals we share.  In the same vessel with our greatest accomplishments.  Maybe they both represent what we understand as God's presence?