November 2025

‘As we rejoice in the gift of this new day,

so may the light of your presence, O God,

set our hearts on fire with love for you.’

These wonderful words are used at the start of Morning Prayer each day. It is a rich and powerful prayer asking God to not only go with us into a new day, but also that we may be changed by God’s presence with us. Hence our love being a vehicle of God’s love in the world.

This is a powerful prayer for our day and age, as the world so much needs the love and light of Christ in so many ways. We can pray it for ourselves and we can pray it for others. Our world leaders, our peace makers, those who put their own lives in danger for the sake of others. November is the month of remembrance, where we give thanks for those who have given their lives in the pursuit of peace, and we reflect on our own calling as peacemakers where we are, in our homes, in our communities, in the decision we make and our reactions to others.

The prayer however is not just practical, it is also spiritual. What does it mean to have our hearts set on fire with love for God? That takes time and devotion, it takes prayer and worship. I am thrilled when I meet a new Christian whose heart is on fire with love for God. Those who come for confirmation are usually our best evangelists showing others what a change Jesus can make, and enthusing others with the joy of the gospel. For those of us who have been followers of Christ for many years, this prayer can be a challenge, and therefore a good reminder day by day, that we need to regularly rekindle faith so we blaze with God’s love and light. In a month when we think about remembrance, and light bonfires and watch fireworks, do take some time to pray this prayer in your own heart, so we can all be set on fire with God’s love as we make Jesus known.

- Bishop Karen

November 2024

The Somme battlefield takes you by surprise. Visitors pull into a car park in a quiet lane and wander into what looks like a leafy National Trust property. A few yards in, though, and you see the trenches. Gently undulating now, softened by time, but unmistakably the dreadful, snaking pits of our imagination. The Somme, of course, is a river: but, for the last century, a name inseparable from the battle that claimed 60,000 young British lives on its first day.

October 2024

We have just under four hundred active retired clergy in the Salisbury diocese.

September 2024

Welcome to this most wistful month of the year, when we sense the shift of summer into autumn, notice the mellowing light and take stock before starting again. I do hope there has been plenty of sunshine for you between the showers!

July 2024

From my bedroom window I have a great view of both Preston Hill and Hambledon Hill. The Wessex Ridgeway Path passes across them, which spurred me, during my period of study leave earlier in the year, to walk that entire path from Marlborough to Lyme Regis. It took me across many new horizons, across the Wiltshire Downs, around Salisbury Plain and down through the Marshwood Vale to the coast. It was a great walk albeit very boggy in places given the February rain.

June 2024

This month marks two years since my service of inauguration in the Cathedral and so its two years since I first ordained people deacon and priest – a powerful and humbling experience.

May 2024

May is exam month for my youngest daughter, who is undergoing her ‘A’ Levels this summer – the last of our three to pass through that ordeal. I still recall (as I’m sure many of you do too) the sense of elation – almost disbelief – when these were over and a new chapter of life could begin. Somewhere in my loft, I still have the ring file I flung into the air when it was all over!

April 2024

At this time of year, we are beckoned outside after a long, cold and often wet winter. Spring has sprung and all creation calls us to go outside, to tend to our gardens and to admire the new life around us.

March 2024

A century ago, the great journalist and Catholic provocateur G.K.Chesterton wrote a wonderful essay entitled ‘The Priest of Spring’ in which he considered the integration of the Christian seasons with the natural year – and referred to the “armies of the intellect who will fight to the end on whether Easter is to be congratulated on fitting in with the spring or the spring on fitting in with Easter”.

February 2024

It won’t have escaped many of us that this year, Ash Wednesday falls on Valentine’s Day. This may feel like an uncomfortable union.

November 2023

Praying for the People God Knows We Need. This autumn it has been a joy to institute and licence a record number of clergy to new posts and as well as being the beginning of new ministry for individuals, communities and parishes, these services represent the culmination of months of careful work.