Message from Bishop Robert, 2 September 2025

I had one of those supposedly small administrative tasks last week that turned into something of a saga. As a charity trustee, I had to confirm my identity with the bank: a supposedly easy task that I was assured would take no more than a text message and five minutes at most to provide proof of address and a selfie.

Having overcome the first obstacle – my deep scepticism that this was indeed legitimate, which led me to delete the first text and report it as junk – I was assured and reassured it was genuine, and so I followed the link. It was indeed easy until I had to take the selfie – could I get it to work? Not a hope. So, a visit to the bank followed, and a five-minute task became a good hour and more. All just to prove who I am, to prove my identity.

 To the bank, this was primarily a question (I was assured) of biometrics, but I think it is rather more profound. As for many of us, the summer has been a time to live life at a different rhythm, with space to stop, think and reflect. There have been fewer meetings, less emails. It has been good to feel refreshed and, as some would say, ‘more myself’. But this week has begun with a clear sense of the pace quickening, and a return to a normal routine. The diary has more meetings, and things that had been put aside for a few weeks need to be picked up and progressed. For each of us, this will be both different and the same. Schoolchildren and students begin a new school year, work may bring new projects, families might have different demands. It’s different yet the same; a quickened pace that brings a sense of new demands, and a sense of looking forward to all that is to be as the summer now lies behind us.

 Isaiah reminds us that God has called us by name and that we belong to God. By God, we are called in all that we are and in all that we do. Thus, contrary to received wisdom, there is no such thing as a work-life balance, for work is part of life and life holds all we are and all we do. What we are called to is to is live all this well. The rhythm of life may be picking up, but still it needs to be balanced, it still needs to be lived well, fully, abundantly, with the right attention paid to all that shapes it – rooted of course in God and in prayer.

 My challenge this September, with all its increased business, is to remember still to be the one God and has called to life – to live well, with rhythms and patterns that are life-giving in September as much as in August.

 And the secret to getting the right selfie for the bank? It turns out it was to smile. Not a bad way to begin September!