Ipswich – the service

No music tonight – I did consider trying to find the mediaeval Ipswich Trump between sections. I am wearing Suffolk pink! You may also enjoy this https://elspethsnaughtyguides.wordpress.com/2026/08/14/a-day-out-with-elspeth-in-ipswich/

Welcome to Between The Stools on August 30^th – a holiday weekend in England and Wales – 2026. I’ve been turning over what to share with you today, and decided to continue the theme of place, although I will offer the other matters mentioned (such as Ezekiel/aliens) in another service soon.

Although I hope to share some things of interest, with deeper significance, about Ipswich, the county town of Suffolk, England, I will make some general comments that I hope you can relate to, whether you are nearer the one in Queensland or New England.

I was encouraged to think of Ipswich as a functional town – it did the things you need it to, without joy in doing them. Ipswich was – do note the past tense – a necessity, if not necessary evil. There was a sense that your stint there would come up like a lottery, which one must endure with fortitude.

Is there a place near you like that? Perhaps it is home, perhaps it is near to home, or a place which could be home. Perhaps it’s where learning or earning is most likely to take place. Perhaps it is well placed between the differing requirements of your loved ones. Perhaps you’ve friends around…yet maybe you might wish to transport them elsewhere. Perhaps it is a place that you fear getting stuck – those projected few months or years might roll into many more, and then you believe it will be a wrench to leave, or you’ll feel too old to by then…

I am wondering whether you have resisted, escaped, embraced. Perhaps Ipswich represents the place that others expect of or try to carve out for you, or your compromising more than you’d like. And I’m wondering what we can do to change this.

One response would be to go and plant yourself doing what you love among those you love in a place which inspires and nurtures you, and not to follow the rut set out by others.

Another might be that the place you have been encouraged to despise, or worry about, is actually fulfilling for you. I met someone who said, ‘I’m one of those who really like Ipswich’. And it made me consider that there was something to like, something I’d missed.

I give you a moment to think on this place for you, and why it seems inevitable and inescapable, and what embracing would feel like, or how one might avoid being in the position of spending much energy in a place that doesn’t nourish you. And I will open in prayer to speak to all that.

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Fore St

I am writing a pair of books about British cathedrals and their cities, although I am allowing that broadly. As the diocese of Suffolk is called St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, that allows me to speak of both towns – I care not if the places I wish to speak of have actual city status. These two don’t.

Early in my travel writing, I wrote of Ipswich – was it my first piece? And I began with the line

‘familiarity breeds appreciation’.

I have used it to open each rewrite and it will appear in the book, perhaps at the front as a philosophy for all places, and more than place.

Recently, I updated the line to say: ‘familiarity breeds fascination’. I am not sure I will stick with that for Ipswich, but it did engross me for a couple of weeks as I researched its many buildings of interest and something of its history.

Let me now introduce Ipswich, and tell you about it in negative terms – through that which is not, and some concerns via patterns I’ve spotted, which will probably relate to your town too. (I am thinking of starting a new series on my sister blog.)

I have written bigger pieces about Ipswich, which don’t have bearing on a sermon – I am aiming here for deeper points about social justice and spirituality.

Ipswich has tried at least once to join the bids to become a city, which has become a fad, and the title meaningless. To me, a real city, whether large or not, has a certain dignity and features, including a cathedral. Ipswich feels city-like, with tall buildings and busy roads, but in other ways, it does not have what other places do, and I’ve been thinking on what that lack is, and why it is important to me.

Ipswich is fond of telling you that it is the first town of English people, referring to being founded in the Saxon era by the native Angles. These were not of course the first peoples here, and I wonder how meaningful this assertion is, and what it really means (in a multicultural town, I am uncomfortable).

I am not sure what real evidence is presented by Ipswichians for their premier claim, but it is asserted, somewhat unusually, at the railway station, on the most prominent platform. There is a picture of Saxon life, including of the famous nearby ship that Ipswich* wasn’t able to display in its museum, despite an employee finding the Sutton Hoo ship burial and its treasures. These are in the railings of the bus station also. So it is depicted here, so that all might know that Ipswich Is Important! *(It is actually not the burial long ship, on closer inspection, but one of the era).

I noted that it’s stated that ‘recent evidence’ has come to light to support this claim, which tells me that it is contested and needs reboosting!

The Old Cattlemarket Bus Station features Sutton Hoo

For a town keen on its early history, Saxon and Norman buildings are conspicuously absent. There is but one carving in the former era (a George and Dragon) and three items of the latter – all small and in churches. Ipswich lost its castle early – by 1173 – and there is contention as to where this wooden structure stood. If the suggestion of it being the site of the Civic Centre is true, it is significant, and I believe not accidental, to add more energies of control to the same spot. I do think that how we use ground matters, and it lingers. That 14 storey 1962 tower was abandoned in 2004 and taken down in 2008; the borough council moved into another new another bland office, this time in a huddle with other councils. Thus there was much destruction for something which lasted only 30-40 years. This is a pattern for Ipswich over the last 2 centuries – of institutions especially. I have been making a list (perhaps I’ll save it for my full piece for another time).

In 2000, Ipswich celebrated the 800^th anniversary of receiving its royal charter, and for this, a series of hangings were commissioned, made by Isabel Clover, and these are now in St Peter’s church – Ipswich has twelve mediaeval ones in its centre. This is something else which Ipswich often tells you. They claim that Ipswich’s probable first church was this one, because it’s near to the ancient river crossing – so it’s circumstantial conjecture, not based on any real evidence that I’ve read.

These hangings, inside a church that isn’t open to the public often, and which has lost some of its peace due to the paraphernalia of becoming a secular arts centre, are interesting. Isabel included buildings that are – and there are some really good ones – and buildings that are no longer. It literally is a rich tapestry, and a thoughtful one. It is a good place to appreciate Ipswich’s history, since the panels about the panels are informative and not juvenile. PICTURE OF ST PETER’S FURTHER DOWN

I couldn’t be bothered to walk right up to it – even this is with a zoom lens…

Since the Ipswich Museum is shut, you won’t learn any other way. This Victorian edifice featuring a woolly mammoth closed in October 2022 for three years. And you’ve guessed right, four years on, it’s still not open yet. It is now projected to return in early 2027, but this is not the first time a new date has been given, only to give another!

Although prevalent media sources and a councillor in particular will tell you how the almost £4 million and 2+ years extra is necessary, I want to tell you what I’m hearing and thinking… that we’ve stopped our habit of going to this out of the way museum, that people loved it as it was, that we don’t appreciate the projected images of hospital chic sensory overload (more Glory in Good Omens than its Victorian glory). The town’s original museum has become one again during the gap.

This first edifice, in the titular street, is another example of something that was moved – in 33 years.

Meanwhile, the sister in the park continues, and I’d like to take you there now. Christchurch is the really good part of Ipswich. Can I think of another place with such a lovely and large central park? And this FREE mansion to explore…

I would have taken you round its rooms – from the Tudor era until the Victorian – with artwork of ruff wearers and 1930s coach outings and late Impressionists with pride, and told you that it is what I picture for Eyres in Graces in my novel. (Parallel Spirals turned 10 last month). But I was angered to learn that at this time of celebrating local painter John Constable’s 250^th anniversary, bag searches are in place. I don’t think I can fit The Haywain in my shopping bag, nor do I have any intention or interest in taking it. I’m sure that any who may do will have ways round this. Jules Verne’s comments on passports (in Around The World in 80 Days) are true here: it just inconveniences the good. Without endorsing it, I do wonder if art theft is really a crime that hurts people, other than the pride of those who own it. Like too much else, it is a commercial offence.

They won’t let me upload my Christchurch Pilfered Tudor Room image!

Maybe we may wish to think on how we value art (the ‘pricelessness’ of paintings, and how such work is objectified and given a fiscal worth, and thus a status…by those who aren’t artistic) as well as our privacy and sovereignty – this policy is onesided and makes us the weaker party, for we’re not expected to look in staff’s bags! Thus it is unlawful.

I’ve noted that bag searches are in the terms of cinemas – it’s in Ipswich’s arts cinema’s; entrance to festivals (Norwich’s beer, on police and insurance advice), as well as some pubs – the Swan opposite the Corn Exchange has this on a sign. My companions and I eschewed it on principle.

So that is some social justice I wish to speak to, for it means that we allow others to have power over us in the name of security, like it was in Northern Ireland before the Good Friday agreement; people were socialised into submitting to bag searches as a condition of entry, treating everyone with suspicion, and behaving with resignation, even acceptance of this being normative. No!!

The other part of injustice in the name of security which I have noted in Ipswich is the camera. There was a poster campaign about not filming people without their consent, especially to make public and used to intimidate them later. Next to these were CCTV signs! Which is exactly used for that purpose. And in that same street, B&M had signs about facial recognition as you enter the store, which I no longer do. These cameras are running the faces of all they capture against police records, and often falsely accuse – innocent people have been accosted. It also means that having a police record may stop you entering shops. Not all such records are just, and we have the right to eat and be!

There have been heavy criticisms and campaigns against this, rightly!

When I so often hear people speak, including myself, of this New World coming, I am aware of these as examples of its opposite. Like the viral era of this decade, it is about control and compliance to be allowed to do basic things. Safety is always the excuse, not the reason.

This is something to speak out against and resist, not to accept.

Holy Trinity Fore Hamlet’s welcoming signs. This is apparently now closed for C of E worship. Hm

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I’m also questioning the acquisitive nature of museums. I had accepted that this and others collected things from elsewhere, but I sympathise with the strong feelings against the British Museum having Ancient World treasures such as the Elgin Marbles, and I am angry when the US has ours. A prominent architect in Ipswich pioneered this latter practice! Reading more deeply about the collections in Christchurch Mansion, I realised that it has accrued from several of Ipswich’s many special contemporary buildings, some of which survive. Why did it get the Hawstead painted panels from Hardwick House near Bury St Edmunds, or those in the Red House in Sproughton? Why has it got the linenfold panelling from the Old Neptune, which is still standing, so a copy was made there in 1960? Why are other parts of that house in Glasgow’s Burrell collection? Why does the fireplace of Eldred the Navigator sit here in the wedding room and not in extant 97 Fore St, a most interesting road rich with historic houses? Why did they build a special but easy to miss room in the 1930s for part of the Great Parlour of Wingfield’s Mansion? This little room by the gallery that currently holds Constable’s bucolic work is not a great parlour. Wingfield’s house on Tacket St was an interesting part of social history, for the home of this leading Tudor – is he less worthy than Wolsey? I’d not heard of him – became Ipswich’s first theatre, a tavern, and then a Salvation Army citadel. An early Nonconformist chapel stood nearby (rebuilt in a new style 1858). The area had other eminent homes, of Christopher Hatton (who I think of Elizabethan Wayne Sleep), Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk; and that of Wolsey’s henchman, Rush, which was destroyed to make Sainsbury’s and defunct C&A stores, whilst others were sacrificed for cars – showrooms and parks – to be accrued and sacrificed in turn.

I note the dominance of a few firms, in both senses, and again, not just in Ipswich. Might we feel that we can’t comment negatively? Why should business people run towns? I question the values of charity, as I did in July. A tour of Ipswich usually includes – it is implied should include – the almshouses and just houses of certain benefactors, oh and their tombs! Note that their names do not appear here. But I’ll say that beneficiaries received dole money on a tomb of their donor!! I’m noting too the addresses and wide ownership of certain abolitionists – the former involving a large Hall.

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This is pretty much it to Blackfriars, hemmed in between a brewery, carpark, and flats with ‘No Loitering’ signs by bins

I’ve long maintained that places seem to have a collective, lasting atmosphere over time. Ipswich seems to be impatient with pulling down, and in living memory, some significant sites (in size and stature) have become roads and shopping malls and wharfs. And offices and flats – the new favourites.

Ipswich is quick to tell you that it had 5 friaries – an average number nationally, I’ve been counting – but it is odd that there are scant remains of but one – Blackfriars. And that flats were built over it in living memory. Worse is that the flats have ‘no loitering’ signs – is that just for the residents, or in the actual ruins, which as a sacred space are a natural place to loiter, but there are no benches and little space. I question if this housing firm can lawfully hope to affect our being stationary – it is term used by fearful regimes to stop people gathering, and says more to me about the housing company than the residents. Two malls and an over-rated insurance office cover two others. Blackfriars was used as the grammar school, and in the last couple of decades, a C19 picture by celebrated John Sell Cotman was found depicting the 100ft long hammerbeam roofed hall, before the occupants were turfed out for demolition! Ipswich had two ancient overlapping schools: one continues, and the other lasted 2 years. The latter is well known because of its locally born founder.

Thomas Wolsey is the elephant not going to get far into this room today, but he is much vaunted here – I believe unjustly. With my interest in Anne Boleyn, I know him quite well and he too represents old values – he is the American dream, the Conservative poster boy of one from modest beginnings who made it as big as you can get in this country, and he had his eye on the ultimate churchman’s seat. Wolsey was the lesser of the two English archbishops, but he was resident in France during the tenure!

He acquired this at 41, cardinal and lord chancellor (no capitals) at 42 – quite young too by their standards. He asked people to give up homes he fancied, and expected a yes, as Henry did to him – Whitehall Palace was York Place, the northern archies’ London base, until the rotund Tudor asked for it, and he also acquired Wolsey’s country residence which was called by a contemporary poet ‘pre-eminent’ over royal palaces, so Henry made it one of his 60. Picture this Hampton Court as it may help you imagine what Wolsey’s college looked like. HCP features heads of Caesars to show off one’s power, and according to Jonathan Foyle, its design is taken from an Italian book on how to be a cardinal.

It seems that Christian values are not part of this manual.

Wolsey shoved off the monks – this was pre Dissolution – and the parishioners of St Peter’s for his choristers, fellows, and pupils. He sold off the chancel roof to next door so he could make a bigger one. He intended that his scholars would continue their education at the Oxford college he was making – ‘Cardinal’, ie referencing his position. He took a priory down for that as well. But both colleges were wrested from him. It literally rained on his inaugural parade, which was Mary’s birthday – for the Ipswich college was dedicated to her – and so they only processed round the grounds that September day, not the town. In two years, Wolsey fell from grace and died, and the unfinished college was closed and swiftly dismantled. We seem not to have any drawing of it – it was gone before John Speed’s map of 1610. In 2023, the estimated 550^th anniversary of Wolsey’s birth*, leaflets and displays gave away that the footprint of the college is merely conjectured. (*They had favoured 1470-1, but the 550^th for that would have fallen during covid). They don’t know where its main entrance was, and can’t draw a plan of it. Wolsey may’ve risen high in 20 years, but he fell in just 2.

Wolsey had eyed a large home in his home town for him to retire to, so he asked Lord Curson for his titular House, right by the college. I wonder if this means that Wolsey intended to not only preside over but expand his college. We don’t have Curson House, which is depicted by Speed, but we do have its Lodge, sitting on the corner of what was thought to be Wolsey’s birthplace, and now his £90,000 statue that I think looks like Jabba the Hut crossed with Dublin’s Floozy in the Jacuzzi. Much is named for Wolsey here – theatre, gallery wing, apartment block, entertainment park, pub… but is becoming the king’s right hand man and de facto running the country, or being ambitious and avaricious and acquisitive but showing little sign of having much of a genuine faith, despite being a senior church official, something to celebrate?

Ipswich plaques bear reference to the many others that this town has produced – Margaret Catchpole I’m sure is worth a sermon, but there was an early aviatrix, archaeologist (she first dug Blackfriars), and ‘rebel leader’ John Harbottle – that makes a change from ‘merchant and mayor/MP’. He was connected to the Suffolk wing of Kett’s would-be revolution that we thought of four years ago.

I’m not pleased at the Ipswich Society’s downplaying comments regarding their plaque. I am also seeing that their logo is an eye, rather reminiscent of the all-seeing one one dollar bills.

I may miss Wolsey’s college architecturally (I am not sure about educationally) but in one sense I am not sorry that it is gone, for it demonstrates the pride fall/bigger barn parable.

OK, the elephant did get in.

This is the site of Wolsey’s college – it’s looked like this for 30 years, with busy roads righ round it and a skyscraper

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Carr St – not how the council puts posters in windows to hide empty shops, possibly of rates it raised too high. The upper floors of the candlesnuffer Co-op store building (right) are all flats now

I’m seeing an alarming trend demonstrated here that is more universal – that public buildings are being turned into flats or offices, and that these are too expensive and bland. I note the perception that Ipswich Borough Council is especially bad for making these decisions. I think this is historical, for it would explain the high losses of important structures. Even Christchurch Mansion was sold in the 1890s for demolition! This beloved museum (which I feel is blighted by its new policy) was rescued for the people, and its buyer and presenter is now considered a plaque-worthy local hero.

This MP and JP’s family brewery languishes; we are to look to new buildings on the quay instead.

old Tolly Cobbold brewery

When a pub closes, it means a community meeting place is gone – a place to build relationships, share ideas, joys, woes, make connections, and have a change of scene. When a church closes, such as Turret Green Baptist, or the Back Hamlet Congregational, a place of spiritual gathering is lost, as is the energy of seeking God together. The conversion takes away from that building being easily used again for a public purpose. I began to note how many older buildings in Ipswich are known as ‘the old…’: Wheatsheaf, Running Buck, Coach and Horses, Pack Horse, Neptune, Saracen…

Only one of those is now anything like a pub – it’s a cafe owned by a church. Maltings that were a nightclub…big sheds and stores…the former Co-op on Carr St with its candlesnuffer roof…all turned into luxury flats. Where are the luxury flat and office dwellers in this town? Are you trying to draw in, or pushing out? And why make everyone pay silly prices and unending debts to live in identikit homes, often too small? These say: there’s nothing of you in here, and you may not be able to make any mark of your own. You stare out onto generic walls and furnishings of another’s choice – I viewed enough properties in my research to see a distinct trend, and that estate agents use ‘character’ inappropriately. The sales pitches made me snort.

I am concerned by the council giving its permission to this – for example, a listed and rare C16 timbered warehouse at 57 Fore St with a long open upper storey can be turned into flats… they must be thinking of the permanent revenue this elicits. I tell them: think again! The New Kingdom doesn’t allow for commodifying basic needs, always being owned and controlled by another – what thinking is behind these ‘commercial decisions’?! One that needs to alter.

I’ve heard it remarked that the town centre of Ipswich is dying, that so many shops are empty, and indeed, an unusual amount of property is for sale or rent. Yet to draw people to take on those debts, estate agents tell you that there is much here, such as those looking to buy a grade 1 listed town house (notably offered for less here than other towns). It seems a very mixed message to me – that many big shops are being shut (and leased to the same few companies)… that I heard police had told pensioners not to bank here, thus scaring off older people – but which generation is most likely to bank in person? And so that remark, as well as fearmongering, helps the trend of closing banks and doing everything remotely. I noted too that Ipswich can have a friendly convivial atmosphere – it has been remarked upon, and that it is multicultural; yet I’ve heard people say they felt afraid here, but not in bigger towns; and comment on the one negative person or group they’ve met all day and not all the kind people or just neutral ones they’ve encountered.

I have more to say about Ipswich in another post and place, but I want to draw together some thoughts:

-bullying in the name of security

-odd choices about who we celebrate

-the choices about which buildings live, and making meeting, especially for worship, harder

-overpricing basic human needs and making them a form of control

-accountable councils who listen, and don’t think of money, kudos and the short term

And that the people choose our government, at all levels – they do not choose the people.

Cherish those of the area you have the privilege to serve!

And then the places we have relationships with, and what makes us feel at home, how we can be influenced by others – note how the thought of the government office or daily grind affected people’s opinion of Ipswich in my circle, and finding those that celebrate it and found it worth moving some distance for, and have stayed a long time.

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Upper Orwell St – the tower of St Michael’s is on scaffoling on the right – note the silver at the top of the street…

The new kingdom

I’d like to end with an image which may sum up Ipswich. It may seem to begin with to be a motif for the negative. Along a scruffy street – the one I apologised for taking my friend down – with a sex shop and views to the back of an abandoned department store and a carpark, you are heralded by a burned out church. It was built in the late C19th century, an Anglican for the widening population, although it may be about winning the souls of the slum dwellers for the church of England, before those nearby Catholics and Nonconformists got to them. It has posters and graffiti on it…I had walked on the other side of the road, if I must pass down Upper Orwell St at all…but recently, I read them. Firstly, the words of the MP, Jo Cox, who was murdered in 2016, are quoted, very much like the log line of one of my favourite films, Agora: “We have far more in common than that which divides us”. It is said that Jo was killed by a person of ‘extremist’ opposing political views. She campaigned for refugees and immigrants. Ipswich participated in nationwide commemorative activities after her death. It too is a town of many immigrants.

Photos of inside were at first alarming; and as I checked some facts, I found a less simple picture emerge, that isn’t so easy to round up on. I am not sure of all that Yorkshire MP Jo stood for, of the truth and motive behind her fatal attack, and what really went on with St Michael’s. It closed in the 1990s and was already derelict when it burned during the night of 7^th March 2011. It is said – and I’m loathed to repeat it without proof – that is was arson, and that a Muslim group were planning to move in is not unconnected. I give to God the truth of that. The Muslims did not move in, but now the Ark church uses the hall which survives at the rear. I do not know this church well, came across it by seeming chance. I can tell that they are as Evangelical as they are sincere and committed; I also note that such churches are often not supported by council or press, nor even other kinds of church.

The positive end I had aimed for was that Jo’s quote was chosen for that husk; that a church continues to worship regularly on that site, and that the name of ‘Ark’ is about a safe vessel in difficult times. I agree with them about casting all onto God: that which separates us from him, from true connection and fulfilment (they may use a word here that I would not). I agree that powers of darkness are real – this oddly unites the more traditional Christian with the broadly New Age. But that these are defeated by ultimate Love, a force on our side who wants to know us.

The photos of the charred interior of St Michael’s are not easy to view at first – they seemed filled with ugly violence, a record of trauma that perhaps some of us have encountered. But I looked some more, and I saw that nature had triumphed over the destructive misused element, that it brought life back like Easter. The scene recalled the glass and plant dominated leisure and shopping facilities of the 1980s prevalent here that were my first architectural interests. I no longer wished for a new roof – only a canopy of glass. There is literally an openness, a lack of hierarchy and starchiness in this al fresco nave. I recall the beautiful sentiments from Coventry cathedral after it was bombed, and how it set up an international Community of the Cross of Nails – and extended it to Dresden, the city that we had bombed. I see that spirit here in Ipswich.

Walking up this street, one is greeted not only by the defiant little bell holder of St Michael – that archangel (I prefer those to an archbishop) who is known as a protector who successfully battles evil. And above the charredness, something taller and shining – like an angel – catches one’s eye and the sun and leads us up and forward. On the site of another landmark which sat empty for 20 years are four simple letters, the name of another living and active church…but better yet is its message.

In the font of the cinema chain who built it is written: “Hope”.

I will end in prayer, including those especially who have suffered fire, and for Ipswich:

IPSWICH, YOU ARE LOVED – and so are you, wherever you are

Blessings and good night. We meet next time on 27^th Sept…alien time? Or another place? Or a voyage?

I end with one of Ipswich’s nicest spots – Northgate St, with the library and Bethesda Baptist and mediaeval buildings

Magdalene Sunday 2026

shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/magdalene-sunday-2026

Welcome to Between The Stools on July 26^th 2026, the Sunday nearest Mary Magdalene’s day of 22^nd, which we always commemorate here.

A little prewarning is needed, but we will end well. Tonight has 3 parts.

I) As I’ve been thinking of places, I am tonight speaking of some of those connected with our Mary of the day. Those would include the Holy Land, France, but I am sticking those to nearer to home. In our neighbour Ireland, there was the angering misuse and abuse of Mary’s name – those laundries where nuns took in unmarried mothers. Mary was not a prostitute, nor an unmarried mother that we know, although I sense she would not judge those people but love them, and especially not bully them, as these Catholic nuns did. I dislike the leap between a prostitute and a person who gets pregnant outside of the narrow confines of the church, which turned out to be a secret adoption industry and unpaid work done by the ‘fallen’ ones. But the remit was widened to those with disabilities, who were ill, poor, and without parents. They were thus workhouses, trying to make the women penitent through manual labour, and by providing children to sell throughout the English speaking world. Many of these girls had suffered abuse, and did so more inside. In the true film and book Philomela, the titular character is told that there was a convenient fire, so her missing child’s details are not available. I recall with glee Steve Coogan’s response to the head nun.

A report has just been published this month, called Truth Recovery, by an independent panel. It speaks of human rights abuses – no surprise – but that failures were connected to state oversight – which use of that word? I reject the role of the state to oversee or its right to control us, especially under the guise of ‘care’. The state was involved and sent women to these evil places of strict discipline, isolation, humiliation, slavery, incarceration, and often early death.

The last of them only closed 30 years ago.

I don’t even like the original 18^th C ethos, which was about submitting women to a work ethic to ‘support’ themselves after their release to avoid prostitution.

Similar laundries were also in Australia. A report from the Abbotsford Convent (now a creative foundation) admits that the slave labour allowed the nuns to undercut competition in doing laundry for hospitals and hotels and railways, and thus to fund their own abuse program.

I hope my ire at this injustice is clear.

I am also angry that Mary – the enlightened student of Jesus’ teaching, and some would say wisdom embodied – was ever tarred to render this powerful spiritual leader as sinful and lesser by a church in competition, and to use her story to spiritually sanitise this ugly programme. Anyone really understanding Jesus’ message, as Mary did, would see that all these institutions could never justly put her name to themselves, for they are an aberration of all that She and He stood for and did. Before the resurrection narratives, there is but one line in the canonical Bible about her – Luke 8:2, where Mary was delivered from 7 demons. Some commentators in more new age or neo priestess realms, who hold Mary dear, see that as meaning that she went through the seven levels of initiation into Christ consciousness.

[prayer pause]

II:i)

I wish to think about older uses of Mary Magdalene’s name in church institutions.

Mary Magdalene is a well known figure, even to those outside of Christianity; despite being only in a few Bible verses, she is part of the Jesus story. Yet there are few churches dedicated to her in Britain. If you asked me, wherever I have lived, to find my nearest church dedicated to Mary the Mother (or Virgin), I could point you to a church in my town or village, or one nearby; in some cities, I could find four.

But Mary Magdalene…even as one interested in churches, I can think of only four English towns whereby it MM the sole parish church (Bildeston Suffolk, Launceston Cornwall, Newark Nottinghamshire, and Taunton Somerset – and after I recorded this I found a fifth, at Debenham in Suffolk).

In cities of multiple mediaeval parish churches, of which England has over 20, I found Magdalene in just 3 – Canterbury, Lincoln, and Colchester. I compared this to: 26 All Saints/Hallows, 24 Peters, 23 Michaels, 20 Johns, (15 Andrew, 14 Nicholas, 10 Margaret, 8x Holy Trinity and Giles; 7x Helen, Lawrence, James, Stephen; 4x Thomas or Leonard, 3 Paul), and Blessed Virgin Mary 45 – by far the most, often with surnames to distinguish them, such as Bredin or Le Bow.

(This includes lost churches…over 370… I’ve continued my list to nearer 400 and the above count is too low for each, but I hope it is still proportional)

Working on a survey of urban medieval churches and religious houses nationally, I come Magdalene in one circumstance – the out of town leper hospital: Norwich, Cambridge, Exeter, Winchester, and Bristol had them. The demolished church in Colchester may have been founded as such a hospital before becoming parochial. It seems that the Norman period was most popular for this kind of foundation. Otherwise, St Giles was the saint given to similar duties – to the outsider, the outcast, found at or just outside of gates.

But the Magdalenes weren’t just beyond the gate, but well outside. In Norwich, I’d estimate it’s at least a mile from the nearest city gate, and perhaps two from the market, and a mile and a half from the cathedral. It is for this chapel that Magdalen St and Road are named. A Norman building still survives, way up Sprowston Rd. It’s served as a public branch library but now is a charity. The tiny chapel at Stourbridge in Cambridge is also still extant. It was such a trek that I didn’t get there in time on the last open day I was around for. Magdalen Rd in Exeter takes you well from the centre to a neighbourhood of its own, and so does that in Colchester. (Sometimes her name is spelled without the final ‘e’). The site of the leper hospital in Winchester is far enough out to be in farmland.

There was one nunnery named for Mary M which wasn’t so far out, and this was the one that shocked me. It was in Bristol, and it’s spelled phonetically – unlike pretentious Oxbridge which have Mary’s full title of honour in letters, but expect you to say ‘Maudlin’. But maudlin means overly given to tears, or drunk. I find that offensive – to use a term for Mary, the Tower or Great one, to a) be synonymous with another church vice, and b) to make out that sentimentality and feeling is a fault. This is just what my priestess sisters would speak out on, as do I. Feeling is not weakness, being moved is not weakness. Feeling is to be celebrated – it is part of Mary’s revolution!

The name of the Bristol street came from a Norman nunnery of Augustinian canonesses – I’ve not heard that phrase. I like the female form of things. This lasted until the reformation, when the remaining few women were dispossessed of their home. The were already deemed too poor to pay taxes (to the Bishop) and had been for three centuries. The church building was diminutive too.

Skip forward three centuries, and using the same name and site came another founded in the 19th C called ‘Bristol female penitentiary’. Clearly there was bullying, shipping in from a wide area, and suspicious deaths and dismissals. Some residents were sent to nearby St Peter’s. I was sorry to learn that this beautifully ornate timbered building was destroyed in the war and not rebuilt. I knew that it began as a hospital in the medieval sense, became a mint, but I didn’t take in that it ended as a workhouse. Now I’m less sorry about the site being cleared, for the energy would have been horrible to live or work in.

Finding the site Children’s Homes, a shocking list of Bristol and Gloucester sites (and elsewhere) came up: the “Bristol Voluntary Lock Hospital” on Ashley Road especially concerned me. Gloucester’s Blackfriars were used as a place for ‘fallen’ women. Clearly, these were places to harass the vulnerable. I have a continuing example to hold to account with you shortly.

So Magdalene has been misused not so much to comfort outsiders but as a brand to ostracise with, to mistreat. This is so far from how I see her, that I’m going to have to rest and calm myself. I invite you to play this song by John Bell and Graham Maule. You can add Magdalene’s name and mine to the start of each verse.

https://www.christianwebresources.co.uk/hymns/hymn/600/#

II:ii) I have a little more raging to do and then we’re going to end calmly and quite differently.

There is one other place named for Magdalene in England, in a town you’ll not be surprised to find her – Glastonbury. I was temped to do a whole service from there, and I may yet do. Sufficient to say, that there is a chapel of St Margaret, which you can attend Celtic communion, or pay to meditate – I do disapprove of an entry fee to an act of worship. The almshouses on the site are named for Magdalene and are 17^th C. Almshouses allegedly began in York in the 9^th C, they assert, but are not uncommon around the country. I have had personal reason to look into these, and I am appalled. The name comes from the receipt of monetary gifts from the charities to the residents, who are poorer people. Now, that is reversed: the poor pay the charities, which may be large and wealthy institutions. As in a book about Victorian housing needs which I just read, the notion is incredibly patronising and condescending, and focusses on the deserving poor. Lay yourselves open to our scrutiny and intrusion, agree to our rules and live to more exacting ones than the rest of us do. You must be poor – but not too poor, because we’re charging you – hefty monthly fees, plus bills. If you get benefits, we’ll have them. And you mustn’t need too much care, because we can’t (read: won’t) be responsible for you. You have less rights (read: none) than tenants, because you are beneficiaries or licensees. No pets, partners. We want to peruse your bank statements and visit you at home to see how you spend and live. Sign all your power to us when you apply, let us contact 3^rd parties as we see fit, or your application will be denied. Arbitrary age restrictions. Wear a special outfit to identify yourselves (Winchester, Chelsea, even now) – and even sit on a special bench in church, so everyone knows you’re mine (Robert Hitcham of Framlingham) We can evict you, for needing care, being poor, or not keeping to our rules. They were often created before today’s welfare state and with different values. I do wonder about those of the founders – were they seeking acclaim, or to ease their conscience, or their way out of hell into heaven?

The disadvantaged should never be disadvantaged; not to have less rights than others, no hope of ownership, and a roof only if a tight line is walked; and their coldness and thoughtlessness, as well as bad administration, is to be remarked on with disgust, often by those in very different positions, with a lineage of positions of power, personally and from the institutions themselves.

Although not on the level, you may argue, of those laundries, both show a faith based way of rounding up a desperate client group and taking away rights, rights that they are encouraged not to question, but to see themselves as fortunate to receive this ‘care’ and opportunity!

It is time to hold these archaic almshouses to account, and ensure a standard of living for all that is not about fear or abasement and hierarchy.

I wish Graham and John would write a housing verse. Or I might for them.

I will say something hopeful: that according to Small Things Like These, in the 1980s, many in Ireland couldn’t imagine taking on the church without fear of repercussion. But in the next decade, the last laundry closed, and public outcry and exposure began. There may be injustices that seem too entrenched, too widespread, committed by too powerful people to whom we are beholden

III) Now we’re switching into our shorter but quite different mode, based on a channelling I heard on Magdalene Day. I may repeat some of this some Easter…

Some of the words from Carissa Andrews from her video of 26^th March 2026

Mary Magdalene & Christ Consciousness Reiki Activation: A Resurrection Healing Transmission

https://www.cityofshamballa.net/videos/mary-magdalene-christ-consciousness-reiki-activation-a-resurrecti

NB I am not claiming reiki or an activation, just quoting her words which I found helpful and wanted to share

Inclusion here does not imply complete mutual endorsement

I close in prayer

Thank you for joining me, blessings – you are the light – go well

Next time we meet on Sun 30^th August. Theme TBA – aliens in the Bible?

Elspeth betweenthestools@hotmail.co.uk

My first novel’s 10 year anniversary

Today, 22nd July, is Magdalene day, the official saint’s day of Jesus’ disciple and companion, Mary.

Each year, we honour that day at Between The Stools on the nearest Sunday, which is this coming one – 26th, at 8pm BST. It’s not live, but will be available from then.

But I wanted to write today about Parallel Spirals, book 1. I’m reflecting on its journey; the hopes I had in 2016 when I saw myself in print for the first time, and what I hoped it would change and lead to. It is a little saddening to compare, certainly on the obvious level, with what actually has happened so far, and with my second novel of 2022, The Jury In My Mind.

Some may wonder about the sequel to Parallel Spirals – I hope so – that I spoke of as being imminent in 2021. I did think of getting that out today, but that hasn’t been possible, and also in relauching the first novel.

These will come; I’ve had personal reasons for the delay…

I can confirm there will be a 3rd novel, set in their middle age.

You can read the start of the first one here:

**Sadly the 3rd party links to my former websites with webs.com are dud due to the platform being suddenly pulled; I’ve been battling for compensation and reinstatement, and think I have finally got somewhere – I will announce it here when they are live**

I have two thoughts: one set on the industry, and one briefer one concerning Magdalene

On the book industry

I’ll say that being independently published has been a difficult journey. Shops are still snobby about indie authors (I feel awkward to even say ‘self publishing’), and the terms of them, virtual and actual, are stacked against the author and publisher. They want an unpalatable cut that can even put the book’s producers at a loss. We remind that we can sell outselves – a market stall, on our own websites – and that we too have the overheads that they claim. They expect you to send the book at your expense to them, and to collect it via the same, or lose it – so what incentive have shops to sell you? Are they not aware of the massive burden that this ‘sale or return’ presses onto producers? Amazon and Ingram Sparks have been especially burdensome and unjust, and I reject the former for its hegemonous conglomeration, whilst the latter unlawfully tried to force its terms, as I’ve already told you.

But I like to work together, especially with fellow independent shops, and hope we mutually can support each other.

I’ve found that literary awards are geared away from indies to conventional publishing houses, and that financial support and winnings explicitly preclude us, although we may be the most worthy recipients. State support doesn’t understand creatives. I’m aware that some well known authors – I’m thinking of one in the same city who published in the same year – get uneven amounts of push and financial backing, massively affecting their visibility. Once your work is talked of positively, it creates a snow ball. If picked up by a well known television reading group, or championed by someone else already with a platform, you are well away. You appear on those bookshop tables, and their virtual equivalent, and then are invited to do events…

The bigger publishing awards cost thousands to enter, creating two tiers even within publishing houses.

The self publishing platforms themselves are filled with unjust and thus unlawful and void terms.

I garnered two slots on a local and relevant radio programme, but in both cases, they – as did a magazine – forgot to mention how to find me and give a link. A local shop – they said they’d shelved my novel under snails! I’ve had the building I was giving a talk in, ill signed, closed for snow, or readings up a corner of a festival that no-one save staff and the next speaker is finding…

And after 13 years, I gave up on the writers’ centre taking an interest, despite years of painfully pretentious networking evenings, for I saw that I wasn’t who they were seeking – it seemed that is a certain ilk; and even when homeless and appealing to those personally known, that they weren’t bothered, and I found them rather a kudos-seeking sham. The national status came because they applied for it. From them, I received a tweet and a fiver (for my crowdfunding campaign – which I critiqued, along with other aspects, on The Artist Bill of Rights).

They expect resident writers to pay!

I’ve had the book mis-sold by Walmart and a private collectors site, direct from a friend, which garners me nothing. I take unsolicited reselling seriously. Please don’t.

As to that advert saying “Buy books second hand, it’s the same story” – I respond: you are harming authors by saying that. Have you no thought about how they survive and that you’re undercutting them. Meanwhile you promote a large money making firm!

So, I continue to speak out against an unjust industry, and one that takes creative choice away from authors.

You can read my initital thoughts on that here.

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How does this book relate to Magdalene?

I would like to think it honours her spirit, although it is not about Mary. In the years soon after publication, I have entered priestess circles, found via Magdalene. She draws those outside of mainstream Christianity into a different spiritual path, one that celebrates the feminine, seeks its divine form. She cares about justice. Mary is seen to celebrate, literally, our embodiement, our sensuality. She is friend of the outcast. She does not fit the conventional mould. She understood Jesus’ teachings fully, and carried them on. There’s a meme from the 2018 film about her with Rooney Mara “Not that kind of life”. She was driven underground by an institutional church which saw her constrasting message as a threat, but she found followers and survived, to re-emerge when the time was right to hear her words.

I think that Parallel Spirals and its author stands up pretty well.

I hope to see you on Sunday, for quite a challenging service

Do stay tuned on here for announcements and special offers

It is worth watching drivethrufiction for an imminent deal!

Does anyone else have stories to share about indie publishing for them?

Elspeth

Summer Solstice Sundown Service

Welcome to Between The Stools on the Summer Solstice 2026. As the most common day for celebrating and calculating the Longest Day in the Northern Hemisphere – June 21^st – falls on a Sunday this year, I decided to make our service then, and for the first time ever, to change the time on a Sunday night to coincide with Sundown. I hope that we will witness this together as part of our service, as we have on Good Friday.

Beyond tying in with this solar event, which I have been celebrating elsewhere for at least 7 years, I did not know what to say. I’m typing this at the time I would normally be uploading my recording, perhaps even the edited version. But things feel a little strange at present. It’s been another difficult time for me – how has it been for you? And I wanted to continue my new theme of Place, but I didn’t know where from.

There is a link from last month, because the Gog and Magog Hills just outside Cambridge are sacred sites, appropriate to see the Solstice from (I now give this a capital S). I’ve given much thought where to do that for myself: for the first time in 2 decades, a wonderful pilgrimage group I’ve been following for 8 years didn’t have a Solstice outing. I note that my attempts to join in previous years had been frustrated, and I’m wondering if anything is trying to prevent me. And that I was recently close to Solstice Central – one of two famed British spots throughout the world, with crop circles and ancient sites and water. And yet…I didn’t stay. I am not writing and speaking to you from one of my more common places – I have felt displaced for some years. I can sense myself taking the default outing which I often revert to when I cannot get to where I’d choose to be. I’m feeling a bit isolated and wondering about my recent choices, and worrying about my future ones.

Can any of you relate to that? Are any of you wishing to celebrate today and are unable to be where you’d wish? Can you find somewhere to see the horizon from – the top storey of your home, a hill, a ridge, a bridge, a field, the sea? Is there a sacred site near you, or somewhere that you hold dear? Here in Britain, we have many sacred sites, and some seem to be given little attention. I read that it wasn’t until the 17^th century that Avebury stone circle, now famous, was noted. It was in plain sight, but this large and distinct monument wasn’t recognised. I wonder what else has not been discovered – perhaps like Sutton Hoo, it lies on private land, land that – mercifully – hasn’t been developed. Or perhaps it is something well known, but that the prevalent view staters have chosen not to see it for what it is. As I researched, trusting that I’d be taken to the right thing to share with you tonight, and for myself, I came up against that often: that there were Official Keepers, lampooning or ignoring those whose theories did not match their own.

I would like to open in prayer

So there is yet not so much plan for tonight; I am writing and trusting, but I also felt that it was time to just be, and not be so pre-written word driven today

I will pause at 918 to give us time to watch that disc go down together – or if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, watch it come up.

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I don’t think that I want to do a once and for all, or even a decade Solstice service tonight. I think that our world is rich in places to savour and feel a connection with spiritual things from. I don’t want to even rush my own country’s. I’ve been thinking of Ley Lines, those ancient energy tracks, and particularly of the Michael and Mary lines from South West England across to East Anglia. This is one of the best known in this country, though by no means the only, and I know people who have dowsed and detected others. You may know that my own faith has been tentatively hybrid for some time, and finding the right place to mark the Celtic Wheel of The Year’s holy days hasn’t been easy. I don’t want to be too Pagan, and yet I can’t stay wholly within mainstream Christianity either. And I don’t just mean for these 4 solar days, and the others in-between which often share a festival with Christianity – for instance, the early August Lammas or Lughnasadh, and Imbolc/Candlemas, and the connecting saint, Bridget. If you’re a little more unusual like me, you may find that in many ways, spreading your wings and soaring involves getting out of the box, including how you celebrate your relationship with God.

I hope that we find a path together today.

Today, also known as Litha, is about being thankful for the sun…or more accurately, being thankful to the sun. I can’t quite give that orb a capital. When I heard people singing to “grandfather sun” I wasn’t sure where I stood on that, having only sung songs of…is it still praise?…to the Christian godhead…and then, Mary began to slip in, somewhat awkwardly…but to a star? Or is God in that star? But the sun itself is not God, and a fiery untouchable gas giant that we can’t approach or look upon feels entirely Not the kind of god I believe in, although ‘he’ – I think the sun is male – fits how God has been depicted.

I can feel that I can be thankful for the sun, for its warmth, its unfailing pattern of rising and setting, no matter what, and that it is essential to our life on Earth. I can be thankful to He/She/They who made and sustain the sun. I can even say I am thankful to any spirit in the sun – if I am open to Gaia as the spirit of the Earth, why not of the sun? I honour the Moon…sort of. I still feel shifty in admitting it, wondering who that I know will read or hear this, and worry that perhaps a friendship or a spiritual community, or even income and lodgings may be affected by what I say.

That tells me something about those around me, and I pray again for own our group.

I am aware that those who honoured the Earth and planets have been vilified, and I have stuck up for witches on here before. I often hear of the witch wound, and I don’t think that has to be just for women. Do we fear that revealing ourselves, what we believe and practise, even what we can do, will have us ostracised, even harmed?

Let me pray on that

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I want us to come back to those parallel ley lines and those different energies – archangel Michael, one of the best known of God’s messengers, who is associated with devil destroying. He is often called on when darkness seems to be near, to banish and bind it. I call on him now.

Perhaps Michael is worth a proper Bible study together sometime, but I will note that his biblical mentions are mostly around Daniel 10 – when he’s called a prince, not an angel – and Revelation 12, when he leads armies against a diabolical dragon; and a verse in what I call Jude The Obscure where he debates with the devil about Moses.

Michael appears in various religious traditions, including the New Age, where he is channelled. He is associated with protection, warrior qualities such as strength and courage, guidance, and healing. He is depicted with great wings, a sword, scales (for justice/balance) and sometimes a breastplate.

I’ve been noting whether churches along this diagonal line are dedicated to Michael. Glastonbury Tor and nearby Burrow Mump are topped with chapels to Michael, and the line leaves England with St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall, a monastic mump in the sea. The rest of the lines aren’t so well known or talked about, and so I am perhaps glad to be near them in a different section, close to the major eastern monument. Around Bury St Edmunds, I can think of but one Michael (at Hunston) – more at Occold, at South Elmham (one of a clump of villages known as The Saints) and Beccles;

but I’ve also seen Georges, another dragon/devil slayer, at Stowlangtoft, and Wyverstone which I think may be named for a type of dragon, the wyvern. If places contain ‘worm’ or ‘orm’, such as Wormegay, it is often because of a legend of a serpent, something larger than a snake which may have limbs or wings. There’s a St George at Shimpling*, Norfolk, also near the line, and at Thwaite. At its eastern terminus, on the Norfolk/Suffolk border, is a church of St Margaret, who’s also associated with overcoming dragons. Margaret is also found a few times close by – a former chapel in Bury St Edmunds, at Westhorpe, Rishangles, and a large church at Lowestoft, close to the sea and the line’s end. The dear little Norman church of Hales*, SW of Norwich, is not far from this line (and is also on the Rockstone Ley); nor are the two Margarets in The Saints of NE Suffolk; Thrandeston’s church is to Margaret, as is Wattisfield; as are Tivetshall Norfolk, Toft Monks*, Herringfleet*, Reydon near Southwold; Cowlinge, and Stradishall (both West Suffolk),

Most maps I’ve found aren’t very clear about this section, and they vary what is meant to be on it.

The lines aren’t straight and they are broad bands.

Then there is the other energy, that of divine Mother – Mary. Finding out her attributes is more difficult as I don’t subscribe to the Catholic meek and obedient model. I see her as having a different kind of strength, compassion and guidance and healing – so actually, similar qualities.

Both of these divine persons have blue as a symbolic colour.

Mary is perhaps the common saint for churches, but I’ve been looking at whether this dedication does increase around these snaky lines. And I think it does – in the East at least. Starting in East Hertfordshire and heading NE: Royston, with caves that are established as part of the line, has a church to John, but Saffron Walden in Essex has a large Marian church, famous Norman Ickleton is to Mary M, Cambridge has 2 Maries, Linton, Little and Great Wratting, both Abingdons, Brinkley, Weston Colville, Haverhill (Suffolk), Depden, Hawkedon, Little Whelnetham (Mary M), Westley. I note a major Marian church at Mildenhall which doesn’t quite fit the line; also at Burwell and Ely.

From Bury St Edmunds to the sea there are: a very fine and large church at Bury itself (the abbey was named for St Edmund, as is today’s cathedral), Rougham; Culford, West Stow, Troston, Ixworth, Stanton, Hinderclay, Barnham (a little north), Coney and Market Westons, Pakenham, Walsham-le-Willows, Badwell Ash (all thought to be on the line), Woolpit (with its Lady’s Well pilgrimage site), Wetherden, Haughley, Stowmarket, Old Newton, Bacton, Mendlesham, Gislingham, Mellis, Burgate, mysterious Wortham*, Redgrave, both Rickinghalls*, Diss, Burston (of School Strike fame) both Thornhams, Braiseworth, Brome, Redenhall (Norfolk), Rushall, Bedingfield, Pulham St Mary, Tivetshall has a Mary and a Margaret, Flixton (Bungay ward), Ditchingham, Haddiscoe*, Somerleyton (we’re skimming the border here), Aldeby, Norton Subcourse, Blundeston*, Ashby St Mary, Somerleyton.

* have round towers – that’s a talk/booklet I’m working on

Is this unusual? There are many more parishes around that are not dedicated to Mary, or anyone dragonous. Is it as much as 1 in 3? Can a credible line be drawn between these? Yes, there are Maries elsewhere – Ipswich has 3 of 13 central medieval churches dedicated to her, and as the Mother of Jesus, sometimes revered in her own right, it’s unsurprising that she was a popular choice, But considering that the reformation tried to curtail Marian devotion, it is noteworthy that so many dedications to her – for changing them is quite possible – have remained.

I tried to seek out a recent message, but I wasn’t sure enough to quote any I found – I will leave you to look up your own, if you wish for them, or to connect with Mary or Michael yourselves. I will leave a little space, and let you know of anything which I hear, perhaps later.

Next month is the Other Mary – Magdalene.

I do wish to share this that I read: that the Solstice is a turning point the start of a new cycle, and there’s strong hints that this is especially relevant now, and that battle of good and evil is at a key stage. I won’t repeat things which I don’t feel sure of, but I will say that there is comfort and we are warned to not accept what we are told at face value.

I’ve been wondering about uncelebrated ancient sites near where I am. I didn’t think that we were a Roman area, but I’ve found that there are several roads of theirs, allegedly, and also some villas, although they are not really visible or visitable. It’s asserted that these sites were to help respond to Boudica’s revolt against the Romans. Her tribal territory is close by. I’m also interested in what was here before Roman invasion…and after? What were those Celtic sacred places? Is it true that they are under churches now, in an attempt to be similar to those Roman’s playbook? I also found some intriguing mounds at sundown… what are they? I’ll let you know if I find out more.

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I didn’t expect to do a service on this – and this may not fully be it – but as I looked for esoteric sources, I kept coming up against aliens. Have you seen the new film Disclosure Day yet? I haven’t. Some interesting writers point out that this supposed disclosure of the presence of aliens among us is being handled by a director that has done so for almost 5 decades – Steven Spielberg – and that the score is composed by a man who has been steering our emotions and telling us what to think for even longer (John Williams). It does make me wonder about the real commissioners for movies, and what extend that the screen is used to disinform or manipulate. Or can it also be the way that truth is told. Which is this? I sense, a mixture.

A theory behind these ley lines – supposedly discovered and named just over a century ago by Watkins – is that they are UFO travel paths. Some will feel comfy with that idea, others not. I prefer – and I’ll be honest that it is a preference – the powerful energy grid hypothesis. The UFO highways is a 1960s idea. As I see that crop circle season has begun, I note that the architects of these geometric shapes in fields are often thought to be UFOs too, sending us messages, although few seem to claim to understand them. The South West of England seems to be the only real area for these and I’m wondering why mainly Wiltshire, but also Dorset, Somerset, and more rarely Hampshire are favoured. Some appear close to sites – a minster or a chalk figure, or a henge. Is there some connection with today’s event and these annual phenomena?

I’ve read a few times the notion that the evil of this world, often posing as our god, is UFOs. Jesus is technically ET, but I’m hearing that there are others….

There is so much to take in on this vast subject. I began reading some classics, wary of a deadline (and what else I have to do), but I’m partly giving this some space as a dear friend who died this year was interested in this subject. If still with us, I’d have reached out to him about it. We had hoped to visit Rendlesham together “England’s Roswell” where even the Forestry Commission have a themed trail through the woods. So I dedicated this in loving memory of Peter, 1965-2026, even though he didn’t share my faith and wouldn’t have acquiesced with all I say.

I just want to, at this time, acknowledge all this, to say that there is much more to say and that I will continue reading the likes of Philip Coppens and John Michell, as well as my own discernment.

I’m hoping that it’s sundown time now. I have access to a working instrument – hurrah – so I’ll play to you (improvised), and then a few final words

Next month we met at the usual 8pm for our annual Magdalene service on July 26^th

Thank you for joining me and goodnight

Easter 2026: Heavenly Ever After

Welcome to Between The Stools on our 7^th Easter Sunday, 5^th April 2026. You’ll note that I didn’t give my usual greeting: “The Joy of the Risen Lord be with You” that I so love to use this day, and will say to other Christians whom I encounter at my special dawn place, if I am feeling sociable. (I am usually not, which is why I may not ever offer that as a public live service with BTS). Truthfully, I am not sure how I am feeling about Christian greetings and mingling this year. I’m having to prepare and record this before the Triduum – that supposedly extra holy long weekend – and I don’t know how I will feel during it. I have thoughts about my experiences each year, but once Easter is over, I don’t feel like revisiting them until near the time next time, and by then, new ideas have come to me.

I know that I felt cross about the Eastertide services that I attended last year and was especially appalled by a Catholic cathedral, as much as it was moving and with beautiful music, and well attended. But the theology of those songs, as well as the supposed power of the priests…!!

It’s struck me this year that it was priests had who put Jesus to death. And that the institutional religion that grew out of Jesus has also punished and even put to death those whom they considered a threat (we thought of some in 2023). And it makes me even less inclined to be in such institution and chain’s buildings even. I consider I did well to walk out of one of them; but I do recognise there are good people in those chains. I see them as chains in both senses.

Whilst preparing for this Easter’s sermons, I had a bit of a faith turn. It began on Fig Monday whilst looking up a reference for Good Friday’s written piece. I realised again that the hell fire references of the Bible were in the words of Jesus, and that more than one Greek translation pointed to the terms ‘everlasting’ and ‘torment’. And as I said on Friday, such a god (no capital G) isn’t good. And so, why do I want to celebrate that god today, for I have always believed that Jesus is God, and was sent by God, and received by God, and that… now this is a thought, as I come to type it… that Jesus’ death did something for God. Prevalent theology states that it appeased him. God could now look away from some of our sins, and reopen that bolted shut door of heaven. He was also pleased by his son’s obedience – and even his suffering?! (Steve Chalke and James Alison’s statements are true!)

But today, after at least a week of misery, is a joyful day, because Jesus is back!

I am bored of pretending that we don’t know this part of the story and taking on as much of the dolour of the cross as we can. I know that I will disagree with dear friends when I state that I do not wish to or feel we should experience that horrible death emotionally each year. Again, deeply aware of death in my own life at present, I consider that an anniversary is about celebration. I don’t lay in hospital beds on machines, nor on roads as cars crash, and nor would I ever wish to watch a video of someone’s torture and execution, let alone act it out. But what do Christians do annually?!

And I’m poignantly aware that unlike Jesus, other people who die do not come back in 3 days: our loss from this earthly realm is permanent. But we’re going to be thinking about the next world via our Lenten lens of the year, and that lens has taken some edge off bereavement and death.

We’ve been to Hell with some fictional Koreans, and now we are back in Heaven, and I am trying to make sense of the Easter story via the television that I’ve been guided to watch throughout Lent. Early this week, I introduced Heavenly Ever After, about an older woman who reunites with her husband in a very odd paradise, and where there is a huge age difference in their appearance. Hae-Sook has been rescued from Hell and has returned, with her honorary daughter, to their heavenly home. To help counter the hell berries she’d been earning, the President of Heaven sends Hae-Sook to church (already I’m feeling more comfortable talking about this show than the biblical tale).

At church is a pastor who has been waiting a very long time for anyone to come to his church. Immediately that is a purple point: I have waited 7 years to set up an in person community. Many of us may feel that our ventures don’t yet have an audience, and I know of ministers who read out services to an empty church, or to very few. There is bravery, not futility, in continuing anyway, in the hope and faith that your showing up and keeping on will be rewarded.

This man, who waited by a church on Earth for a very long time, finally has a congregant, but she’s not there out of choice, and immediately that makes the pastor rude to Hae-sook. She either sleeps through, or interrupts, his sermons. The pastor even brings along other activities to do whilst she sleeps. But then, someone else appears, and also Hae-sook and the young pastor form a bond, and events start to take shape. Those hell berries – not that I condone them – pushed Hae-sook into that church; being alone made them start a relationship that wouldn’t have been possible with others around for long; and a wonderful healing and resolving journey has started.

Is healing really a form of resolution? Are the terms synonymous?

Isn’t Easter’s message about healing, resolution, completion?

But how does rising from the dead achieve that?

————————-

A prayer: Lord, I don’t know what to feel this year. I continue my commitment to offering a service today, and I bring who I am and what I am thinking to you, and to this community, which is all those who read this, whether they are regular and known to me or not. I felt that was better than saying more Christian sounding statements which I didn’t feel. Thank you that I don’t feel afraid to say this to you and about you. I hope not to put anyone off faith and truth, but rather that this honesty be a means of turning to it. I ask that the real God reveal themself – for I feel certain there is a God of truth and love. Amen

I’d like to offer my thoughts on Heavenly Ever After, as I wrote after first watching the show in January this year. They are not all Easterly, but they are all theological.

And then I’d like to take up some thoughts about the several Korean television series which I have watched, and the process of becoming human.

They will be offered with some silence, then some music from the shows (under fair/religious use): from Knight Flower, and 1 piece (the waltz next to the prayer) from The King’s Affection – chosen for their majesty and celebration

A: Critiques of Heavenly Ever After

1) The soul collector (formerly the Grim Reaper) is rude and not comforting. He doesn’t really look at Hae-sook, he doesn’t touch her, he seems irritated by her and her questions. I believe that was we transition via death, our guides and angels look after us, are filled with love, and understand our natural queries; as Hae-sook points out, this is a new experience for each of us.

2) That the judgement process is automated; that one rides to your afterlife alone, without a guide, and are compelled to get off your chosen transport according to what the process has decided, having no idea about where you are destined, and no appeal. I hope that is a satire on modern life, but I don’t believe in judgement as we have oft heard it, nor that there is this dichotomy of a fearful or a nice place to spend forever. And I believe we are accompanied, without fear or uncertainty.

3) That no-one walks you through the Pearly Gates – which are like airport security, and an intimidatingly white huge space. But even in that horribly worldly, discomforting space, we see a fireman who is sorry not to have saved a girl in a fire; they are reunited and become a family unit

4) That Heaven resembles a office, with computers and uniforms, and aloof staff with policies (cf The Brand New Testament – and the bad, weak bully god who is overthrown)

5) That both afterlife destinations are filled with immutable choices, unlike on Earth

6) That our age comes with limitations and pain

Revelation 21:4 tells us that there is no pain or illness in Heaven

7) That we are paired with our partners from Earth Jesus said that there is no marriage in Heaven. This show doesn’t show what happens if you have more than one partner on Earth – with whom do you reside in Paradise?

8) That the President gives the appearance of being a senior spirit, with his glow and false echoey voice, but also that he is rude to Hae-sook at first. He brushes her aside, saying that he’s busy.

This doesn’t match with his compassion and wisdom for the rest of the show

This caused me to wonder if the President was infact truly good. I saw much in common with The Good Place initially, and wondered if a similar reveal was coming. This story developed quite differently, except that there is also posthumous maturity and that they experience both places.

9) The fear of Hell remains: if you swear, hit, attack vending machines, you may be sent berries – and you need only 6 to be thrown into Hell. (I was confused as to why Hae-sook seemed to uniquely collect these, after no-one allegedly had for centuries). I strongly believe that once in Heaven, it’s where we stay and that Hell’s agents cannot touch us there, nor have any authority to claim their own, and that they are inferior to God’s power and mandate

10) Hell has power in Heaven, to remove beings from it without seemingly being stopped.

I believe it is the other way around – that God and Good have the ultimate power

11) Heaven’s president says that hell is precise; it punishes exactly for crimes.

[I refuted this on Good Friday]

12) That you still need currency in Heaven, and can be short of it; that you don’t know if you have enough. Hae-sook nervously reaches out to pay, wondering if it will be accepted. This feels like OT (and Church) sacrifices. All are wrong. Currency, stored in your wrist, is of your earthly good deeds, but we don’t know how they’re calculated – so much like in The Good Place. It’s not having enough – to buy for another, who can’t buy – that causes her to trash the vending machine – the action that gets her sent to Hell (Why can’t they balance check? Why this uncertainty and sudden shock?)

But Hae-sook discovers a hidden resource of good deeds that she’d forgotten about or not realised on Earth, and she revisits those, and is able to spend again. The process of running out allowed her to learn of and heal via the extra points she’d accrued. The point wasn’t the points

Why is the vending machine valued so highly (or badly) that it tips one into Hell, when a lady who has bullied for a living is allowed into Heaven – aren’t her loan shark crimes greater?

13) That God is not seen; he’s not resident in Heaven, for the sins on Earth keep him too busy!

cf James Alison, who said in On Being Liked that in atonement theory, sin is too large a character; God dances round him

 

B: The interesting, positive and profound points

1) In Ep 7, Heaven’s president teaches dogs about loving for own sake without an object of love

Sit with that

 

2) Reincarnation

i) Young-ae has been mother and honorary child to Hae-sook; her father was also Young-ae’s, and thus her lover previously, and she goes back to Earth to work through things with that man

Are there persons we know who feel like we’ve big things to explore and put right?

The President of Heaven says that this man, who’d been negligent and abusive in two bodies, has been given the ultimate punishment – parental love. ‘Punishment’ is the wrong term, but in his coming to care deeply about his child, this being felt the weight of what he had done and deeply desired to put it right, when he was shown it all from a heavenly perspective. This for me is how we should put right and undergo not punishment but more like a kind of restorative treatment.

ii) The dog (Mandu) who chooses to be a pet for a homeless person, and thinks it’s a great gig, unlike his worldly friends, who think of only the expensive treats, holidays and homes they might live in. The image of a homeless man cuddling a pup is heartwarming, and I realise that those who are homeless – whom we are encouraged to judge – may have a special role – not that that excuses for the lack of compassion and system failures that makes their situation possible.

iii) Our protagonists are concerned for one (Hae-sook’s mother in law, played by the heroine of Behind Your Touch’s best friend) who chooses a very challenging life to reincarnate into 

This may feel like a purple point for many of us – what did we agree to in this life?! Yet I hope that we are supported in it, and welcomed home at the end of it, and that there is an end – as in a goal.

iv) “Suffering brings enlightenment equal to its weight” says the President of Heaven to the Pastor, who, when at last understanding his situation, says it of himself. I believe it to be an Eastern idea, although I could not find a direct quote for this line. What do we feel? Am I comforted by that?

Do we feel that enlightenment has come to us…or will it only come in the next world or worlds?

Is englightenment itself a sufficient reward or exchange? I think I’d like to reframe that maxim…

 

3: Things to ponder

i) DOING GOOD FOR ITS OWN SAKE, NOT FOR REWARD OR PUNISHMENT

This has been the theme of several of the shows we’ve considered

Please sit with this, as it’s a huge point, for isn’t much of ethics, and especially Christian ethics and theology, based on who we’ll please by our actions and what will happen if we displease?!

ii) Easter is about ultimate love; many of the mostly Korean shows I’ve watched – including some I’ve not really talked about here – have also been. What is the greatest love? Why is this often limited to romantic or perhaps parental love?

iii) We have many stories about non humans – often superbeings – becoming human

who are weaker, who suffer, limitations, shorter life, and our feelings

In No Tail To Tell ep 6, a magical fox gives speech about becoming human: she is prepared for the challenges, even disappointments of being human

What can we learn about humanity via those entering it who were once outside?

The choice and experience of becoming human at the heart of the gospel

How can we retell that in a new way, without going over sin, guilt and gore and punishment?

 

Thank you for bearing with me and my questions. I want this to be a place where we are free to ask them, and not to be fixed or taught at, but to grow in new understanding

Blessings, do reach out – and good night for now

Next time is May 17^th – Mermaids, David, or Hell?

Elspeth   betweenthestools@hotmail.co.uk

Why I’m not a Unitarian

 

There was not long ago an article in the Inquirer entitled “Why I’m not a Quaker”. This is offered in the same spirit, as an invitation to critique and see ourselves from an outside lens.

 

 

I’ve been around Unitarians for 20 years, in different communities. I’ve noted a penchant for claiming many, throughout history, as being under that umbrella. Despite my regular attendance and sometimes involvement, I can’t be classed as such. Here is why: (I save the largest, most pertinent reason until last).

 

 

I’ve found Unitarians to be often a self congratulatory community, with more than one sermon being quite like the Pharisee’s prayer – Thank God (whom I probably don’t believe in) that we’re not like other denominations. I’ve noted a sense of intellectual superiority, and certainly of spiritual advancement, over the theistic, miracle believing, sacrament practising, Bible teaching Christians. I have my critiques of many flavours of that too, but I share many aspects of their faith and dislike hearing them patronised, if not rubbished.

 

 

I’ve witnessed hierarchy: the use of gowns and triple decker pulpits, the giving of and awe for people with Titles and High Roles. That feels ironic, given the nonconformist genesis of Unitarians away from the established churches.

 

 

My first Unitarian service was on the theme “Are we really as diverse as we claim?” The answer is no; like other groups, Unitarians’ beliefs are in a small bubble of what’s accepted. I knew that my statement of a risen Lord, as later confirmed, was an anathema by definition to most Unitarians. Hence I found myself avoiding Unitarians at the times of year that I would most want to be in church – the times of celebrating the fulcrums of my faith, Christmas and Easter. And I knew that this meant something wasn’t right, and this wasn’t a denomination that I could be fully part of.

 

 

I miss the supernatural and mystic element so central to much faith here.

It worries me that many Unitarians don’t pray, nor want to speak of God.

 

 

I’ve been surprised that despite its claims to think independently, that I’ve found Unitarians to be conformist. They have added to, not questioned, the climate emergency narrative. Caring for the Earth – absolutely; but has anyone stopped to question the ‘woke’ agenda? Similarly, around the pandemic, I  witnessed nothing but adherence to its measures, rather than ask what was really happening, or where was the real evidence for them being necessary?

 

 

On the same day, I went to the annual Julian lecture, about being beloved, belovable, and capable of beloving, given by Brian Thorne, a Christian psychotherapist. It moved me to tears, and remains one of the best talks that I have heard. That night, I heard another talk by the then Unitarian President.

The contrast was very telling, and there was no love of God, or even love.

 

 

And that brings me to the crux (something missing from Unitarianism): the love felt among congregations. No, I have not met all of you, and I am grateful for the kindness that I did receive. But I know I’m not alone in noting that Unitarians are often formal, embodying the British stiff upper lip. Pastoral care doesn’t feel a strong point. My erstwhile minister seemed dismissive of feelings – those of my distress around how I’d been treated – and said they can’t be proven. That, for me, proved my point.

 

 

When I repeatedly reached out in circumstances I’ll not spell out, but that were both acute and chronic and serious, I felt a dwindling interest. I was told that my local congregation had no ‘mandate’ for financial assistance, urgently needed. That legal jargon was used as a first response worried me. I was apparently the first ever to have enquired! I was shocked that no-one seemed to pick up what was really happening and at stake for me, but then alarmed that when someone apparently did, that there was a threat of ‘safeguarding’.

 

 

I took some pains, and do again, to explain that safeguarding only protects the organisation and professional from supposedly blame. It keeps no-one else safe. It passes vulnerable people up a chain to ever less suitable persons culminating in law enforcers, infantalising them by taking agency away because they are deemed to be at risk. In such circumstances, the persons concerned should be the first to be consulted, and to give permission – so much of abuse is about things done to us that we don’t allow, and much abuse happens by safeguarders. The irony should be clear.

 

 

I was given lots of policy, of what isn’t done, and in looking up the complaints procedure of the General Assembly, that it is designed to not hear many of the most pertinent issues potentially brought to it. That reminded me of certain government departments, whose legal arm admitted this. It feels a policy driven, bureaucratic group, not realising that to offer real and meaningful care, you need a crucible that isn’t about boundary and policy and formality, and where we spend more time putting away after a service than in real fellowship.

 

 

The official website doesn’t even understand cookie law and ethics: they’re perfectly safe and we’re using them, says the banner, 22 years after the main applicable law and 8 after GDPR was introduced.

 

 

 

It is my hope that Unitarians learn from this and take the opportunity to deeply consider. It is saddening that I’ve again stepped away and been hurt by my experiences among you, which had started well. As a literal nonconformist, I seek to forge new communities that I hope will do what I thought you did.

 

 

 

This was offered to the Inquirer, the national Unitarian magazine, who after initially editing it beyond recognition, then declined to publish in any form, citing their board and claims about my protection, which was rather ironic as they wanted me to give a full name, photo and bio-line.

 

A note re my other websites

I have received notice that these may be taken down soon – they have been as of Nov 2023

This affects parallel-spirals.webs.com

elspethrushbrook.webs.com

betweenthestools.webs.com

I am deciding what to do with this material, but please use this site as first port of call. I will update here when I can. My work and offerings will remain online in some way

Any queries, please contact me: betweenthestools@hotmail.co.uk

Temporarily, my new site is at https://elspethr8.wixsite.com/my-site-1 as a place holder until new domains are made

To mark 111 years since the British Titanic Inquiry

…I have prepared Act II of my play, The Jury In My Mind, as an audio performance. If you’ve purchased the book, you can have free access. I hope to make a full professional recording and live in person performances. Act 1 is already online for a while for everyone

If you’ve purchased my book in any format then email RushbrookBooks@outlook.com and I’ll send you a link

I’m aware that there’s another inquiry regarding the Titanic…I’m still marshalling my thoughts but as ever, am wary of deeper meanings. Is this anniversary and current event with the Titan not coincidence?

Titanic play performance for 111th anniversary 14-15th

My novella/play The Jury In My Mind is exactly a year old today, 10th April – the day that Titanic left Southampton for its only voyage. Between the 14th and 15th, straddling time zones and days, the ship floundered.

I said that it would be performed a year on – and it’s happening online at that time, this weekend.

I’m going to give a one woman performance….it will be available for a limited time from Friday 14th at 11.40pm BST for free, and then to subscribers, and those who buy the novel (print or download). If you’ve already bought it, you can listen for free anytime, but please tune in to help drive traffic to the podcast

It was all recorded on the weekend of the voyage but part 2 will be available in the summer, during the time of the official inquests

It will be on my podcast channel, Acast, which I use for my audio on here

https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/the-jury-in-my-mind-act1

Please get in touch for more information

I am still looking to have it put on in a theatre…would yours be interested?

Please email me on RushbrookBooks@outlook.com (also the BetweenTheStools email is fine)

A-ha and other movies

https://play.acast.com/s/between-the-stools/a-ha-soundtrack-to-our-lives

Due to my novel launch, I’ve stockpiled other thoughts for a while, except if they are on service themes.

The three things I wish to speak of today are all recently released films – and a new release of my own.

The Duke was an unexpected surprise, for this people pleasing comedy starring a pair of national treasures in a true story about stealing another had the issue of TV licensing at its heart, and showed up the injustice of this outdated bullying levy. I wish that it had gone far further in questioning the door to door extortion by the BBC, and the expectation of having to prove that you don’t contract with someone. Unlike a Belfast paper I’ll not dignify by naming it, the removed right of implied access is not a legal loophole, it’s fact exposing the legal fiction and regaining our rights from this manupulative status quo. I question the message of television, especially its news, more than ever, and since I wrote a piece on TV licensing half a decade ago. Surveillance in the name of subscription is not the answer.

Bernadetta was a shock, but not all unpleasant. Every film magazine I read portrays this period tale about nuns as a romp, but it was traumatic and violent – which neither Picture Recommends, Empire nor Little White Lies warns about. The other women at my screening – all strangers – met in the toilets for a post-trauma meeting, feeling highly harrowed. I didn’t want to talk about it, and yet it was compelling. I want to ensure that potential viewers are warned, but I also want to saw that it was memorable – not for just being upsetting or rude. It had the effect of the film in my novel, Parallel Spirals, with which it shares much material. There seemed to be something profound, as I see it as a story of the body – its denial, all its uses, and then its reclamation. It exposes evil rather satisfyingly, and allows the supernatural element to be possible, rather than decrying it as some modern biographers have done. I might even see it again – I’ll be interested in DVD extras. Just be prepared to hide your face in one scene especially and book energy healing and counselling right after the screening.

A-ha the movie is a band documentary made by Eeyore. I’ve followed this trio since the mid 1980s, and they have been an especial influence on my own music. Discovering the film – shown in Britain for one night only at selected cinemas – elicted a squeal and took as much determination as A-ha did to come to London to get to it. But it was balloon bursting… there were strong hints that the band didn’t really get on, had threatened to split up even more often than their 2 official break ups, and that some favourite songs were hybrids foisted on their vying writers by producers. Worse still, the albums I consider their finest – before their mid 90s first hiatus – were dismissed as dishonest U2-esque impersonations to react against the manufactured boyband image. Perhaps that is why the non single offerings of East of the Sun, West of the Moon and Memorial Beach are so rarely played live. I enjoyed seeing the snippets of their famous signature pop videos – the animated ones by Steve Barron that helped win them attention – and there were moments of reliving the joy I felt at seeing them live.

What it has most provoked in me was to at least make public my own homage to A-ha – a song about them the last time I thought they’d finished as a group. In under 7 minutes, I take you through 25 years of pop history, but also my own with Norway’s famous export.

I’m going to post it here with the words by the end of the month, along with some updates on the novel

Here it is:

https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/a-ha-soundtrack-to-our-lives

The title comes from the T-shirts on some German fans at their supposed farewell concerts of 2010 “You wrote the soundtrack to our lives” – lyrics below

You hear the start of an early style concert; Scoundrel Days for the verse and chorus, and then the very different sounds to show their departure in style, ending with I Call Your Name into Memorial Beach…. back (after their first split) to what they were like pre 1994, and then the long outro of the 2010 Royal Albert Hall orchestral concert and Shadowside on their 10th studio album

(c) Elspeth Rushbrook 2012-22 – recording quality deliberate

I hope to make a video and release it commercially for the 40th anniversary

Soundtrack to our lives

Called from teen chores

Drawn by your chords

Joining the dots

Animating cartoons

Rips and wristbands

Swoon of boyband

I showed my independence

in resisting you

Was it likeness

sneaking solidarity

that began in the back of a car

While I laughed at mishearing

a truce I was nearing

transported by wheels

and the songs of A-ha

You wrote the soundtrack to our lives

You soared and hearts

and seared our cries

As we grew you did too

You wrote the soundtrack to our lives

You counselled: choose adventure over safety

Poetic riddles, soulful words

Now yeahs and oohs mix with grundgy darknesss

Distort ideas which are absurd

Estranged by your strangeness

Rabbit winds flew me by

Waiting for you to move back to Memphis

These locust years felt rather dry

I only saw how sweet it was

As night grew dark for all

We had our wings clipped

We writhed your snake twists

Called dying loves’ names

and felt cold as stone

Aurally tripped

memoir emotive

we travelled by trapdoor

til a lifeline is thrown

The strength of recall

from student to concert hall

Does not abate now the butterfly’s flown

You needed an audience and thanked us for finding you

I hope through you

I will find my own

You wrote the soundtrack to our lives

and seared our cries

As we grew you did too

You soared our hearts

You wrote the soundtrack to our lives

Wiating for her in darkness she glows

Untouchable angels in velvet repose

Emmerald neon comes out of blue

Stillborn by choice, in joy found by you

The Launch of The Jury In My Mind

Following our Titanic theme this year, this was a Between The Stools special event to launch my novella/play which commemorates the 110th anniversary of the day that Titanic sailed

Here is the trailer version (31st May):

https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/the-jury-in-my-mind-trailer

Here is an audio of the full event:

https://play.acast.com/s/between-the-stools/

https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/the-launch-of-the-jury-in-my-mind

I hope to post an edited version of the video soon – link coming

Further Titanic related services this Holy week 2022:

Thurs 14th 11.40pm-2.20am GMT* Silent watch night for Titanic/Maundy Thursday

Please note you don’t have to come for all of it. Just the music at the start and end will be available later

Friday 15th Sundown sermon: Sacrifice, or why I’m Cross with the Cross 7.28pm GMT*

Sat 16th Easter Eve Written reflection: The Inferno

Sun 17th Dawn words (pre-recorded) and 8pm GMT* service on Titanic: Death Is Not The End

*Note – we are now on British Summer Time, which is an hour later

Titanic themed posts will continue for a year

Go to this post for how to buy the book

NOW ON APPLE BOOKS https://books.apple.com/gb/book/id1618784574

The Jury In My…

A novella/play on t…

By Elspeth Rushbrook

Book Preview

Betweenthestools@hotmail.co.uk

The Jury In My Mind

A new novella/play on the Titanic

There will be a series of Titanic related posts here running up to the launch (see sidebar/tag cloud) including a weekly Lenten reflection and Easter services (Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun of Holy Week)

The live event will be a semi BTS service; it will be under an hour and include original music – the story has its own theme – and a reading and a talk about me and the Titanic

It will be recorded and posted on this blog, pinned, shortly after (allow a day or two for editing).

More information about buying the book below

Links to the trailers and launch event here

—————————————————-

You are about to witness a revelation

There is an inquisition that the world has never known

on the most famous sea disaster in living memory.

It has raged passionately on a daily basis,  yet has never been recorded or publicly attended.

Its location and contents have remained clandestine and undiscovered.

Until now.

The courtroom is in my head; the juror and victim: me.

I expect that everyone holds such a bar inside them regularly.

My jury has met frequently over a range of matters.

This is its bitterest and longest running case.

It remains unresolved.

I am anxious to settle this immediately.

The case is not about not scrutinising the actions of the White Star Line company.

Instead, friends and lovers, even God, are called to the dock

My case is within these perimeters, and yet independent of them.

It is a microcosmic view, not privy to the captain’s table nor the crow’s nest

This is an entirely personal claim, from one young woman’s experience of the voyage, and a tragedy of the most personal kind:

a double loss, the hardest of all to assimilate; the sharpest of two edged swords, which to my knowledge has not been told before.

This is a voyage of spiritual and emotional maturity.

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Where to obtain a copy

It is being printed by more than one source. There will also be a digital PDF download and ebook.

It is not immediately available in shops, libraries or sites like Amazon. It will be print on demand via online platforms and available when I do in-person events. I will not be selling the book directly otherwise.

One of the sources will be https://www.drivethrufiction.com/browse/pub/10068/Rushbrook-Books, digital download only (also my previous novel)

Another is Blurb where print, PDF, and ebook (apparently only for a year) are available

https://www.blurb.co.uk/b/11113693-the-jury-in-my-mind-colour Print & PDF

https://www.blurb.co.uk/ebooks/774853-the-jury-in-my-mind (colour inside)

There is a cheaper version with black and white interior https://www.blurb.co.uk/b/11157333-the-jury-in-my-mind-black-and-white

The ebook is on Apple: https://books.apple.com/gb/book/id1618784574

Others will be added here and updated as necessary

There will be ISBNs, depending on who’s printing it – some places auto assign one and if you send it back for revisions, the same version receives another. Hence I will wait before posting these here and it is not showing on Nielsen book data yet.

Like the Titanic had a guarantee group aboard the voyages to look for things to improve, I am doing the same. If you see any glitches or errors, please email me on RushbrookBooks@outlook.com

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I am open to speaking engagements around England (further will depend on restrictions and that travel expenses may prove prohibitive). Please use the above email or the contact form under ‘about me’

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Facts about the book

It’s 198 pages long, about half a kilo in weight, and c20x13 cm (5×8 in). Yes it should fit a letterbox, depending how third parties package it

It includes my hybrid novella/play (34,000 words), which has occasional colour artwork by me interspersed with the text on lovely glossy paper, and also

a short story, extending this one

an epilogue 20 years on

the Titanic and me (author)

Questions you might have – about the facts of the story

sources

my poem, on which the play’s musical theme is based

about me and my other projects

totalling 42,500 words = a unique independently made piece of art

Please note: this text is not suitable for performance – I have separate ones for stage and radio, and there will need to be an agreement with me, including a fee for using my work; but I’d be delighted if any companies are interested

It is self published by choice: I explain why here and in posts around it

I may also do a piece on costs; but printing and postage is pricey, and there have been thousands of unpaid hours in the production of this

I’m not interested in the mass market that outprices small businesses and makes losses just to get sales

The digital version isn’t much cheaper than the physical book because the same amount of work went into making it; you have the same product; and you’ve saved postage costs. If you want it printed, I recommend the professionally print and bound copy

I will be adding new artwork to https://www.redbubble.com/people/ERUSHBROOK/shop reflecting the pictures in this book

The music and launch audio recording are on https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools

The Jury In My…

A novella/play on t…

By Elspeth Rushbrook

Book Preview

Parallel Spirals sequel is now finished!

Yes, within the hour, I did my last save at the end of the document! It will be set and printed and given a final edit/polish before flying into the world. I don’t have a date for that and next year, I will publish my novel about the Titanic, The Jury In My Mind, to coincide with the 110th anniversary. So PS II may wait til after then.

There is going to be a third instalment of Parallel Spirals and some special extras, which I’ve also been working on

If you’ve not read my first novel yet, learn about it here:

www.parallel-spirals.webs.com

Hint about 2nd book’s cover. It’s going to be gold

Pinned post: open letters

AN OPEN LETTER ABOUT MASKS AND OTHER COVID-RELATED RULES

See also Are you distressing and discriminating against disabled and diverse people?

An open letter to Christians about covid Updated

CEASE AND DESIST ORDER re masks on trains

Sunday’s service

Will it be on Ancient Aliens or the town of the Ancient House (Ipswich)?

Come back at 8pm or later GMT (not live) this Sunday 30th August 2026 to find out!

Sunday’s Sundown Summer Solstice Service

For the first time EVER I’m changing the service time to 2100 GMT to coincide with sundown here, so we’ll watch it go dark together

I will say I am as yet awaiting the theme of the day beyond it being Summer Solstice, so sorry for the later reminder. It’ll not be live but will be posted and listenable then

Be planning your spot to see sundown from. Here it is due at 2122

Cambridge – the service

The picture is deliberately not of postcard Cambridge, but part of The Kite, taken by me

Welcome to Between The Stools on May 17^th 2026. It’s been a tough month for me – how has it been for you? I would like to open in prayer straight away today:

Mermaids and King David will be along anon; I’ve decided to begin the series of services based on places that I spoke of. The first place I would like to explore with you – ever with a broadly spiritual eye – is Cambridge. English, original Cambridge, in the west of the East, with its own character distinct from the rest of that region. The history I will speak of is not that of tourist guides – oft so self-aggrandising (read: university aggrandising). This will be a critical history.

I am fond of observing that we in Britain start our histories not with the coming of Christ, but of the Romans, ten years after His popular Ascension date (commemorated today, translated from Thurs.) But that misses out on the richness of the many centuries of human occupation before those tin and brush hatted invaders. If we’ve no Roman history – and Cambridge does – then we skip to the next set of European invaders (Cambridge had those too – St Bene’t’s is the extant evidence) and are usually able to make a start, if not new chapter, with the Normans (who left 3 special buildings here). Many places begin their chronicles with whether it was mentioned in the Doomsday survey 20 years after the invasion led by the man I prefer to call William The Bastard (a contemporary moniker).

Cambridge’s story prior to AD43, like elsewhere, is often just a few lines in a book or website. But I am wondering what and who those Romans overtook. Were they really the first to realise that a hill by the river was a good place to settle and defend? What of those hills just outside Cambridge, named for biblical figures and Pagan giants, Gog and Magog? They do not seem wholly natural to me, especially given the very flat nature of these Fenlands. I sense something kindred to Glastonbury’s Tor and to Burrow Mump, both in Somerset, which has fenlike Levels. Indeed, there are shared legends about the giants of the hills, who are said to sleep in them still… They are also the subject of modern Christian End of Times prophecy. They are linked with the biblical Nephilim and the final Good and Evil battles in Revelation (I may do a full study sometime on Gog and Magog).

We – or the spokespeople for the collective – seem to like to date our towns from when they became civilised. ‘Civilisation’ refers actually to the Roman process of creating urban centres; it is nothing to do with having culture, manners, and more thoughtful sensibilities, as that word has come to mean. We are aware of what the Roman idea of culture was – barbaric acts; and yet that word – ‘barbarian’ – is simply their term for those outside their realm. It is a moniker to wear with pride – yes Scotland!

The equivalent of ‘barbarian’ appears for a part of Cambridge later in this service; note how it is used to support negative changes impacting those people.

The university, tracing its official history to the coming of Oxford students in 1209, has been a very unequal force in this town for the past 800 years. (I recall being irritated by the banners in 2009 calling Cambridge by its Latin name which sounds far more like a city in Kent; and even more annoyed that some ministers use this word after their name and degrees on church noticeboards). And I’ll underscore that Cambridge was a town until living memory, receiving city status only in the 1950s. So to blogger Antony Carpen’s coined phrase “a city run like a market town” I respond: the latter is essentially what Cambridge is – a county town of about 100,000 (I see that in the last census, this is now half as much again: almost 50% growth in 25 years). City status used to be awarded only for having a cathedral, but Cambridge is in the diocese of Ely, as it has been since that see was created around 1100 – a century before its scholars were noted. No, the size of King’s College chapel doesn’t create it a cathedral, for that is the seat of a bishop, and mother church to a large area, open to all; KCC is the place of supposed worship for a private, enclosed community. The two are diametrically opposed and it’s why I so disapprove of Oxford having a chapel which combines those roles.

I wonder if it’s spin when books – such as the Jarrold “more than a guide” of the 1990s – claim that relations have never been better between town and gown. I am tempted to guess on which side of that divide the authors – or the publication’s sponsors – are. Or on that of the development-pushing, profit-benefitting firms that may choose to label themselves as ‘town’, whom we will soon meet. But what of the real residents, who may or may not have studied here or anywhere? Belonging to a group whose ancestors were hung following clashes with the colleges, whilst students received royal pardon, is pretty difficult. Studying a map of the city shows just how much those 31 colleges geographically dominate Cambridge, and how resentful and alarmed citizens must have felt as these institutions started appearing, often in clumps of about half a dozen, especially as houses and places of work were demolished to create those exclusive quads. King’s took away the 14^th parish church, St John Zachary, and much of its parish, including an important street. Then, having cleared this vast area, it sat – save the chapel and old quad – empty for 3 centuries, only being completed in the 1800s. The next royally founded college – Trinity – also subsumed others. Henry VIII wasn’t sure that he would allow the colleges to continue under his dissolution (read: massive land and power grab operation); perhaps by persuading him to instead set one up, with a garth as great as his girth and an effigy of himself in the gatehouse that’s also rather like him, the university was saved.

Was Trinity a reaction to Wolsey’s foundation at Oxford – and before or after he fell from grace?

I’ll breathe and lurch aside to note that Oxbridge suppressed all other seats of learning in England (but not separate Scotland) until the early 1800s, when the university of Durham was born – another C of E institution, set up in the face of Catholic emancipation. (Of course, many colleges were founded by Catholics, pre-reformation, and functioned under that church for up to 3 centuries). Hence, their boasts about having all the famous influencers is moot, since there was no other seat of learning in the country for them to study and work. (I later learn of a college at Salisbury which survived until the reformation – is this oft-stated fact about the suppression by Oxbridge thus true, or does it only apply post 1500s?)

Today, it’s not just the considerable college grounds that are owned by these corporations (which they are, as the 90s St John’s guidebook begins by stating); they are also landlords of places that we might consider ought to be public. Several streets of usefully placed dwellings are not for the public to live in; these are ‘external staircases’ – ie student houses, owned by the college exclusively for their own. Walking to Grantchester, a well-promoted village on Cambridge’s outskirts, I noted that the meadows I passed had signs with college badges on, showing they had ownership and curtailed public rights to roam on them. And it is possible to reside in Cambridge as a nonstudent and find that you live on college land. One college I had hitherto warmed to is a landowner that is involved in something negative in living memory. I will come to this in Part II.

But first, I want us to skip forward three hundred years past the university’s initial founding (note my deliberate lack of capitals for the U and C words) to something else that I write with lower case: the reformation. It was prevalent here, and some churches are quick to point out those from that era who preached in their pulpits, as if the other 800 or even 1200 years of their tenure have not produced other notable divines. Are you more proud of Latimer than, say, living poet and mystic Malcolm Guite?

I had heard that whereas Oxford was the conservative institution, Cambridge was the radical place of learning – at least, from the 1500s. Elizabeth I liked Cambridge; it taught what she wanted her people to learn, so much that she founded a similar college in Dublin so that the wayward (read: independent and Catholic) Irish might also be civilised and learn it too. It was a propaganda tool, a way of influencing learned and potential influencers, to make sure that the right kind of people became well known and made the right kind of influence.

In the Round Church – one of only 4 surviving parish churches of that shape from Norman times – is a Christian heritage centre. It was a living church until the 90s when the large evangelical congregation decamped to empty and more capacious St Andrew the Great. You can watch a video on saints and scholars – do I agree with the implied overlap? – if one doesn’t mind the modest fee to enter. I sometimes do.

It took a long time for me to learn that my own heritage – and where I am now, spiritually – is not protestant. There are not only two choices of Christianity: the reformation was a three pronged fork. And my tradition was the Radical tine, not that of Calvin and Luther, who kept religion with the secular authorities, in a hierarchy. No, that is the better famed magisterial reformation. I heard a student respond to one of his don’s just-preached sermons as ‘magisterial’. I didn’t go back to St Catharine’s after that. I am not into sycophancy any more than I am the ‘magisterium’. This word means teaching with authority, and is behind the secular legal position of magistrate, as well as the position of the Catholic church having the alleged god-given right to interpret the Bible for its flock. There is both the word for teacher (from of course, Latin) and being greater in the etymology and history of this word. Yes, I would have been a separatist with Robert Browne – whose incendiary tract spoke against both meanings – although I am gutted to learn where he ended up. ‘Magisterial’ has also the meaning of pomposity and arrogance. I am not sure that I’d be flattered by such a pronouncement on my preaching – unless the double meaning was intended by that student?

So Cambridge, as I understand, wasn’t so radical: it was radical against the hitherto monarchical catholic church (ie the sole church and spiritual dominant force). But it wasn’t really so radical in the sense of the true meaning of that word – which I learned from Malcolm Guite’s exposition of his own Advent poem – it means ‘root’ (from Latin ‘radix’). The Radical Reformers were those who went back to their roots – the early church of the Bible – and wanted a reset to what they thought Jesus had taught and instigated. I’m aware of just how far both Anglican, Catholic and other chains have come from that. And the ironies of the reformation are far from wasted on me. Now the monarchs, who had become also head of the spiritual realm of their nation, had new ideas and they wanted those expounded and expressed, and no other sort. This not only meant that Catholic ideas and worship were driven underground – but still survived, to revive three centuries on – but that the Dissenters were too. These latter were not pleased at how the new church in the land was developing; it did not reform enough and it had too many of the flaws of the Old Faith, including persecution.

As I stated three years ago, the protestant children of Henry VIII executed as many as their infamous Catholic half sister; and their father killed the equivalent population of his major cities combined. The man who made the reformation possible – although was not really a proponent, he was a puppet – committed mass atrocities.

I am sensing – do tell me (nicely) if you think this is wrong – that Cambridge university hasn’t really ever welcomed truly radical thought, but only ideas within a set bubble (except science). Its current list of undergraduate degrees is traditional, missing several standard subjects that one would expect a university to offer today – there’s natural sciences, but no media or creative arts. You can ‘read’ – I always said ‘studied’ for my degrees – Anglo Saxon or Classics, but not Theatre of Film.

Jesus said that tradition is worn lightly, and no-one need stand unwillingly in its shadow.

I am referring to a fairly recent college prospectus, but could our Lord also say that?

The context in the prospectus was regarding the compulsory wearing of a gown to ‘formal hall’ ie dining, and the saying of Latin grace. Why? Are they truly thankful for food? Why use a dead language, just to sound elite as the Romans intended it? Why do you need to wear a cape at table?

I ask this of clergy at the Lord’s table. I refer back to that statement – could it come from Jesus? What tradition could that mean, and does that mean that one can opt out – or do you just not join in?

Cambridge university claims that it is diverse and inclusive nowadays, as any society and church should be. But can handpicked meritocracy ever be inclusive? And is it right, and Christlike?

Please sit with that before we have a break for a meditation.

————————-II————————-

Reading about old Cambridge, you are likely to come across the word Barnwell, the eastern suburb. Barnwell Abbey was just behind St Andrew the Less church on arterial Newmarket Road. Further from the centre on this same route is the little leper chapel of Mary Magdalene at Stourbridge, linked with this now missing monastery. The monks at St Giles church – patron saint of lepers – decamped to Barnwell for more space in the early 1200s. The association with outcasts continued. In the 1800s and beyond, Barnwell is spoken of as a dubious area, a slum, a place of immorality and vice. These are the ‘barbarian’ kindred that I referenced in part I. Today, some of this neighbourhood is known as The Kite due to the shape of its outer roads – better than Norwich’s Golden Triangle (which is a beige parallelogram). It lies broadly between the green spaces of Christ’s and Parker’s Pieces and Midsummer Common, and East Road. Beyond that is alternative, multicultural Mill Road, where the workhouse and cemetery were sited. Thus it too was a place for Outside people and places.

My impression is that at least historically, The Kite wasn’t part of the university’s Cambridge. No, its staff nor students would not reside nor be encouraged to go there. This was the area – unlike much of the Cambridge I know – which was for the long term, perhaps lifelong resident, and those whose lives were largely lived within the shape of that uneven flying parallelogram. It presented an alternative centre, for the amount of shops and pubs and some arts in that zone were self sufficient.

Cambridge’s Theatre Royal, now Buddhist centre, is here; the street was the former address of the region’s new writing theatre. Travelling troupes performed at fairs on nearby Stourbridge common.

A plot near this once famous site was chosen for the city’s sewage pumping station and ‘destructor’.

An act of 1736 prohibited theatres inside the town boundaries of Oxbridge. In the late 19^thC, the theatre became a mission hall for revivalist preaching. Most Nonconformist denominations are in this corner, some in multiple; all are on outwith the town boundary of the King’s Ditch, extant in 1810 (post Roman Cambridge wasn’t walled but was wooden gated). The Catholic church is also outside it.

Beyond Barnwell Gate, past Christ’s college, was called Preacher Street and Ward in the later 16^thC, and it led to the site of the Preaching (ie Dominican/Black) friars, who were taken over by Emmanuel College.

This makes me question the way that this area is often described in more ‘official’ sources, at least until recently, and what they – the developers and heavily university-influenced council – planned to do to it. Since the enclosures of the early 1800s, Jesus college was ‘awarded’ much of the area, which made possible what happened late in the next century. Its two main streets – Burleigh and Fitzroy – refer to other large and private landowners. Between the defined green spaces, the once open area became a dense network of nineteenth century housing.

Ellice Hopkins worked with working men about a century before the shopping mall we’ll soon meet. She went into pubs alone – which was generally not done as a lady, especially one of a respectable class – but could gather a few hundred men from them to listen to her. The blogger calling himself Cambridge Town Owl (Antony Carpen) says that he had expected to be annoyed by the daughter of an academic going to presume, patronise and preach to the poor, but that her work – told in her own book and that of others – impressed him.

Ellice said that pubs were prevalent because people couldn’t socialise at home: they were cramped, dirty, not private. Perhaps we can sympathise if we’ve ever felt that our home is too scruffy or busy to entertain in. Hence the public house gave people a place to meet; and she pointed out that conversation was difficult at these men’s places of work, which kept them busy and discouraged, if not punished, conversation. (I’m thinking more about the critique of work and Jeremy Bentham, who went to Oxford, and the factory/prison he designed – I am sure I will share that with you anon). Pubs also meant that many people from different households could come together, and potentially share ideas and concerns. This is what I think is really of concern to the institutions around, and to the hierarchical employers, perhaps afraid of left wing ideals and nonconformity being spread.

Ellice is said to have listened as much as she talked to these men. She heard how not having respectable clothes was a bar to attending work and church, and how that gambling in pubs was a way to raise money to obtain them. I am not sure that I echo her call to open coffee houses instead of pubs, and I question why one must be in a place or work or worship. I do share her critique of government and the aberration of Christianity. Ellice now sits among Cambridge’s heroes and heroines, and others such as Florence Ada Keynes took up similar work after her.

Another example of the university’s undue influence at that time, and its prejudice – which still has impact today – is the siting of the railway station. If you have ever used it in Cambridge, you will be aware of the long walk needed – I’d set aside half and hour for an average paced person – or the necessity of paying for further public transport. It is oft cited that the university feared that its students would ride to London for prostitutes if the station was closer to town, and to them. But tradition states that scholars need not to travel so far – weren’t they found in the areas of ‘vice’ we were just thinking of, lying between the town ditches and the railway line? What really was the reason for this rather backward and inconvenient decision? Oxford’s station is far more agreeably sited, although it tramples the footprint of its lost but greatest church – Osney Abbey. Now, there are two parkway stations, one of which is close to Cambridge University Press and the tech and pharma giants that the city is keen to attract.

My final thought, before a round up, is about the history in living memory of Kite. Why in the mid 1900s did the council and university eye this area – already filled with homes – as a place for a great (as in huge) mall and carpark? This galvanised residents into an effective pressure group. The plans were stalled and scaled down, but the Grafton centre – named for a lord – went ahead. It divides the city centre and its shopping heart in two, although both the historic and the…other…are filled with brand name retailers and restaurants. They Jezebel-eyed the Eden Baptist chapel and made it into an eatery – named for the am dram company, filled with famous actors whilst they were here – and gave the Baptists a new home round the corner. Point?!

I wonder if the Grafton centre wasn’t just a way of being modern and increasing commerce; that it may have been a deliberate attempt to dissipate this cohesive community, so different from the city of brochures. It didn’t work, for the Kite has an active social history and resident’s group today. In the now failing shopping centre, there is a shop unit about the future of the area, now considered a heritage zone. Instead of shutting its undesirable drinking dens, there’s a campaign to preserve pubs.

A closing thought: that yes, these different Cambridges may supposedly co-exist now, peaceably, but I reiterate thoughts I share on my other blog. Cambridge is land of Don’t Walk On The Grass – even the current tourist information website says, as a justification for visitors’ meekness and obedience: “Behind those walls are people trying to educate young minds”! I found that derisible. But some modern colleges advertise their members actively lying on the hallowed lawns – no such set of silly privileges at Robinson. Churchill tried to influence by setting up a college in his name to promote science – why should a prime minister tell us what to study? Any why the preferential treatment of that discipline? (Answering this will bring us back to Bentham, who I am sure to dissect with you when I’ve finished reading about him). The city’s vast bookshops have limited intellectual breadth. I couldn’t find any books about the critique of work; nor of covid, nor tax, nor climate change; views of Trump or Putin were predictable. So I say again – is Cambridge really a place for new thought, for questioning what we hear, or is it a place of promoting certain ideals to a certain class, at least intellectually?

I hope this might inspire you to look further into the people and places I’ve named, and think on the values I’ve touched on. I’ll close with a question: What might persons of faith’s response be to an area like Barnwell? How should we respond to social injustice and inequality? How can we discern the true histories of places, beyond popular spin, and find truth?

Next service on Summer Solstice, 21^st June… I may even change the time as a one off [I did, to 9pm, for sundown]

Otherwise, I’ll aim for the end of each month unless there’s a special event to tie in with or I know I’m not around

Do reach out to me, Elspeth, on betweenthestools@hotmail.co.uk

No, I wasn’t sponsored by Malcolm G, Robinson’s, or Kite.

Is it inappropriate to end this by telling you that I turned Cambridge down?!

Good Friday 2026

We’re continuing our thoughts from a Korean TV lens.

Heavenly Ever After is another very enjoyable, moving, and profound Korean drama.

We began thinking about it on Tues, March 31^st in a birthday post.

Today, we traditionally think about Jesus’ death – all day, if not week. Having recently encountered the death of loved ones, I particularly strongly felt repugnance at doing so for Jesus, as we would not do that at a funeral. We think on their life, and celebrate it and its meaning. We do not go over the means of their death. I am again asking: what really was the meaning of that life, and death – and not the meaning attached via the repetitions of early Christian thinkers.

Hence I am again stepping away to peer at the significance of Jesus via completely different narratives. We’re usually told that the events of today stop us from going to Hell, and giving us the chance to be in Heaven; we’re told that tomorrow, Jesus will go to preach in Hell. Via this series, we will go there also, which features the usual sacrifice and sin – but I won’t be saying the usual!

In Heavenly Ever After, the president of the Heaven Support Centre (played by Chun Ho-jin) says that this is not a permanent home; it is a place to work things out that were not healed or resolved on Earth. There is the threat that one may still fall into Hell, and there’s a list of rules to keep, or you will earn berry points towards the Other Place… (see picture above)

Which is utter rubbish, as I’ll be reasserting again this weekend. We are safe in the arms of Jesus in Heaven; today’s work is about power over death, sin, Hell and the forces of evil. Repeat that!

Heavenly Ever After is a journey about love of different kinds – animals, family, partners (but notably, not friends). Hae-sook is given the opportunity for great healing and growth, with lots of quirky East Asian humour on the way. It’s powerful and spiritual, and occasionally, horrible.

I will need to think a little about the horrible episode – 5 – which comes with a health warning and rather mars the show; but I won’t be posting any nasty pictures, clips, or written descriptions. That episode makes me angry, for it casts a shadow over the otherwise very recommendable drama, and it also has some alarming theology at its heart, which is implied to be just. Even the CEO of Heaven – we don’t ever meet God in the series – says that the punishment is precise, and that we must trust the system. Perhaps that line would please traditional Christians who believe in Hell, and want to believe that the God in charge of such horrors is just and good, and still worthy of our devotion – on pain of our slipping and being sent to the Other Place.

I am appalled and I’m angry. I’m angry at the godless places of torment without even His supposed wise judgement (it is automated in this show!), and a Heaven without His presence. I’m angry that here, as with The Good Place that we looked at two years ago, the devils have all the power. It is they who torture, and they enjoy it, thinking up new ways to do so. In Heavenly, they think up ways to match the crime, and these clearly seem to reflect the writers’ views. It is not that I disagree with some of the crimes being heinous, especially against animals, who feature heavily in the show. (A very beautiful point is where an abandoned dog pulls his former owner out of the fires of Hell). But eternal suffering makes no sense. It also makes the torturers evil – and this would mean God himself, if he ordered it, which I don’t think he does. It makes God subordinate to fallen angels, it means that the balance of the world is ‘perfect’ with utter unchecked evil meting out punishment.

And thus of course, that is no real perfection at all, and makes the whole sacrificial atonement theory – so relevant to today’s event – utter nonsense. For the god who tortures cannot be a sinless sacrifice, and nor can the god who requires it. Note my lack of capital G for that false god.

Devils punishing may be a popular medieval painting motif, but it is not biblical. Many of us are aware that the church used such images and – could we honour it by calling it a ‘doctrine’ – to control the populace. Some even think that the hell narrative was a conscious invention to that end.

The Bible speaks of the Devil and his angels being thrown into the Lake of Fire forever (Mt 25:41, Rev 20:10). The torturers are not those demons. No, they are the recipients of torment. That verse in Revelation has been skewed. (I am still thinking on the story of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16. What is the source of ‘torment’ Lazarus in the underworld, and was it meant to be literally what happens to us all? And as I read on in Matthew 25, I’m quite disturbed, for it does speak of us being eternally punished, and in the words of Jesus; and what of Rev 20:21? We will need to have a Bible study on this – help, Lord, what can this mean?! This surely cannot really be You?)

Let me get straight: torture isn’t punishment. That implies that it is just or justified. Hell being a place of torture is not about ‘just deserts’. And could anything we do really merit unending horror?

Hell is fruitless punishment, for there’s no restoration, and no point – it is cruelty, under the pretence of some kind of just desert, which it cannot be.

In Heavenly, it’s less just than our earthly legal system, for there is no judge and no appeal.

As HEA’s president of Hell admits, what is considered sinful has changed over time (this point also came into The Good Place); here, it reflects personal opinion.

Our protagonist, after being deemed worthy of Heaven, even though she was a loan shark in life, falls from supposed paradise after earning 6 hell berries. These are given for small misdeameanours: swearing, hitting, hair pulling, and the one that finally tips the balance: attacking a vending machine. I reiterate that Hell then has power to appear in Heaven in a terrifying and unstoppable manner, and cart our heroine off to their place. This is utterly wrong in all senses.

When faced with the borderline scales of Hell, Hae-sook offers to take the weight of her honorary daughter Young-ae’s sin. It was touching, and christlike, but also galling. What does that phrase ‘take the weight of our sin’, so familiar in Christianity, really mean? Here, it is seen as literal, not by a low to no sinner, but a person who has done evil on Earth and led this younger woman into following her into it. The devils look on, willing our protagonists to fail the weight test and be handed over to them. Is our God watching scales, hoping they tip – in whose real favour? The weighing of scales and the arbitrary cut off point showed that this doctrine is as horrible as is is ludicrous.

We are asked to see her husband’s voluntary pursuit into Hell to be an act of great love; and his leaping into a pit of fiery liquid to save her to be the ultimate. But how does his being scorched so horrifically save Hae-Sook? What evil, and I say again, what evil presence would be sated by that? And would they honour the apparent bargain – her soul for yours? In our human bodies, we can only suffer so much before we pass. The firey tub would swiftly have sent Nak-joon to the next world, a place without suffering or death. So isn’t it extra sick that these hellish beings want their victims to be in a place where they can’t die, but to suffer continuously.

I refer back to that Lake of Fire in Revelation, and it feels just for such beings – if there be such.

Making today, Good Friday, as being about Jesus stopping some of us from the fate I’ve just described isn’t Good. Having Jesus be the Son of the God who sends to such a place – did he even create it?! – is not Good. Isn’t today really then about judgement and obedience? I want to again question that as the fulcrum of our faith. What did Jesus’ death really achieve? And I’m not implying nothing, I am asking an earnest question which can right away be answered: not what Anselm thought. How is it ultimate love to suffer in someone’s stead – does anyone need to suffer? If Jesus is called our Saviour, shouldn’t he have destroyed Hell and the Devil, rather than save via self sacrifice that still allows the aforementioned to run rife?

I do believe that Jesus was and is God, a God who is good, and just, and the greatest force in the universe. I do believe that something of cosmic importance happened with his death. I’m just using these TV shows to flag up that it can’t be what we are tradionally taught, nor what the shows teach.

I will be back on Sunday to think of the essential part 2 of this weekend – the coming back.

For now, I offer again my 7 Sayings words and original music. See you at 8pm BST on 5th

7 Sayings

Words and my original music based on the sayings of the cross

Picture of Norwich from St James Hill by me (not offered in person this year)

If you listen when it is posted, the sun sets in this time zone as the music plays

Back at 8pm UK time on Easter Sunday for a service (not live)

NB The webs website on the poster is no longer active

More Beautiful Than Heaven

Celebrating maturity and roles we play

Tuesday March 31^st  2026

Holy Week is our birthday – and this year is our 7^th Easter. My first Between The Stools post was on Table Turning Tuesday, and my theme on this special day (7 is perfect in biblical times) is related.

I would like to take this birthday time to introduce our Holy Week lens for this year. As ever, we’re looking at the Easter story through something else, and I won’t be saying or singing the usual things for this time of year, but questioning them.

We’ve stayed in South Korea throughout Lent, thinking about universal themes in its television dramas. I have already stated that I consider these 7 weeks a time for us to reflect on the world we live in and the one we’d would like to, and if the world is yet the one that Jesus came to make. We’ve thought about discrimination and hierarchy, the depiction of work, and I’ve had purple points pulling lessons from the shows that we might find helpful in our lives. For this final week of Eastertide, I am taking you into Heaven and the most powerful TV show I’ve seen, perhaps ever.

All the shows I mention are currently on UK Netflix. This one is made by Studio Phoenix and SLL.

The TV series of the holy week is Heavenly Ever After, although it can also be translated as [More] Beautiful Than Heaven. It has a senior lady as the heroine and romantic lead; it is the same woman as in The Light In Your Eyes. It seems that Korean society may be ageist, for both these series especially address that issue. Is yours and mine too? Hae-Sook is told by her husband that she looked lovely in her 20s when they met, gorgeous in her 40s, but now, at twice that age, she is the best of all.

And I love that; I immediately felt that much loved actress Kim Hye-ja had an appealing face and I was happy to go the distance with her. It is quite a journey!

In this story, she is soon widowed, then passes herself, and taken to a strange Heaven which I’ll be critiquing at the weekend. At the pearly…not so much gates as airport style security…she is asked which age she would like to appear for Eternity. Because of her husband’s comment, she says: 80. The youthful clerk is surprised – really? For her husband of many decades has, like almost everyone else in Heaven, elected to represent as young. And this decision is apparently not reversible.

Initially, the show is about that age gap and their discomfort with it, but they become comfortable and normative, and their story is a transcendent one, showing that soul connections transcend our physical years and even death. Love and life beyond death feel very apt at this time of year.

I’ll comment that 85 year old bedridden Nak-joon (Park Woong) is also appealing in his appearance and radiant – as least as much as his younger self. He shines from that bed that he has lain in for decades, and he’s a special soul. This joint protagonist contrasts with the work ethic I flagged and critiqued because he doesn’t work on Earth, but oddly, he does in Heaven. His wife, unusually for one born in the mid 20^th century, is the breadwinner, or rather, bread stealer; what she does makes that lovely mature visage seem rather different – especially when she’s doing it. I point out again that Jesus didn’t work conventionally either, and that Nak-joon ministered from his bed, to the seemingly very few. But Heaven noticed, and it mattered.

In our February service, I said that certain Korean actors often appear together, and that means trying out different roles and permutations. This was the first series where I saw a trinity of Lee Jung-eun and Han Ji-min with Hye-ja – all in The Light In Your Eyes and Our Blues; Ji-min was the star of Behind Your Touch. (You may note there are few Korean name permutations and that they follow a pattern – the first given name is their last name; there are few family clans).

In Heavenly Ever After, those three experiment within the roles that they play. Heroine Hae-sook has a sidekick/daughter, but in Heaven, she learns of their past connection: that the same person, much younger than her during this life, was (shall I spoil this now? Look away if you’d like to see the show and haven’t yet)…her real mum. Thus, she is reborn within Hae-sook’s lifetime and plays the opposite role. Hae-sook’s father comes back as Young-ae’s also. And Ji-Min…well, her character is a mystery. She, unusually, has no memory of her earthly life. Nak-joon feels compelled to rescue her, posthumously, and she feels familiar; she knows things instinctively; she has unique habits. She seems like a threat to their marriage and their sidekick/daughter relationship who also joins them in the holy house (Walsingham reference deliberate – where many will flock this week).

I’d like to point out that although past lives are not part of Christian teaching, that it is intrinsic to many other cultures and beliefs, and here in Korean Heaven (we see no other peoples), as on Earth, there’s a mix of Christian and Eastern religions, and I think that the blend, on principle, makes sense.

Whether or not you believe in past lives – and I now do – I think it’s possible to see different permutations within a relationship, perhaps as one person’s role seems to change; and also that we can have a sense of business or significance that goes beyond the apparent earthly level connection. This TV show is about having a heavenly perspective on our relationships. I do wonder whether we continue working on these posthumously, in the spirit world or back on our own. For it’s clear that the rather worrying Heaven in Heavenly Ever After is (like The Good Place) a place of working out.

How is all this relevant to Jesus’ journey to the cross, you may ask? Was he not in the temple today, whipping over market stalls of the greedy and unjust in that holy place? Why am I not speaking on that? Well, I did, 7 years ago; and I’ve been doing so all along – perhaps I could say in almost every blog post, since and some before. This whole Lenten piece, like every Between The Stools Lent sequence, has been questioning norms, pointing out injustice, and that includes in the way we do Easter and the way that we tell Easter. This year, I felt I wanted to tell a different story. Six years ago, I spoke out about why I’d left the Anglican church; this year, I felt I wanted to focus on higher perspectives and understanding, and on Heaven – the place we traditionally believe was reopened to us due to what happened this week, about 2000 years ago. The show also makes us think not only what sort of world we live in, and should, but what sort of afterworld, with what sort of God. And: Love.

Isn’t Love the heart of our Easter message? And shouldn’t that love influence the loves we have, not just with romantic partners and our children, but a whole range of people? As I am fond of quoting, (from Cassady Cayne) are we not here to expand our expression of love, to find new categories?

The show I’ve chosen was first aired on Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday last year (19/20^th April); it involves a literally undying love that involves going to Hell to save the one you love, in carrying the weight of another’s sin, sacrifice, coming back from the dead, and a second coming. And there are extraordinary acts of grace and very brave soul growth as something is finally faced and healed and assimilated. I wish for us to be on such a journey.

I hope you will join me in my weekend reflections, which also emanate from Korean drama, which involve priests and church

-a few written words and my 7 Sayings piece available from Sundown on Good Friday 3^rd April

-a service at 8pm BST on Easter Sunday (note, we’ve just changed our clocks in Britain)

NB – warning about the 5^th episode, which is hell horror (and will not be discussed or shown here)

Birthday Blessings! I hope to see you again!

Elspeth betweenthestools@hotmail.co.uk