millions
About a year ago the parents of one of my favourite graduating students sent me a present for my son. It was this lovely book, Millions. It's a story about two boys and their father who move house after their mum dies. They start a new school, deal with bereavement, and inadvertently get involved in a crime story. The youngest boy is trying to make sense of heaven, and where his mother is, and his "meeting" with a series of saints is touching and hilarious by turns.
Since then we have also acquired the movie of the book, produced by Danny Boyle and starring James Nesbitt. It's well filmed, and puts across beautifully the book's delicate balance of bereavement, humour, thrills and childhood ideas about spirituality. With "barbecue summer" turning out a bit hit and miss, a little row of good DVD's and a freezer full of pizzas seems essential summer holiday kit this year. Millions is one of my top recommendations.
-
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.
-
Search
-
-
