brian shivers

in loss and grief a moment arrives when all goes quiet. the beloved no longer present the soul knows not what to do where to go who to be. all that remains is void. -bshivers

Psalms* spilled from the lips of a dying man as he hung displayed in the midday sun yet another casualty of empire’s paranoia. The truth of the words from the pens of the ancient poets became a flame hidden in his heart that no earthly kingdom could ever extinguish. For authority belongs only to God, the one who rules over nations, a rock of strength, a stronghold to save. -bshivers *reference Psalm 22 and Psalm 31

On the Monday of the week we call Holy in the Christian tradition - holy in a way that somehow is different than the holiness of every other week -  we find a small  vignette tucked into the narrative story of the final week of the life of Jesus. After coming to the city of Jerusalem, Jesus enters the temple and finds that the most sacred of spaces had been converted from a house of prayer into a marketplace where goods were bought and sold at the highest prices. A place that was to be a place of prayer and connection with the divine for all nations had become a noisy shopping mall. The authors tell us that Jesus cleansed the temple of all that clutter, clamor, and clatter. Jesus then called the people back to that for which this space was originally set apart.  We, too, have a habit of taking that which is supposed to be a place of prayer and connection with the divine and turning it into a distracting marketplace. Those spaces may be physical places or may be internal....