greenbelt 10, #gb10
After a blustery and showery day yesterday, Greenbelt is bathed in warm sunlight today and the festival atmosphere is on. I’ve had a busy morning recording for BBC radio 4 and Greenbelt TV. Now hoping to catch one or two people I so far haven’t managed to bump in to.
Greenbelt is always stuffed to the gills with great things to try, see, hear, watch – but one of the best features that you can’t exactly advertise is that if you become a festival regular many hours can be spent simply catching up with other Greenbelters. This is like a once-a-year meet up for old friends, people who come from far and wide. I’ve just had ten minutes each with friends from Glasgow, Nashville, Bristol, Bath and Hampshire all of whom I haven’t seen for 12 months or more. In this respect Greenbelt has become something of a pilgrim site – a place to go to where you aren’t sure quite how, but it will change the spiritual temperature somehow. I’m walking round with a sense of hope in my heart that wasn’t there three days ago.
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author musician theologian
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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