Monthly Archives: July 2007

Hamo’s Random Coffee Commentary I

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Ok,in the last 6 months I have gone from being an appreciator of good coffee, (while still being a regular instant drinker) to now being somewhat obsessive about the stuff.

I owe that largely to my caffeine freak friend Grendel who has ‘converted’ me to a life of ‘only the best’.

I have entered the ranks of those who reject instant coffee in favour of water or tea. I can even pick the difference between good and very good these days and sadly most days I would rather drink at home than risk someone else’s brew.

Anyway here’s a quick run-down of some places I’ve visited lately and the quality of their coffee… (in my humble opinion…) I tried some of these places because following our tour of the 5 Senses ‘lab’ we were given a bunch of vouchers to use.

Velvet Espresso – King Steet in the city – Hmmm…. bloody good coffee! (5 Senses) I had some muesli and fruit as well as two flat whites and they were brilliant. The place was humming and the staff seemed to know what they were doing, which is probably why they have such a good rep around the place. A real winner! 9/10

Stimulatte – in Hay St Subiaco, just near Nandos. We stopped in here to get a coffee on the way down south, so it was always going to be take away. I don’t like paper cups, but you gotta do what you gotta do… Its a small cafe, but was busy enough when we were there. I could tell the barista was going to stuff my order up because he was engrossed in conversation with a mate, so the request for 1 sugar in my flat white was forgotten in the hubbub. We only discovered the absence of sugar after we had started driving… But in my mind its a measure of good coffee if you can drink it without sugar. These guys are right up there for quality coffee (5 Senses) because it was still very very good. A little attention to customer needs and they’d be a real winner. 8.5/10

Prevelly Cafe – Margaret River – The views from this cafe mean you could drink cat wee and not complain! With a large swell running out at the bombie and a beautiful sunny winter’s day I was in heaven. The coffee was average and the staff were ok. 6/10 for the coffee experience 11/10 for the location

The Urban Bean – ok you have you go to Margaret River to get this stuff, but these guys do a great brew! Its at the top of the street (south end) and well worth the effort. The food is the organic salad kind of stuff and it has that ‘we grew it ourselves’ type of feel. Personally I like a bit more meat… but the staff are good, the vibe is nice and the coffee is sensational. 9.5/10

MacDonalds Busselton – come on… laugh with me! Actually it was better than I expected but still not something you’d go back for! The kids loved it and Danelle enjoyed the sleep in. 5/10

Yallingup Coffee – Dunsborough – These guys do their own brew and are getting fairly well known. I have been there twice now and had a large flat white both times. I’d have to say it was ok but tasted a bit harsh and wasn’t up there with some of the better stuff I have come across. The place was busy and quite impersonal. Not a cafe I’d hang out to get back to. 710

Bridgetown Pottery & Tea Rooms – Bridgetown – This place has become a regular stop off on my south west travels! The coffee is ok – pretty average really – but the scones, homemade jam and double cream are just sensational!!! The vibe is much like a lounge room and the owner is friendly. If you’re in the vicinity then stop in and have some scones… you won’t remember the coffee once you sink your teeth into them. 10/10 for scones, jam and cream 5/10 for coffee.

The Merchant – Mandurah – these guys have a very good reputation for good coffee and being right on the shore of the estuary it was a nice place to spend a Sunday morning. Unfortunately this is where I am reminded that factors other than coffee come into play when it comes to assessing a cafe. The manageress (I assume this was who it was) was one of those obnoxious, belligerent people who abused her staff any time they did anything wrong. As we sat right next to the till we heard everything! The coffee was good but the way she treated her staff made me want to walk out. 6/10

Long Mach – South Terrace Fremantle – another example of people who know what they are doing with coffee. My Five Senses voucher got me another freebie for Danelle and I as we came home from holidays and it was verrry nice. Good vibe, nice people and an interesting food menu. Would have liked to stay and eat… 9/10

The coffee at Long Mach was a great way to end the holiday…

More random coffee commentary to come…

Weekend in Meeka

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I got a phone call yesterday from a friend who is on our weekly prayer list asking if I’d consider a slightly odd request. I laughed.

“Of course!” (I’m always up for an adventure)

“Do you know where Meekatharra is?” he asked.

“Yep”

“8 hours north east from Perth in the absolute middle of nowhere?” (Obviously not convinced that I did!)

“Yep”

“Well… I got a call yesterday from some Vietnam Vets who do an annual remembrance service for the battle at Long Tan. They were asking if I could go up and do the dawn service on the Saturday morning for them, but I can’t do it. They asked if I knew anyone who was spiritual, but not too religious who could come and take the service. I thought of you. They’d fly you up and back and put you up at a motel. There’s no money in it, and you’d have to fly in Friday and couldn’t go home until Monday because there are no flights out… What do you think?”

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“Long who? I’m afraid my knowledge of the whole Vietnam deal is rather dodgy.” It wasn’t the world’s most attractive offer and my diary already showed a weekend commitment, so I wasn’t feeling overly inspired.

I told him I’d think it over and then googled Long Tan… but was not much wiser. I also contemplated the whole war issue and then filed it in the too hard basket.

However I woke up this morning feeling I should do it – that if nothing else it’d be a wild adventure to go to an outback town and spend the whole weekend with some Vietnam Vets, listen to some of their stories, see a very different side of life and maybe even do some good and bring some hope to the blokes.

So I rang and said ‘yes’.

I have no idea exactly what I’ve got myself into… but isn’t that half the fun sometimes! I think my mate knew I am a sucker for a blokey kind of adventure…

God Hates Visionary Dreaming… (Bonhoeffer)

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Do you reckon he could be onto something?!

“God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.” (Life Together)

(from here)

I don’t question that God actually does give people visions & dreams. I wonder if Bonhoeffer is referring more to that kind of visionary dreaming where we conjure up an idea to justify our existence.

I remember as a pastor having to come up with a vision for the year when occasionally there was no ‘vision’ beyond keeping going on the same track. I do think some of what masquerades as visionary dreaming is the stuff Bonhoeffer writes about – our own ego needs being expressed in the form of a corporate vision. And when we don’t achieve the vision we do so easily blame the community, God or ourselves.

How do you know if your vision is from God or is just something that you would like to achieve – especially when there is an element of pressure to keep on coming up with ‘vision’?

Are Churches really just Religious Football Clubs?

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Its a bit of a sad day for Docker fans because Chris Connolly, coach of the Freo club has pulled the pin. After a pretty disastrous season he has fallen on his sword and accepted personal responsibility for the state the club is in. He will move on and Freo will try and find another Messiah to lead them to the promised land (just to mix metaphors a little)

Connolly couldn’t ‘deliver’ on the goods over the time he was at Fremantle and after much speculation he has stepped down. The underlying belief here is ‘if we get the right coach then he will enable us to win more games and ultimately we will be a premiership side‘.

It is some of the thinking that is being applied in Oz evangelical churches at the moment where if the senior pastor can’t deliver on the KPI’s of the church – which usually includes an appropriate number of conversions – then he is held responsible and asked to resign. (This is the theory, but I am yet to see any church implement it, nor any pastor resign due to his inability to deliver.) The phrase ‘back the jockey – not the horse’ is one I have heard often, used to imply that the key element in seeing churches deliver on conversion growth is the right senior pastor. I hear the rhetoric, but is any pastor really going to fall on his sword and call himself ‘incompetent’, or is any board really going to sack a faithful diligent worker because he can’t deliver conversions?

While I applaud missionary endeavour and the call to better efforts I can’t help think its a little more complex than both of these situations seem to suggest.

What we can learn about friendship from our dogs

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As Brighton has developed as a suburb people have become noticeably less willing to say ‘g’day’ in the street. It seems to go with the territory of being a more established community. So now its not unusual to go down to the park and to not speak with people or to watch the kids play alongside other parents without acknowledging one another’s presence. Its sometimes as if we live in a bubble and only interact when we have to.

I have to remind myself that it doesn’t have to be this way because these are familiar patterns and all too easy to slip into.

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If only we were a little more like our dogs…

I took Winston for a walk yesterday and every time he saw another dog we stopped while they sniffed each other and acknowledged that they existed. At the beach he was only too happy to play ball with the other dogs and then happily trot on. There is much we can learn from mere dogs…

Questions of Truth and Condescending Crap

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I have heard some condescending crap in my time, and this is right up there with the best with of it.

I don’t often bother with these kinds of shows, but I had some time today, so thought I’d listen in.

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I feel for Tony Jones, who got to express some of his views, but was belittled and mocked by Russell Moore, all in the name of ‘TRUTH’. (Is it just me or is there something very ironic there?…)

This was not a genuine debate/discussion but rather an orchestrated stoush, where the views of the host (Moore) were clearly ‘correct’ and where Jones and those like him were clearly defined as heretics. If only life were so simple…

Moore used the title of an old Campolo book to describe how he saw the landscape ‘we have met the enemy and they are partly right’. When did other Christians ever become the enemy?!

I actually think Campolo would retitle that book if he had the chance because it was about how we engage with other religions – also not the enemy.

I haven’t read all of what Jones thinks on issues, but whether he’s right or wrong he certainly sounded like the better man on the day.

What the F- – – – – – – K!

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One day I woke up and had all these emails asking me to be a ‘friend’ on facebook…

As is my gentle nature, I was too polite to refuse… wouldn’t want to hurt any feelings out there… Now I have all these ‘friends’ and a facebook profile but I’m still figuring out the point of the whole thing.

I haven’t got a ‘myspace’ account, but it seems that I have almost been defaulted into facebook because some people have emailed me and signed me up.

Its an interesting phenomenon and one I think will grow and grow because even the ‘disinterested’ like me almost get no choice in the matter, but have to sign up. (I don’t mind really – all you people who are feeling annoyed at me!)

However if you are like me who wonder what the hell its all about this little vid here helped. From thunk speed movie download

So you can call me your friend on facebook if you like.. or not…

Can You Be Too Incarnational

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Matt Stone asks some excellent questions on his blog Journeys in Between. Here he poses the one that gets asked of many missionaries…

Can you be too incarnational? – I understand this to mean ‘can you be so immersed in the world that you lose any value as a salt/light influence’?

Matt begins:

“Since Alan Hirsch has goaded me into this discussion I thought I would publish a diagram I have been working on in an effort to try and articulate my own position. In essence my answer is no, you can never be too incarnational, for properly understood that’s akin to asking whether you can be too Christlike.”

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fiddler on the roof divx download

Read more here

As one who grew up in the ‘come apart and be separate’ world it has been a fun journey the last 7 or 8 years discovering that people ‘out there’ are not as they had been described and I have not been infected with ‘non-Christianitis’ as we once worried!

Perhaps a similar question is ‘how far is too far?’ when it comes to contextualisation. When do we actually compromise the gospel and begin leading people astray?

I guess that depends largely on how you define sin doesn’t it… and to what degree ‘sin’ is culturally determined?…

Just some light thoughts on a cool Monday morning here in Perth.