Pentecost 2019
Staff Bulletin 10/6/19 My mind has recently gone back that glorious Olympic summer of 2012 and my experiences as a Games Maker volunteer Chaplain in the Olympic Sailing Village in Weymouth. In particular, the unforgettable Wednesday evening I spent in the Olympic stadium in London as one of the lucky volunteers invited to attend the final dress rehearsal of the unforgettable Danny Boyle and Frank Cottrell-Boyce-inspired Opening Ceremony. This pairing of an agnostic former seminarian (Boyle) and a practicing Catholic (Cottrell-Boyce) managed to create a spectacle that was, at the same time, intensely personal and deeply British, which nonetheless struck a chord with audiences and critics alike around the world. Something that Cottrell-Boyce wrote in an article for the Jesuit website a few weeks after the Games came back to mind the other day when thinking about the theme of Pentecost. He describes the time after that Weds. evening dress rehearsal: “ It must have been the same night, af...