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July 2023 July 2023
THE PARISHES of BERE REGIS and AFFPUDDLE

with TURNERSPUDDLE

Our Our Mission:
Vision: To encourage awareness of the
To make presence of God through worship
Christ’s music and the arts;
love To encourage everyone in the
known in Christian faith through example,
the world learning and spiritual growth;
today and To make our churches open and
to live out welcoming to all, and supportive
his of those in need;
teaching
To challenge injustice at home and
abroad and to balance our care
for the environment.

LETTER FROM OUR ASSOCIATE PRIEST

The county of Dorset certainly has it all – spectacular cliffs, glorious beaches,
rolling hills, lovely towns and villages, apple cake and ice cream. But it’s not just
that – it also has a window into the ancient history of Britain. It’s not hard, with a
Jurassic coastline on the doorstep, to feel quite small and insignificant if you are
at the bottom of those magnificent cliffs, but to think how long they’ve been
there is quite mind boggling. I’m sure most of us have been fossil hunting and
know the thrill of finding something in the rocks and we know that there are
treasures still to be found of creatures that lived in the seas around Britain more
than a hundred and fifty million years ago. How can we even imagine what life
was like then, it’s bad enough thinking
about things one hundred and fifty
years ago – and how much the world
has changed since then!
It makes me think about the vastness of
our planet’s story and the smallness of
our place in it. The mysterious creatures
fossilised in our local cliffs were part of a
whole ecosystem that was there long
before the earliest humans. Perhaps we

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