Sunday, Fourth Week of Lent, Mark 8:11-21, Trust
The schedule of readings I use proposes Mark for the Sundays of Lent. I like John more and more, his poetic, enigmatic sentences and his mystical images, thus it cost me to change Gospels today, but the passage I’ve read today is beautifully written (Mark 8:11-21). See here:
“Is your heart still hardened? Having eyes, don’t you see? Having ears, don’t you hear? Don’t you remember? When I broke the five loaves among the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” Jesus is firing all these questions to the worrysome disciples, who had forgotten to take bread with them going out in a boat. But Jesus had just fed a multitude with only five loafs of bread, so they should not have worried at all. Jesus said: "Don't you understand, yet?”
I must say, I do sympathize with the disciples. Why should it happen again, this miracle with the loafes of bread? Why trust a miracle? Is not it hard enough to have trust in normal things?
I wondered, what makes that I can have trust (what are the conditions... )? This is my question to the tarot today, a broad question. A second interesting question would be: what blocks my trust?
I have pulled Ten of Swords from the Fantastic Menagerie Tarot made by the baba_studio.
The Ten of Swords announces the end of a cycle, and a new cycle will begin after that. Here the worst thing has happened already. The little mouse on the card is dead, or almost dead and it cannot get worse. This means to me that for me to be able to trust is knowing that the situation cannot but become better; when I can see hope dawning.
Ohh… to be honest, it is even worse than this. The fear for the gnawing teeth of the crocodile blocks my trust. I am a worrisome person. I do not have to draw a second card for what is blocking my trust. It is right here on this card. Always expecting the worst and not even believing that situations and issues can resolve and become better, really better.
Schedule of readings from: Dienstboek, Zoetermeer, 1998.