Dear Colleagues,

I am home for a week between the first and second course of chemotherapy.   I want you to know that the treatment appears to be going well, and that I am in good heart.   I can also say that this is very largely due to the overwhelming sense of you, and many others, praying for me.   That, and all your cards and letters, means more to Sarah, the family, and myself than I can put into words.   So thank you!

The first couple of weeks in hospital consisted largely in knuckling under, and entering a world of Hickman lines, haemoglobes, platelets, and, latterly, neutrophils.   Until the nurses and medical staff got all that under control, my arms – which don’t have the best veins from their point of view in any case – felt like pin-cushions!   But all is settled now, and I can feel my body catching up with what has been happening to it.  I may be biased, but the National Health Service really has come up trumps; and I have been able to see and experience aspects of hospital life that were a closed book to me.  

For understandable reasons, visiting has been restricted.   But that does not mean that I don’t have you on my heart each day.   You will all know by now that Christopher Lowson is going to be Head of the Ministry Division from early next year.   Chris has been a loyal, creative and energetic colleague, with whom it has been a privilege to work.   His cheerful way of thinking laterally and finding solutions to all kinds problems are great gifts which we shall all miss.   He even managed to get me to a cricket match!   But at the Ministry Division, at this particular time, he will have a crucial, strategic influence on the whole of the Church of England, and our ecumenical partners as well; and he will, I very much hope, bring some vision and realism to the fog we seem to have got ourselves into.
I know that his appointment has been welcomed by many of my Episcopal colleagues, who know and respect him.  I shall shortly be setting in motion a consultation process to help me appoint his successor.   Please pray for God’s wisdom for us all.

Another feature on the landscape, due to go to Diocesan Synod, is the Dilloway Report, which makes some important recommendations about simplifying our Board and Committee structures, and strengthening their accountability, in order to get a far clearer balance between mission initiatives and proper resourcing.   I hope they will be looked at positively, because they have my broad support.   But I hope, too, that they will be seen in the wider and far more important context of the KAIROS process.    I don’t want people’s energies to be diverted from the main game!

It has been a strange autumn.   Thursday 13th October is the tenth anniversary of my consecration as Bishop.   I hadn’t intended to do anything special, because of all the events surrounding the Trafalgar Bicentenary.   But I shall be celebrating the eucharist with my colleagues in my chapel, and will be thinking back with gratitude, and forward in hope – that God will give me the strength for the next ten years!   These past five weeks, I have managed most days to say Morning and Evening Prayer, in the simple form that I tend to take around with me (I have never been very good at moving around a big, complex book).   These points in the day have been like anchors.   Sometimes I have barely been able to concentrate.  At other times, everything has seemed to fit together.  The Psalms have always been central, with their own rhythms of human experience brought before God.   But I have come to value the new short Collects.   Last week’s will always stick in my mind:

Faithful Lord,
whose steadfast love never ceases
and whose mercies never come to an end:
grant us grace to trust you
and to receive the gifts of your love
new every morning,
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen

So keep praying for me, as I do for you!

With affection and prayers.

+ Kenneth