Seeking Understanding

All week I have been sitting with the theme from last Sunday's gospel that the power is in our powerlessness.  I took that further or renamed it to say that our power is in our vulnerability.  Just what does that mean?  Is that to simply wallow in or celebrate our weakness?  I never thought that. 

I did think that a key to my pursuit for understanding would be in this Sunday's gospel which continues on with Mark's gospel, and there is!  The key is in once again in taking the gospel as a community based document that it is written from a community for the community.

It is not that I alone am vulnerable but that we are all vulnerable, that we naturally share in human vulnerability.  There is solidarity in this shared human vulnerability.  This tells me that together we are vulnerable and in solidarity we find the way forward to work for justice and build a better world.

When we just focus on how strong we are and how we have everything or can get everything ourselves, we become isolated individuals acting for ourselves and in competition against everyone else.  With this mindset, when we don't succeed, we then tend to blame ourselves and become victims; and when we see others not succeeding, we just blame them and they become victims. 

Awareness of our shared vulnerability acts to help us build up our connectedness with others.  It is then that we can act together and together we can make our life better.  With this mindset, compassion is for the strong and not for the weak and we are called out of ourselves to act for the other and not be self-absorbed.  So we don't throw the unwanted to the side; we don't put the weak down; we don't blame the victim.  True, the world is not just, as I am so often told!  However, the other side then is that together in our shared vulnerability, we can work to make the world a just place.  Here is our true strength - solidarity in our vulnerability. Yes, this is mind-blowing. No wonder last Sunday's gospel reading held a "WOW" statement for me.  Now this week's gospel reading gives me a key to understanding it and living it.