{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Maggi Dawn: Beginnings and Endings & Giving It Up","description":" The Forum with Maggi Dawn Grace Cathedral, San Francisco\u202f    Author, professor, and priest Maggi Dawn has written two guides to the church year: Beginnings and Endings (and what happens in between): Daily Bible readings from Advent to Epiphany and Giving It Up: Daily Bible Readings from Ash Wednesday to Easter Day.     Our everyday lives are full of small-scale beginnings and endings \u2013 births, deaths, marriages, careers, house moves and so on. How do the grand-scale beginnings and endings of Advent help to guide us as we seek to follow Jesus in the 21st century?     The idea of 'giving something up for Lent' is widely known, but how many know that the ancient discipline of the Lenten fast had several purposes? \u2013 a reminder of our daily dependence on God for all our needs, to draw us closer to God in prayer, to reconnect with the idea of community, and to help us follow Christ's journey through the wilderness and on to Jerusalem.     Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Dawn about how Lent can be a time for exploring a different kind of 'giving up' \u2013 one that can transform our lives \u2013 and how ancient wisdom informs the human experience that happens inbetween beginnings and endings, grand and small scale.  \u202f  Recorded at Grace Cathedral on February 8, 2026.    Give to Grace\u202f  You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org\/give  \u202f\u202f  Become a GraceArts Member  Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join at gracecathedral.org\/join.    About the Guest  The Rev. Dr. Maggi Dawn is an author, songwriter, professor, and priest in the Episcopal Church, currently serving as Diocesan Theologian in the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island. Maggi travels widely throughout the USA, leading clergy and parish retreats, and giving sermons and lectures. After a first career as a writer and performer in the music business, Maggi studied theology at the University of Cambridge (UK), and since then has taught and researched at the Universities of Cambridge and Durham in the UK, and at Yale University, where she was Associate Dean and Professor at the Divinity School.     About the Moderator  The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young\u202fis the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of\u202fThe Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau\u202fand\u202fThe Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner. \u202f\u202f  \u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f   About\u202fThe\u202fForum  The Forum\u202fis a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum\u2019s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of\u202fThe Forum\u202fis singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world.\u202f\u202fLearn more about The Forum here:\u202f\u202f\u202f  gracecathedral.org\/the-forum  ","author_name":"The Forum at Grace Cathedral","author_url":"http:\/\/www.gracecathedral.org\/","html":"