Coffee and Freedom

Final Step Cafe, Melbourne. Murphy Street, Toorak. Double Ristretto. I only risk the double rist when great rewards are offered. Probably the best I’ve ever had – the real deal. It refused to be relegated to the background, to quietly shuffle to the corner of my consciousness behind the smells,…

The Bells

We used to live in a little cubical building, nave’s length from a bell tower. An aisle’s length, not quite, but every friday night it was a measured space, although not by paces; in concussions. From 6pm to 8pm the Ringers would gather – I imagine from curious little…

All who have departed —William Saumarez Smith

THE PREACHER’S PRAYER LORD, when my heart is slow to feel, And when my lips are slow to speak, And yet my heart still Thee doth seek, And yet my lips would Thee reveal; Then send Thy gracious Spirit, Lord, That He may my dull heart inspire, And touch…

What it means to preach.

I walked around in a daze yesterday. Felt like I’d spent the night going rounds in an underground Fight Club. My tender bits ached. There was this sort of slosh of spent adrenaline, an acid bath, chewing on the strings of my muscles. I couldn’t write words, I…

Grief, Expectation, Comfort

The God of Israel and the God of Jesus Christ invites expectation. Precisely because he has chosen (freely) to be a promising God and therefore an ‘expectable’ God; and precisely because (freely) he fulfils his promises through his sovereign patience and indefatigable persuasiveness (meaning that God is not at the…

Grieving the Future

Sometimes, barrelling along the highway between here and there, I get caught up in the sense of history flowing. Our little jelly-bean bubble of conversation is a trapped pocket of air in the stream of time. The fixed point in a river rushing, the wheels of our vehicle madly spinning…

Love in Inconstant Times

Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering…

The Ariadne of Darlington

For Emma, on her Birthday. Much attention has been given, in this fortieth anniversary of the Lunar landing, to the causes which propelled Man to the Moon. According to Wikipedia there were three essential elements: Science, Technology, and Imagination. Of course, sometimes the somethings that Wikipedia does not say speak…