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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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I do wonder what will happen to village/ small town churches that are currently attended almost exclusively by people over the age of 60, and where almost nothing bar Sunday services seems to happen.
I suspect, Tony, that they will either morph into something different, or gradually close down. I think the reduction in number of small ageing communities meeting in large expensive buildings is simply impossible to support. All the same, the feeling of passion for the local parish church is sometimes underestimated. A small and poorly attended village Church I worked in near here was threatened with closure only a few years ago. Those who attended leafleted the village explaining the situation; the entire village got involved in fundraising to save their church, and through that project the attendance at Church, baptisms etc., rose over several years to see a thriving multi-generational community inside the Church as well as a repaired building with a sense of ownership by the entire village. So you never know…
Food for thought. It seems a strange situation at the moment – the Rector is still very much at the centre of village life and involved in things that go on, but most of the things that go on are not really connected to the Church, and the Church is only attended by a small fraction of villagers. I think an awful lot of people have got “the wrong idea” about the Church – just like I had until recently.
Hi Maggie – before I push back a little on part of what I sense you saying, let me say my own experience strongly connects with this proposition:
how the concerns of Emerging are, in fact, emerging in different settings all over the place – messily, imperfectly and inunexpected places – which, in fact, is more faithful to the concept of emergence
For people outside the em church or church bubble, emergence refers to the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. These are messy, random, indigenous – even counter-intuitive.
Now, my push back. I do not consider myself radical in any way (hell, I drive a mini-van), but I have lived my 44 years in a time when Church as we knew it has been in many cases decaying or dying. By Church, I do not mean local ‘ekklesia’ or “gathering” or the global organism to which Paul calls it in 1 Corinthians 12 “the body of Christ”. I mean much of the scaffolding and institutions that arise & fall around these bodies.
And by dying, I do not mean the scientific construct of the end of the life of a biological organism. Instead, I sense hope in the new life emerging, in the rising again, as from decay or disuse. Certainly some of what has always been part of Jesus followers’ story is renewal, to restore or replenish. But I do know from my own studies and (more powerfully) the web of experiences I move in, that revival — revīvere to live again –, the messy transformative power that walks thru Via Dolores, sits in a tomb and surprises those walking on a road – well revival is a cornerstone of the story we re-member.
As a person whose very DNA swims in currents of the liturgical seaons, my sense is that the Church (or the church) finds itself in some manifestations at a Holy Saturday moment, what the Dutch move thru as Silent Saturday. Those of us (like me) invested in the legacy momentum yearn to fast-forward the tape to Easter morn. There is no fast forward – our Liberating King has been executed. We know that, as y Welsh poet Dylan Thomas wrote, death has no dominion.
The body of Christ is dying, dead & reviving – that is just the nature of that body.
Hi Maggi Dawn,
Great stuff here and in the most recent two posts. Thanks again for the link.
I talked to Dave last night, and I’ll look forward to getting together over the summer when you’re here in the Seattle area.
Tim