Advent: too busy to stop?
Advent (which begins next Sunday) is the time of year when clergy get ready for a non-stop steamroller to Christmas. There is everything, but everything to get done – the carol concerts, the visits, the looking after people who will be alone for Christmas, prep for all the Christmas services, say nothing of your own prep for family celebrations when the madness dies down.Yeah, I know it’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year and all that, but I’ve noticed recently that the eyes of one or two clergy friends have glazed over at the mention of Advent.
Dave’s District Blog takes a different approach. Advent, he says, is not gearing up to go faster and faster until you get to Christmas and collapse in a heap. It’s a time to STOP. Wait a while. Take a close look at the tracks ahead before you proceed any further.
Quite how you do that with Carol concerts and the like to organise I’m not sure. But I like the sound of it.
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Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
In an increasingly secularised society few people have a good working knowledge of the Bible. Yet a great deal of our culture is built on stories or ideas that come from the Bible. Literature, art, music, language and even the fabric of our society - such as our justice system - are built on Christian concepts and biblical references. The Writing on the Wall provides a fascinating introduction to the Bible's best-known, and most influential, stories. Each chapter gives some background to the text of the Bible, and shows how the stories have become enmeshed in Western culture. Adam and Eve, the ten plagues of Egypt, The Prodigal Son and Mary Magdalene all feature - along with how the Bible has influenced everyone from Shakespeare to Monty Python, and Caravaggio to Banksy. 
Giving It Up explores the Lenten idea of 'giving up', taking it beyond the traditional idea of simply abstaining from something, and suggesting instead that what we need to give up is our existing ideas about God. With a daily readings for each day of Lent, from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, it follows the heroes of the Bible who had to give up their own too-small ideas about God.
This is Maggi’s bestselling book of daily readings for each day of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. Advent is the beginning of the Church year, and marks the anticipation of the coming Messiah. These readings explore how beginnings and endings in our own lives are illuminated by the different Gospel narratives of Christ's coming.
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