So, Mr Turner

Turneresque? Or is Turner Creationesque?

It just needed a steam tug and the hulk of the Temeraire to make a perfect picture. This afternoon we went to look at the sea, after raiding the local shops This is going to be a busy weekend. The Ordinariate in Bournemouth has a 'bring and share' lunch party, so that we have time after Mass  to discuss some of the things which need decisions - such as how much we can send to Central Funds, and what we are to do about more hymn books, and how we will introduce the Ordinariate Use from Advent Sunday. That luncheon partly accounted for our shopping; the other event (the same day) is a dinner party at home for some Anglican friends.

The Friends of the Ordinariate are making available to us copies of the Ordinariate Use (as produced first for Warwick Street) and Mgr Newton has said he is happy for us to use this version. We need to have enough copies of both the Mass and the English Hymnal to enable us to invite friends from other churches to experience the new Use. There seems to be considerable interest among both Diocesan Catholics and Anglicans who want to see just how it works in practice. After Christmas our Bournemouth Mission will have to decide if and when we continue its use, and if we do, then how often.

But back to JMWT. Last year we revisited Petworth where some of the great works he painted there are still hung. Good to look out on the deer park and realise the great great grandparents of those deer are the ones Turner painted. More recently we went to Greenwich for the wonderful show "Turner and the Sea". People make such a fuss over the French Impressionists, but Turner outdid them all before any of them had laid brush to canvas. I'm rather sorry that the ancient Jews were not a sea-going race - there is far too little about the Oceans in the Psalms, and precious little in the whole Bible (despite Jonah). Others may lift up their eyes to the hills, but for me the Creator's supreme handiwork is the sea. Landscapes change, even mountains are eroded, but the tides have been going in and out ever since the land and the sea were first divided; and they will be doing so long after we are gone. 'When I consider your handiwork, the moon and the stars' - yes, and the seas and oceans too ... 'what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visitest him?'

The sea is his and he made it, and his hands prepared the dry land: sunset over Dorset