In reading about the role of plot in a Gospel of Mark, I felt my hackles rise when I read about the use of conflict to identify the energy of the story: “The driving goal in Mark’s narrative is for God to establish rulership over the world.”
I applaud the attempt to move away from “kingdom” language but the emphasis on dominion or rule leaves us in the same divided and dissected condition as brought us to each state-of-affairs that follows its predecessor.
Clothes were a first limit past which we were not able to return but only start a new line of fate. We are now expecting and put up with cycle-after-cycle of busted-born-busted~again. Somehow we can’t bridge the gap symbolized by unnecessary covering and return to some original partnership. Once an arbitrary test-line has been crossed, no amount of forgiveness or mercy seems to avail to re-establish a primary relationship. G*D goes back to being chief of the gods and humans return to creaturehood. Both have lost their ability to impact the other, to be partners.
A goal of returning to the impetus to relationship beyond the aloneness of ruling over all one can see and, through colonial surrogates, even that under another sun—seems much too small a goal.
The conflicts in Mark are not so much for overcoming as for resolving.
Here is another try that takes the open-ended conclusion of Mark into better account—the potential renewed relationships in the midst of ordinary life back home in Galilee. “The driving goal in Mark’s narrative is for human, non-humans, and meta-humans to re-establish a working relationship in the context of the whole of creation and any larger context it may have.”
The suzerainty of G*D is a very scratched lens through which to find the music of the spheres as expressed through “Coir an oir an oir an eer o” (https://youtu.be/0BOEE7-UhQM).
How does the world go on again, if not rolling toward morning? Try this song:
https://youtu.be/T0kmGoFH-X8.