Look up!
When I first came to live in Cambridge, someone said to me that it was important in this city to remember to look up! Quite a lot of Cambridge’s streets are built up high, and an amazing array of architecture can be seen – plenty of medieval, Tudor and Elizabethan, along with some striking examples of more recent styles. But at ground level, dashing from lecture theatre to supervision room, or on a lunchtime trip to the bank, much of what you see is the same-old 1990’s/2000’s shop fronts. To see the view, you have to raise your eyes above Top Shop and Marks and Spencer. You have to look up. Similarly, even inside architectural gems like King’s College Chapel, which dates almost entirely from the mid 15th-mid16th century, there is so much to see that you could forget to take note of the most stunning feature of all – the longest fan-vaulted ceiling in Europe. To see the best bit, you have to look up.
Kathryn (over at GoodInParts) is blogging her way through Advent by making an effort to look beyond everyday chaos and notice the signs of the Kingdom. She was inspired by the gospel reading for Advent Sunday, which
“…reminded us that when all sorts of wild and terrifying things are going on in the world, we are to look up because the Kingdom begins here.”
I’m thinking this would be a good spiritual exercise for Advent. For encouragement, you can follow Kathryn here.
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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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