Dear Colleagues,

I vividly remember Richard Holloway, in a suitably doom-laden voice, beginning a sermon in Old St Paul’s, Edinburgh, when I was a student, with the words: ‘February is the three o’clock in the morning of the Church’s year.’ I usually find this month a bit of a trial: the weather seems much colder than it has a right to be; Lent is round the corner, and I want to say to people they should do – and talk – less; and the naturalistic ‘flowers of spring’ approach to the Resurrection seems at best superficial and at worst a dodge. To cap it all, memories of February funerals on the Lincolnshire fens come back, where two pairs of socks and a thick clerical cloak were scant protection against the damp Baltic wind!

Well, this year the tables are turned a little as far as I am concerned. Chemo 4 came and went in mid-January, with far fewer side-effects than Chemo 3, its identical twin; the blood-counts fell with less discomfort than before; so far I’ve managed to avoid an infection, and the longer this is the case, the more likely that I stay out of the immediate clutches of the Hospital, except for weekly check-ups at Clinic, until my blood counts are normal again. More significantly, the Pathologist has been very positive about the future, and about the real likelihood of regaining all my former energies. I can’t begin to say what all this means, to me, to Sarah, to the rest of the family. Your prayers have, as I have said before, meant more than I can tell.

Right now, I’m still not sure exactly how I am going to pick things up. On the public front, I’m still on target for the Chrism Eucharist in the Cathedral, Thursday 13th April at 11.00 a.m., when there will also be an opportunity to say thankyou to Bishop Trevor; I would like all clergy to be present, and every parish, as usual, represented ministerially at this service; but it is also an occasion, particularly this year, when the service is for everyone. I plan to be at the Cathedral for Palm Sunday and Easter mornings, baptizing and confirming on Easter Eve at 6.00 p.m.

(please note the time). What I do over and above that from mid-March onwards remains to be seen, but it will probably be confined to a few weekday evensongs in the Cathedral, and a few weekday eucharists here and there. Less publicly, I shall be involved in staff meetings, and other encounters that have yet to be arranged. But I am going to take it gently – it’s too risky to do otherwise at this crucial stage.


I am only too aware that my absence has involved a lot of extra work for my immediate colleagues on the Bishop’s Staff, whose combination of modesty and diligence perhaps conceals the fact that I have not been around to provide the public support that I have only managed to give from the background. They have been wonderful, all of them, and they deserve our thanks! Chris Lowson’s new appointment had already been signed and sealed last August (before my illness struck), and his departure has added further to their burdens. Meanwhile, I ask for your prayers in making a new appointment for the Isle of Wight Archdeaconry.

In these ‘Ad Clerum’ letters, I have tried to be as open and frank as possible about the journey I have been taking. It will be a long time before I can even begin to make some kind of sense of it. But I have felt the hand of God, even at the lowest and most awful moments. When He has seemed absent, I’ve known that your prayers have enabled me somehow to pray through it all. When I ‘pick up the reins’, therefore, I don’t really want to have to talk to people about my illness and how I’m feeling. I would rather put it all to one side and ‘move on’, as they say. That doesn’t mean, of course, that it won’t figure either in the foreground or the background in my preaching, teaching, and writing ministry. But bishops can be a bit prone to talking about themselves, and while I know that there are times when this is appropriate, as with these letters, there are also times when it is not, like a conversation in a Church Hall that could more usefully be about something else.

One of the abiding memories of these past few months has been the deluge of cards, letters and greetings that have come my way. They kept both of us going. And I can assure you both Sarah and I have read every single one, and that every single one has been appreciated. But I’m aware of not having been able to reply in every case. Sometimes, as with a group or a school, I have tried to send a card or a note back. For far too many others, this has proved impossible, perhaps compounded by the fact that it was a bad day, or that the effect of the treatment made my handwriting even less legible than normal. But there have been occasions more recently when I have been able to write to a wider span of people, partly because I have felt so much stronger and better, and partly because what started as a great flood slowed down to a steady trickle. Please pass on my warmest thanks to your colleagues in ministry teams, your schools, and your congregations, if you think it is appropriate.

And what of Transfiguration? As I slowly put the new book together, I am of course faced with far too many facts, and a deluge (yes!) of preachers, commentators, writers of various kinds. There is, too, a mixed history that can be tantalizing. The early tradition, in both East and West, which was not about a feast at all, tended to read the narrative in connection with Lent – glory before suffering. Then along came August 6th, a date plucked out of the calendar in order to give expression to a tradition that Jesus was transfigured forty days before the crucifixion, September 14th, Holy Cross Day. Jerusalem, unsurprisingly, was the place of origin, probably some time in the fifth or sixth century, from where it spread to Constantinople in the seventh or eighth, as a major feast. It only reached the West as a minor occasion in Spain, in the tenth century, and from then on spread in dribs and drabs, with some monastic enthusiasm, particularly from Cluniacs like Peter the Venerable in 1132, until 1457, when Pope Callixtus III imposed it on the Catholic Church. He was a Valencian by birth, plugged into the memory of Moorish domination in Spain, and wanted to use the new feast as a way of celebrating the victory on August 6th over the Turks at Belgrade the year before. A curious example of inter-faith relations!

Our new arrangements, lavish as ever, provide us with both options. Rome still reads the narrative on Lent 2, because she has done so since 1474. The ecumenical adaptation of the 3-year lectionary wisely provides the option for reading the narrative on the Sunday before Lent, serving as a kind of book-end before the solemn season begins. This is what we are fortunate to have in Common Worship. Over and above these vagaries of history, which have landed us in such a rich fare, our task is not to get lost in the details, but to ponder what it all means. This year’s Marcan reading (Mk 9:1-8) gives us the starkest picture of all: the enigmatic Jesus, whose identity the demons know (Mk 3:11, 5:7), but the disciples keep misunderstanding, James and John only a chapter later asking themselves (in Mark’s Gospel) for ringside seats in the kingdom (Mk 10:35); whose clothes no earthly bleacher could make whiter, emphasizing further the heavenly nature of this extraordinary event; and whose face is not mentioned (unlike the other gospels), suggesting a further dimension of unknowability, a further dimension of fear and distance on the part of the disciples.

Mark’s account has a hidden, eloquent ‘And yet’ about it. We, the collective ‘audience’ of the Gospel, may keep misunderstanding Jesus, but we keep coming back for more, responding to his call, in spite of our fragility, our weakness, our inability to trust one another. There’s a seed of Easter hope in all that – which is worth pondering and cherishing perhaps rather more than we often give ourselves time for.

With love, best wishes and prayers

+ Kenneth