Dark Emu plant identification

On reading a wonderful Australian book "Dark Emu" I was keen to create a list of all plant species listed within it. This page links from my Goodreads review of the book. 

Table depicting plants identified in “Dark Emu; Aboriginal Australia and the birth of agriculture”, Bruce Pascoe, 2018, paperback, 277 pages, Magabala Books, as edible

Identified to whether the plant is also identified in “Wild Food in Australia”, A.B & J.W. Cribb, paperback, 2^nd edition, 1987, 284 pages, Fontana

Common name	Latin Name	In Wild Food	Comment
Warran plant	Discorea hastifolia		A yam
Muroong	Microsons lanceolata		A yam
	Panicum laevinode		Grass
Barley grass or native millet	Panicum decompositum	Yes
Coopers clover	Trigonella sauvissima	Yes
Nardoo	Marsilea drummondi	Yes
Onion grass	Cyperus bulbosus
Australian banana	Musa acuminana
Kurumi	Tetracornia avancea
Bulrush	Balyan	Yes
Native catgrass	Themeda arborea
Native sorghum	Sorghum leiocladum
Vanilla lily	Arthropodium milleforum	Yes
Kangaroo grass	Themeda triandra

Shalom,

Ozhamada
#readAustralian

Opening sermon illustration; 2 Chronicles 12

I’m keen for feedback. Please offer your thoughts. 

Does this text work as a sermon introduction? Is the illustration and the transition from illustration to exegesis sound? 

--/--

TEXT: 2 Chronicles 12

TITLE: Discipline as necessary as grace

DATE: 18 October 2018

I am in the process of taking my child through 120 hours of driving instruction while on L plates. It is a long process. My child has reached the 80 hour mark. Now, the 80 hour mark is a very dangerous one. With it, there is a certain confident attitude. My child knows enough to be road safe; enough to steer, change lines, contemplate what other drivers are doing, but she does not have depth of experience. Being confident of your abilities before time can be a very dangerous thing. At worse, it can cut you off from further learning.

[Slide #X; Extract of child’s Learner logbook depicting 80 hour total]

Now, King Rehoboam, was a bit like my child at the 80 hour mark. Chapter 12 of 2 Chronicles opens after three years of very good kingship. Rehoboam had walked with God and had prospered. During those three years, Rehoboam had fortified cities, built the priesthood of the kingdom and placed his sons into the cities that surrounded Jerusalem. But, Rehoboam had became too confident with himself and with his own abilities. He neglected the dependency that he and his kingdom had on God. He had not reached the 120 hour mark. Rehoboam would never reach it. He cut himself off.

 --/--

This is in preparation of a third sermon in a series of twelve on sin. The sermon is due to be presented in October 2018.



{Previous in series on sin}
{Next in series on sin}



Shalom,
Ozhamada



[213 words] 
#Bible #heisrisen #jesus #Christ #messiah #preaching #sermon #homiletic
#2CHRONICLES 

Review of book; Keep Christianity Weird

“Keep Christianity Weird – Embracing the Discipline of Being Different” by Michael Frost is a delight. The book has the chance of shaking the church to a realisation. The realisation is that the church, for all the weirdness of the message it counter-culturally is tasked to present, can fall into a stasis of its own conventionality. Christ was weird for his time, indeed for now, so it follows that the church should be weird. That is, the church should stand apart from the world and call the world for what it is. Frost uses weird as in ‘eccentric’, rather than as in ‘zany’.

 

Image source: https://goo.gl/images/dQ9kVe

The book is timely in that much of the church in the Western World runs to close to point with the world. In this respect Frost captures a similar notion to another current book: God is Good for You, by Greg Sheridan. Indeed, I found that Frost and Sheridan have quoted similar sources.

The high point of the book was in respect two concepts; threshold of collective behaviour and level of collective disinhibition. I would very much like to see Frost explore these further in another book. I appreciate these for clarifying a reading of Bonhoeffer.

In The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer makes the point that man is lost in the crowd of the world up until such point as he finds Christ. In finding Christ*, man then recognises that his identity is in Christ. Man then leaves the comfort of the crowd to live in Christ and in Christ communities (church). To Frost’s first concept the man must have a break in his threshold of collective behaviour to turn from the crowd and to approach Christ. To Frost’s second concept, man must cognitively accept data that is beyond his customary filters. This is the step of faith – to accept the unseen.

The book has a great depth of research but never falls into the trap of sounding academic. It is readable by all. The Chapters flow well and there is a neat symmetry in word count from one chapter to the next which makes it easy to compartmentalise a journey through the book.

I follow Frost on Facebook and read his blog posts. I do not always agree with him. This was the first of his books that I have read. I hope to read more.

Shalom,

Ozhamada

*Theologically, Christ finds the man rather than the other way round.

This review follows from reading: “Keep Christianity Weird – Embracing the Discipline of Being Different” by Michael Frost. I read the paperback version, 2018, Navpress, ISBN 978-1-63146-851-3. The book was purchased from Book Depositary.

This page indexes from a title page. It also indexes from my http://www.goodreads.com/ review of the book.

[412 words] #jesus #weird #heisrisen #keepchristianityweird #book #reading #read #wyrd

 #BookDepositary

King Parrot, Alisterus scapularis

What an amazing birdlife Australia has! The King Parrot is named appropriately for both its size and colour. It is the king of all its kind.

 

Male King Parrot, Lane Cove, 17 September 2019, within tree that it was feeding
 from, and of a group of approximately ten birds.

Some King Parrots have visited a Lane Cove street. They have taken a liking to an Australian native tree that is seeding.

 

The male is unique amongst Australian parrots in that it is the only parrot to have red head colouring. It is distinguished from the female in this way in that she has green colouring for her head. In common, both male and female have a red belly and green back.

 

King Parrots habitat is principally in rainforests; they feed within tree canopies. They eat both seeds and fruit. They will travel from rainforest environs when food is in short supply. King Parrots are found on the East Coast of Australia from the tropics through to Victoria. This makes them a common sight within Sydney. They largely live their entire lives in a tight geographic area.  King Parrots will eat from feeding trays and may often be seen drinking from backyard ponds.

 

The King Parrot prefers to nest in hollow trees. They will often have a nest that is within fifty centimetres of ground level where the entry point to the hollowed tree is ten metres or more high!

 

A surprising feature of the King Parrot is that some colouring patterns are visible only the ultra-violet wave-lengths. While King Parrots look very much alike to human observers, they look quite unique to King Parrots whose vision includes the ultra-violet spectrum. That is a helpful way for a King Parrot in the darkness of a nest to know whether the King Parrot entering the nest is your mate!

 

The location of the King Parrots; corner of Finlayson Street and Centennial Avenue; image: Google Maps.

Photographing the King Parrots proved difficult with a camera that had no credible zoom ability. The birds would scatter if I came too close. With some patience, a single photograph of a male was taken.

 

Reference: http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/species/Alisterus-scapularis

 

Shalom,

Ozhamada

 

[324 words] #parrot #sydney #sydneylocal #lanecove #lovewhereyoulive #inthecove #sydneyflorist #birding #twitching

Review of Scrublands, an Australian novel

2018 seems to mark the role of the priest in Australian literature. For both Tim Winton in The Shepherd's Hut and Chris Hammer in Scrublands include clergy.

Winton's book assigns a member of clergy to a forgotten parish. Hammer’s book finds a member of clergy (deceased yet central to the story) who shielded his previous life. In both instances, the clergy are in hot, dusty and remote locations.

And, Scrublands has a publican (deceased) who was once an Army chaplain.

Where the former Army chaplain and deceased priest sought atonement through passage of monies to an overseas orphanage, Winton’s priest is beyond atonement but to serve his time in isolation.

Scrublands is a great read. The characters are richly developed, the town of Riversend is colourfully displayed and the story moves quickly. The reader follows the steps of a journalist. The journalist pieces together why the priest committed murders, then was killed. Official Police accounts and the facts diverge; the journalist works carefully to re-imagine the story.

The story has much intrigue. Many parties are involved including Australia’s spy agency, Police, media and a bikie gang. Destruction arises from car accidents, bushfires, abduction and fire. The story depicts how a small country town can be subject to many pressures. The drought, the waterless river and the limited business hours of the town all seem synonymous with the slow death of the community.

I borrowed Scrublands from City of Sydney Library. This post links from Goodreads.

Shalom,

Ozhamada

[175 words] #agreatread #books #cityofsydney #library #goodreads #amazon #readAustralian

Tragic love story

I’ll never win any points with conservative Biblical scholars or preachers for drawing parallels between Exodus 32 and a Led Zeppelin song. This I did in this linked post. Nonetheless, the comparison served well. It was the catalyst that bought about the penny dropping – the how to exposit the Golden Calf narrative in a sermon.

 For the narrative is ultimately a love story.

It is not a love story of the Mills & Boon type nor of the type wonderfully portrayed by in-real-life-married actors in the quirky French comedy La Fée. It is instead a tragic love story in that the husband’s love is spurned.

 

Source: https://goo.gl/images/bs4gEi

For the Almighty God, God of the covenant communicated to Abraham, who freed the people from captivity in Egypt, is rejected by his spouse – the Israelites – in favour of a god that the spouse creates with their own hands. It is the tragedy of a loving God watching his spouse worship something of creation rather than the creator. It is the tragedy of watching Aaron, as second to Moses, acquiesce to the people’s request rather than attesting to God’s decrees.

And, it is a love story because God is slow to anger in that in his righteousness he could have smite the people for their evil. For Moses fasts in prayer for the people that Moses may endeavour to best make right that which is wrong.

The sermon will fall together well as a love story. It is a segment of the definitive love story – that God sent his only Son.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,

 that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 

John 3:16 NIV

{Previous in series on sin}

{Next in series on sin}

Shalom,

Ozhamada

#Sabbath #Bible #heisrisen #jesus #Christ #messiah #preaching #sermon #homilitic #LedZeppelin

Review of park: Kesterton Park, North Sydney

Kesterton Park, North Sydney had recently been renovated with new fitness equipment, updated children's playground and new water-side access to the de-commissioned HMAS Platypus base.

It is a pleasant park that is hidden away at the end of High Street, North Sydney. Sydney Ferries Neutral Bay service stops at the North Sydney wharf adjoining the park.

The former HMAS Platypus buildings will be eventually released to business interests - restaurants, cafes, art galleries and the like. It will be a wonderful gentrification of the area. Some of the naval and submarine history has been preserved.

Fitness equipment

 There is a public bathroom, running water and an electric BBQ area.

Waterside walk entry to Sub Base Platypus - gate closed at a set time each night depending on season.

We enjoyed an hour's walk through the park and former naval base Platypus. There were educative signage and wonderful views across the water.

Electric BBQ area with children's playground at rear

 The area had few people - the park extension is probably not well known.

Bunting on fence between opened public area and a building that one day may be a café.

 The grass areas are neatly kept and the pathways are accessible to wheelchair and pram.

Updated playground equipment

We are hoping to have many happy return visits.


Shalom,
Ozhamada