Chris and The Book of (Dock) Life
Dock chaplain, Chris Bennett, writes about another little milestone in the life of the Dock – they’ve filled a complete visitor’s book in Dock Café.
“When Joe commissioned some lovely leather–bound visitors books for the cafe when we had just opened back in 2012, it seemed impossible that we would ever run out of space. Hundreds of pages, eight entries per page… there would never be that many customers through our doors, would there?
“(This was back in the days when the amount of customers in an entire day might be less than we now have waiting outside when we open the door in the morning!)
“But looking through the completed book now – it does the heart good to see the multinational, multicultural multiplicity of people who have signed their name and home and comment on every page of the book. From the very first entries in 2012 to the last comments filling up the (now rather frayed) final page, page after page after page tells a story: of visitors finding a welcome, wanderers finding a home, individuals finding friendship, busy people finding peace, stressed people finding space, sorrowful people finding a smile, sceptical people finding faith (or sometimes just some experience of God, or grace, or something divine that they can’t quite put their finger on…)
“Click here if you want to see just a very small sample of some of the messages (and if you want to see, yet again, what an incredible difference the smiles of the Dock volunteers make to those who come in through the doors)
“Or better yet, call in soon and leaf through the book yourself – we’ll leave the old completed book alongside the nice empty fresh one for a while. And if your name isn’t in those pages somewhere, maybe it’s time to add a comment and join the Dock story yourself…”