Fish and chips is usually good, but tonight we had fish and chips that was utterly spectacular. We are on our way north for a week with the family and we stopped at Durham for the evening before driving to our motel in nearby South Shields.
We walked the city centre streets of Durham, visited Palace Green and the Cathedral, and had a look at the Lindisfarne Gospels exhibit (it's oustanding, by the way).
Then we stopped at Bells Restaurant for fish and chips. They were the best ever! Really delicious, beautifully cooked, nicely presented on fish-shaped plates, with friendly service thrown in for good measure. I thought I should share the photo.
This cup of coffee is partly shaded, like a half moon. When a moon or planet is more than half illuminated it is said to be gibbous, hence a cup of gibbous coffee.
Coffee half shaded
Gibbous is astronomical jargon, a useful term with a precise meaning.
The coffee was part of our breakfast this morning at 'The Ambiance Cafe' in the Riverside Park in St Neots.
It's a popular place for people wanting a snack, a drink, an ice cream, or a simple meal, neatly and conveniently positioned between the car parking spaces and the grass and trees of the park itself.
After our breakfast and coffee/tea we headed off for a bench under a shady tree for the next part of 'The Forgotten Ways' by Alan Hirsch, a workbook we've been studying. This time we completed the section on the 'Missional-incarnational impulse' so we're ready next time to begin 'Apostolic environment'.
If this all sounds double-Dutch, please be reassured that it's most certainly not. It's actually a very interesting study on how church works and what makes it really fly. In a sense this book is telling us that we need to be fully in the light and not half in the dark, like the gibbous coffee.
So Donna and I took our notebooks and pens and our copies of the Handbook and headed a couple of miles down the A1 to McDonald's where Donna had a flake McFlurry and I chose a banana shake.
Then we got stuck into Session 1 of 'The Missional-Incarnational Impulse'.
The book calls places like McDonald's 'third places'. They are not home, they are not the workplace (or in our case church), but they are places where the community gathers. They are therefore good places to go if we want to connect with the community in a real and natural way.
It was interesting to look at it in this way, and I was able to have a friendly chat with a family in the queue just ahead of us. Small children are great conversation starters, and this group's three-year-old was no exception!
Today was Tuesday, and that means Small Group. Donna helps our friends Roger and Carolyn run an Open Door Small Group and tonight we were meeting at our house.
The washing up
We begin with a meal together, then we decamp from the dining room clutching mugs of coffee (or tea) and head to the lounge to share in singing, prayer, Bible reading and discussion.
We just abandon the washing up in the kitchen. Everyone helps clear the table and stack the dirty plates, cups and cutlery around the sink.
When everyone has gone home I usually load up the dishwasher and set it going, often a second load is needed in the morning.
We only host the meeting once every couple of months, mostly it circulates around from house to house so everyone gets a turn at washing up - it's good for the soul!
Even washing up can make a good photo. Look at the range of colours in this image, some vivid, others subdued. Then see how many different textures you can find, and the reflections. There are transparent objects, translucent ones, metallic ones. An astonishingly rich scene.
Feedly and Clover are both worth checking out, but the Clover video shared by Feedly is amazing. I'll explain...
My laptop screen
Feedly is a software tool, a feed reader. Clover is a food truck and restaurant company. You can see references to both in the photo of my laptop.
Feedly provides me with all the information I need from all the websites I follow. I used to read this stuff in Google Reader, but like many users of Google Reader I transferred to Feedly when I heard Google were closing down their reader.
Feedly is awesome. However, on their blog, they shared a seminar given by the head of Clover, a small food startup in the Boston (Massachusetts) area.
Clover and Feedly have something important in common - they listen to their customers in radical, intentional ways. It's good for them and it's good for us.
The video is really great, please don't miss it. It's full of very important ideas. If you are running a business or service, just starting one, planning a project, working for yourself or for someone else, part of a club or interest group, planting a church, doing research, writing a book... whatever, do not miss the video! :-)
How can you apply these powerful ideas?
Oh... I'd better give you the link, then. Here's the video....
