{"id":4080,"date":"2012-04-19T12:19:01","date_gmt":"2012-04-19T16:19:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedockchurch.org\/blog\/?p=4080"},"modified":"2012-04-19T12:22:58","modified_gmt":"2012-04-19T16:22:58","slug":"ok-ive-officially-run-out-of-superlatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.the-dock.org\/blog\/2012\/ok-ive-officially-run-out-of-superlatives\/","title":{"rendered":"OK, I’ve officially run out of superlatives"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well hello again, after a little bit of a breather to recover from perhaps the most phenomenal two weeks of my life! \u00a0And the idea was to give you all a little bit of a breather too, from my regular appearances on your TV screens, radio sets and magazine covers – didn’t work out quite like that – more about that tomorrow!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>For now I just thought I’d better finish off the story of the last few weeks. \u00a0Those of you who have been following this blog (you brave souls) will have seen the posts growing longer and more frequent, your trusty blogger becoming more emotional, and my beard growing ever longer and scruffier (don’t worry, it’s all shaved off now – it was starting to scare children). \u00a0And as each event seemed to be more powerful, more moving, more beautiful than the last, the question emerged – would there be enough superlatives left in the English language if it just kept getting better and better?<\/p>\n

And the answer is quite simply – no. \u00a0It’s hard to put into words why<\/em> this whole story has come to mean so much. \u00a0Andrew Marr may be leading the sarky backlash to the Titanic overload, Julian Fellowes is (quite rightly I reckon) getting a bit of a kicking for the terribleness of his half-hearted take on the whole affair, and it’s becoming increasingly trendy to profess a world-weary Titanic-cynicism (Titanicism…?) whenever the subject is mentioned. \u00a0All that I can say is that for those of us in the middle of the story for the last few weeks, the commemoration of this Titanic story, with its extremes of hope and sorrow, its uncountable fascinating facets and angles, was a profound experience we will never<\/em> forget.<\/p>\n

And I think (hope!) it was a profound weekend not just for me but the whole Dock gang. \u00a0We had the huge privilege of manning (and womanning) a Prayer Room right at the heart of events (in the pavilion at Titanic Belfast) throughout the weekend, offering prayer, chat and space to those (and there were plenty) who chose to step aside and come in through the doors.
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I got to see sunset on 14th April and sunrise on 15th – and wonder what it must have been like to see both, on both dates, on the Atlantic 100 years ago:
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\nWe got to meet some fantastic people; Gayle got to meet Dr Robert Ballard, who discovered Titanic’s final resting place on the seabed; I got to meet Eric Kuhne, the visionary designer who master-planned the Titanic Quarter development (and left his own unique mark in the Book of Commoration at the Prayer Room):
\n\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\u00a0\"\"<\/a>And I had the unique, immense privilege of leading the service at Titanic Belfast to mark the exact centenary of Titanic’s fateful collision at 11:40pm on 14th April.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\u00a0Gathered on the balconies of Titanic Belfast, we heard the complex, ethereal harmonies of Eric Whitacre’s Water Night<\/em>; gathered in the Drawing Office, we listened to the words of Thomas Hardy’s unmatched poem The Convergence of the Twain <\/em>and the terse, tragic SOS messages from Titanic (which have a kind of poetry of their own); and gathered in the night air, surrounded by the design offices and slipways where Titanic’s story began, we read aloud the names of the individuals whose earthly stories ended when Titanic sank.
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