Mark 13:1-8

Pentecost +25 - Year B

Mark 13:1-8

I've been off lection task for a week plus. I come back to find the stones of scripture and tradition seeming larger than before my break. How can they be addressed with such small resources as reason and experience? Where is an entry spot into some larger meaning they represent and cover at the same time?

There is comfort in hearing that they are not so huge. My fears make them larger than life but the reality is that not one word of scripture or stone of tradition will remain to block what is aborning. Both the scripture and the tradition record where we have been in our search for meaning. They report a portion of our journey, but are not predictive of what's next. Moving into and through a next good dark night will mean raging against residual luminescence. As the poet says:
          Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
          And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
          Do not go gentle into that good night.

Beware. Many will claim to be a voice of tomorrow while consolidating today under their control. Many will discount new birth out of fear of the discontinuity it brings in its wake. But the end of yesterday is but the beginning of the birthpangs of tomorrow. There is no easier way through.

What a welcome back - large stones that aren't. How disorienting; how hopeful.