April 2025

‘Hope is the bird that waits for dawn and sings while it is still dark.’

This is one of my favourite quotations, which particularly comes to mind this month as the birds start to sing melodiously and signs of colour start to appear in our gardens. The long dark months of winter are over, and we can imagine once again those hazy lazy days of summer.

And as the light of the days lengthens, we enter the celebration of the Son, Easter. April is certainly the month of hope.

Yet looking at our news headlines, hope feels in short supply. It is hard to remain hopeful for our planet, as world leaders vie for power, and our extreme weather systems indicate all is not well. Sitting in our crowded cathedral at the beginning of Lent speaking to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and hearing her story of imprisonment as a hostage in Iran and injustice, I was reminded of a religious painting in the Methodist Art Collection. The painting is of the inside of the tomb on Easter morning. It shows the stone rolled away, not allowing us in, but allowing us to step out.

Nazanin recalled her experience of re-adjusting to the light of freedom. Stepping out into a life of hope means adjusting to a long-term view, believing that there is more goodness to come. It means enjoying the colour now and living in the hope of all eternity.

As Christians Easter strengthens our belief that hope triumphs over despair, that light overcomes the darkness, and love wins. That is our song, which together we are called to sing. Despite everything, including the differences we live with every day, Jesus is Lord, the stone was rolled away so we can walk free and know eternal life.

Bishop Karen


May 2025

We have been fortunate to celebrate a peaceful Easter in our land, we find Sudan and South Sudan in probably the most desperate state in more than 25 years of our half century of partnership.

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March 2025

Returning recently to my former parish in Crystal Palace, South London, I was reminded of the glorious glass edifice that once stood atop Sydenham Hill, overlooking the city.

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February 2025

At the west end of your cathedral, on the south wall nearest the main entrance, is a large slate stone which records all the names of the Bishops of Salisbury. Mine is the most recent to have been inscribed. I am number 79. Someone else will follow. It serves to make one feel small rather than important.

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January 2025

At the end of 1992 we all remember the late Queen describing the year as an Annus Horribilis.  Well, in a way 2024 has been an Annus Horribilis for the Church of England. 

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December 2024

December is not the best month for a birthday, believe me, I know. Having a birthday in December has always been a bit of an anti-climax for me, especially when one is a member of the clergy and there’s another carol service to do.

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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.

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October 2024

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

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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!

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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.

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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.

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