The IDEAS of March
Last week I posted about a local cultural event which will take place in Cambridge on 15th march – the date known as the Ides of March. There was a soothsayer in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar who went about intoning "Beware the Ides of March", and it came to pass that it was on the Ides that Brutus did the dastardly deed… The Ides and St Patrick’s Day have always been easy dates for me to remember because they are either side of my birthday.
Now I see that David amusingly misread the Ides of March into the Ideas of March…
If you live in the east of England you’ll be needing some good ideas for keeping warm at the moment. The temperature dropped below freezing again last night, requiring an extra layer of bedding and clothes, and anxious bubble-wrapping of the spring flowers that have already courageously bloomed, only to have their lovely petals frozen off. A few years back we had a good idea for the 16th March – instituting St Megingaud as a Robinson Chapel feast day (purely in order that we could go out for a mid-Lent birthday chocolate party, I admit) – that was an idea that has lasted a full 4 years now. This year St Megingaud coincides with Palm Sunday, when my Choir and I will be visiting All Saints Stamford to sing Evensong, with yours truly preaching. And chocolate – dairy free – will doubtless feature at some point in the day too.
Tell me your ideas for March, blog readers.
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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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The exiled Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh has some interesting thoughts on the Kingdom of God in his book ‘Living Buddha, Living Christ’.
sounds interesting, Karin – can you give us a taster of the ideas he puts forward?
Sorry I wasn’t able to come back to this last week, Maggi, but here is one or two examples.
Commenting on Jesus saying ‘Blessed are the Peacemakers’Thich Nhat Hanh says,
“To work for peace, you must have a peaceful heart. When you do, you are the child of God. But many who work for peace are not at peace. They still have anger and frustration, and their work is not really peaceful. We cannot say that they are touching the Kingdom of God.”
He sees the Kingdom of God as very much about the present, the here and now, and something we should be cultivating in our lives and in the world around us.
He sees the Holy Spirit as very much like the Buddhist idea of mindfulness and says that the energy of the Holy Spirit needs to be brought into a church for that community to be authentic, cultivating, mindfulness, understanding and love.
He has written a whole book on the similarities between his idea of Buddhism and his idea of Christianity, and scores of books developing his various themes, but hopefully that gives you some idea.