The next decade
There are reports all over the papers, the radio, the TV, the blogosphere, about the decade that has just ended. The best of this, and the worst of that. I can’t seem to get into that this year. I’m outstandingly busy on a project and some future plans as well as the basic job-and-home stuff, so maybe I don’t have time to look back. But I’m also just feeling more inspired to look forward. I’ve been touched by the untimely deaths of two friends in the last couple of months, both of whom seem to have left behind them the message that life is not a rehearsal. Don’t look back.
This morning I was writing about one of the legacies of Christian culture being the forward movement of time, rather than time as an ever-repeating cycle. One of my favourite blogs, instead of having wise words about the decade gone, is talking about what the next decade will be like. And one of my favourite books of 2009 was Eat Pray Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert, which is an account of her resolution of a lot of “stuff”, but is forward-looking with a hopeful view of the present and the future that is just inspirational.
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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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