A beautiful prayer gathering at Belfast City Hall this morning.  After a week in which so many words have been used to blame, boast and berate, hundreds of people gathered in the dawn light to stand still and be quiet… to pray, and weep, and hope.

Fantastic to see it reported as a piece of good news from Belfast on the BBC here.

And on the same theme, I was sent a link to this rewritten carol which I thought was too good not to share (you can find it, along with audio version, here).  Maybe you could make it your prayer for Belfast today:

O little town of Belfast
How will we see you lie
Through anger deep and broken sleep
As siren-sounds go by?
Yet in your dark streets shining
Is still that hopeful Light
Though wounds and tears of fifty years
Flow free in you tonight

O ruling powers together
Pass blame for all it’s worth
While voices ring for flag and king
But few for peace on earth
While fear is born of all unknown
Still gathered up above
As children sleep, the Light will keep
Its watch of endless love

O holy one, in Belfast
Descend again we pray
Throw out all sin, let love come in
And hatred melt away
We would hear the Christmas headlines
Assure us all is well
O come to us, abide with us
And rid our minds of ‘them and us’
O free us from this hell
Our Lord, Emmanuel

As if you needed another reason to visit Belfast’s best (only) Honesty Box Cafe…!

The Dock is hosting a fantastic photographic exhibition (starting this week and on display until Christmas) – winners of a photography competition run by the Shorts Camera Club.  All the photos have a local connection – familiar and unfamiliar sights from around the Titanic Quarter and East Belfast – seen from new angles and perspectives, taken by people with an eye for a great photo.  Don’t miss the chance to come in and have a look while they’re on public display!

And a few of my own humble efforts – not exactly photography-competition-worthy, but a few snapshots of life in Dock Cafe…  On one side of the cafe today, along with the usual mix of cafe customers chilling, eating, drinking, playing chess and strumming the Titanic Guitars, this group from the Met College held their seminar (they’re all studying fashion) over coffees and krispie buns:

And on the other side of the coffee bar, Ken and David dangled acrobatically on ladders and scaffolding to complete a long-intended Dock Cafe project: to fit curtains at the dividing wall so that all our lovely toasty warmth doesn’t disappear into the unused area of the shop unit:

Last night we gathered in that toasty warmth for Titanic Quarter’s first ever community forum – an chance for residents, developers and neighbourhood police to meet over mince pies and fruit punch (my own recipe, after every single shop had run out of pre-prepared stuff!)  It was great to be part of a new community just beginning to connect and write the first chapter of its story.  And, if I do say so myself, the mulled fruit punch was awesome.

Well we’re back!  The Bennetts have been spending a few days camping (or glamping really – as it’s in a nice warm campervan with blown-air heating and hot running water) in the wilds of Co. Tipperary.

We also found a wee tea shop in Kilkenny which, for the first and only time, made the Suki tea selection at Dock Cafe look small by comparison…

It was something of a heartbreak, it must be said, to travel home from the mist-shrouded hills of the Glen of Aherlow to a world of water cannons, petrol bombs and messy, ragged emotions.  A hundred-and-one blog posts wrote themselves, deleted themselves, reconsidered and re-wrote themselves in my mind as we travelled along – but for now I’ll choose not to add any more words and opinions to a situation already over-bulging with voices.

What I will do is turn those words to prayers: I’m planning to join this gathering at 8:30am at the City Hall on Saturday morning – a chance to pray for peace at the place which has been the focus of so much hurt and hatred over this past week.  Check out the link and hopefully see you there!

So you’ve heard all about Thanksgiving day, the Dock’s third birthday, Volunteer Day… but in the wonderful world of Dock, there was plenty more going on over the past month…

…like the arrival of a gang from SusTrans (on two wheels, of course) – one of many groups using the new cycle links to arrive at Dock Cafe:

…or a fancy dinner at the glittering, Christmas-ised Titanic Belfast –

– to celebrate the 25-year anniversary of the Pushkin Trust, for which Susan and I got to dress up all fancy and enjoy some stupendous food and very exalted company (it’s not every day that someone says “Oh you must meet the Russian Ambassador!”):

This month we also hosted little Lawrence’s gathering one Sunday afternoon – Dock Cafe’s very first christening party:

And November was the month when we started to really get to know some of the students who frequent Dock Cafe as their living-room-away-from-home.  When hordes of them started arriving in Dock Cafe back at the start of term, to be honest, we were slightly scared! – but as we get to know them, a nicer, funnier, friendlier bunch would be impossible to find.  And I think they’re starting to relax in Dock Cafe too…

This bunch were the first to use the cafe’s new chess board last week – although I did laugh when they confessed that after a while they had moved on from chess to the real heavy stuff: Hangman…
 

And speaking of new additions to the cafe – you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!  Our new heaters were last month’s big change (and they’re fantastic – toasty cosy even on the iciest of days) – but this month an even more long-awaited ‘installation’ has arrived… Watch this space!

Of course the cafe isn’t just popular with locals and students – we had visitors from far-flung places like Nepal, the Shankill Road and Braniel:

…so maybe you’re getting the picture – quite a month!  Community, faith, new faces, unexpected conversations…  In the Dock you can be chilling out with a bunch of students on the comfy sofa one moment, and getting ready to put on a tux for a fancy-shmancy shebang in Titanic Belfast the next.  You can go from roaring with laughter to feeling your heart melt.  You get to see the best of people.  You’re part of building a new community – Life in the Titanic Quarter.

Are you feeling Christmassy yet?  Vivid winter sunsets, Christmas markets at the City Hall, breath steaming in the air… isn’t it fabulous!

1st December is the day Christmas arrives at Dock Cafe…   If you call in any time today (we’re open 11-5), as well as scrummy mugs of coffee, hot chocolate and fruit punch, you can lend a hand at the bauble-hanging, tinsel-positioning, tree-decorating, snow-in-a-can-spraying, and general Christmassy shenanigans going on!

(Or you can take a seat in our new Christmas-coloured Very Comfy Chair and watch and laugh…)

UPDATE:

It’s done and it looks amazing!  A real tree from a lovely wee fruit&veg shop in East Belfast, some comfy new chairs, and lots of tasteful lights and sparkly bits:

If you think Christmas is getting a bit too sparkly, you might be inspired by the example of this guy: