Happy Birthday, Cambridge
Saturday night was the first saturday of Term in the 800th anniversary year of the University of Cambridge. There was a special peal of bells composed and rung for the event, a light show projected onto Senate House, and the crowd spontaneously sang "Happy Birthday" to Cambridge.
Streetlights all over Cambridge have been decorated with banners celebrating the 800 years, and one banner has a list of dates on it, each one a significant publication. There's a quiz to see if you can identify the significance of the dates. Hmm. 1381 was the Peasant's Revolt, and John Ball's sermon, and 1584 was the foundation of Emmanuel College to train protestant preachers, but I don't know what publications came out those years. 1687 is bound to be Newton. 1859 must be there for Darwin's Origin of Species. And I'll hazard a guess that 1988 was Hawking's Brief history of Time – though I may be out on that one. Anyone else like to take a stab?
Cambridge is a settlement that goes way back beyond Roman times, and also sees, this year, the 900th Anniversary of the Diocese of Ely, which will be launched this Saturday. Back in the day, Ely was a more significant city than Cambridge; the history of the two cities has been dramatically affected by that seemingly small decision by the rebels from Oxford to stop in Cambridge.
Meantime, celebrations have just concluded for Anglia Ruskin University's 150th birthday. It's my son's birthday next week, and a couple of months after that I have a Significant Birthday of my own. (No, I'm not 800 years old, although I feel about 124 at the moment.)
All these birthdays. When do we get cake, then?
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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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