Sacramental stories – healing at Holy Rood House.

Gillian Straine: In this episode of the Go Health podcast I’m chatting with the Reverend Elizabeth Baxter, who is the executive director of Holy Rood House, a place of healing and refuge in Thirsk, in Yorkshire. Elizabeth is pastor and chaplain to the community. She’s also spiritual director, theologian, and coordinates the centre for the Study of Theology and Health. In 2018, she received the Langton Award for Community Service awarded by the Archbishop of Canterbury in recognition for her many years of work in Holy Rood House, providing a space and a place for healing hope and encouragement.

Elizabeth, thank you so much for joining me here on the Go Health podcast to tell us a little bit about your life and your ministry. So this is not the first time we’ve met, right? We’ve been working together for a whole 5 years. The whole time I’ve been in the Guild. In fact, your wonderful husband, Stanley, who I know who was so instrumental in the healing ministry who passed away, sadly, it was about five years ago now, wasn’t it?

Elizabeth Baxter: That’s right, yes. He helped to get you to the Guild, didn’t he?

Gillian Straine: Yes, and what a force of nature. When I met him I remember. Ohh I got the job and I thought and then I met Stanley like this, this force of nature this this man, who’d networked and promoted the healing ministry his whole life. And we have work together since then haven’t we. Look tell everyone who’s listening, please, your background, your ministry and your life at Holy Rood House. How did you come to be the director of Holy Rood House and doing all the work you’re engaged with today?

Elizabeth Baxter: Yes, so it’s almost well. It was actually 28 years ago since we, Stanley and I, first came over the threshold at Holy Rood House in Thirsk, because the healing ministry in the area of Yorkshire, which was then in the Diocese of Rippon, it’s now called Diocese of Leeds and covers a lot more places, areas of Yorkshire, they set up a healing ministry back in the 70s through Bishop Maurice Maddox, who is well known for his very classic work, really on the healing ministry. And he was the Archbishop of York and Archbishop of Canterbury’s advisor for healing. And he wanted to set up a prayer group in Yorkshire, which he did, and Juliet Ramsden who was a trustee with the charity right from those times and right through until very recently, she passed away fairly recently. She was part of that and she linked Stanley and I into that part of the healing ministry when we used to stay over near to where Juliet lived.

At that time we were clergy in a tough area in in Leeds. It was all during the 1980s, a very difficult time. We worked very much on the edge with people, we were developing inclusivity in our language, in the way we worked with people. It was a very inclusive church, we worked through the terrible time of the AIDS crisis then and I work very much with young people. I was actually a youth and community worker before I was made a deaconess in 1984, I was deaconess then and then Deacon in 1987. So I was never a priest in Leeds, but working as a chaplain or the chaplain of Abbey Grange High School, which is a big school. I was there for 8 years. First woman chaplain, I think, I’m pretty certain, of a school in England.

Gillian Straine: The first woman in many aspects as well, you were one of the first ordained women too.

Elizabeth Baxter: Well, yes I was. I was a bit of a pioneer, and still am. I hope I’ll always be a pioneer. And yes, so we were working there. I was doing a lot of work with women and girls who were going through terrible, terrible times, so we were involved in the healing ministry in every way really working along with our Muslim and Hindu brothers and sisters. Seeking justice seeing healing as very much a justice issue and we had healing services then and we felt everything was about Jesus as healer and teacher always went together and how we understood the Gospels and so on. And meanwhile, while all that was going on and Juliet Ramsden and Morris Maddox and others were developing this, the work and which became The North of England Christian Healing Trust. That was the first title of the charity, and they set up a house called Spennithorne, Home of Healing, which was in Wensleydale, so I used to take people there who were in need of respite, I used to drive them there, leave them there, and go and pick them up and I also took the youngsters I was working with there, which was great fun. They thought it was very exciting this very posh house. They’d never seen anything like. They used to say oh all these servants they’ve got! It was really the women who came in with the trolley with tea and cake.

But so I, we were linked in in a way, at that level and Stanley and I used to think it would be really interesting to work in develop the healing ministry, but not there, it was not the right kind of place or culture, really. But starting afresh, but nevertheless we were very dedicated to the inner city, and we’d made a commitment to be there. We were there for 12 years and we were going to carry on working there.

But at the same time there was another community, the Sisters of the Holy Rood, an Anglican order of sisters who originally were in Middlesbrough and they way way back this is, during, you know, when there were a lot of industrial accidents and so on and they set up these women, this order to support the poor and they set up the first cottage hospital in Britain, which was wonderful. Anyway in the 70s they came to Thirsk, and they were no longer, well they were a healing order, but they were no longer doing what they had done, but they’re working in the community. Their order was coming to an end at the end of 1992. And as they were coming to an end our community in Leeds and the community at Spennithorne, home of healing, we kind of all, um, dovetailed, three communities and we were asked completely out of the blue if we would set up, start again for the healing ministry at Thirsk in what had been the convent.

Gillian Straine: Ah

Elizabeth Baxter: So that was 1993. Completely out of the blue, we, we came over incognito, the whole place was closed up. We just had a look and we knew, we knew we had to come and it was really, at the start it was just Stanley and I coming along to start it completely afresh. Very hard thing to do Gillian. It was really hard because our hearts were in the inner city and we were committed to…I did, I used to do a lot of door to door work. I loved it, loved it, it was hard and I loved the chaplaincy in the school as well and the young people, taking them on retreat and and all those things. But we knew it was right. So we came.

 Gillian Straine: And now, 28 years later, what is life at Holy Rood House like now? What do you offer and for what kind of ministry?

 Elizabeth Baxter: Well, yes, I mean in in strangely, in many ways it’s the same as it was when we started because what we decided was first of all, we had to be a community, people had to live on site. We had to create a healing community of hospitality, that is still the case now. We always have people living here. It creates a hub, it’s our home, it is where I live and people come, have always come to our home, the community’s home. So there’s a sense of when people have lost home, as it were, within their hearts and and lives, and sometimes literally, they can find something home at home there about… and that’s a theology as well as what they feel through hospitality, though, and then things that we said right from the beginning…I remember our very first leaflet that we got printed before we even moved in…we had very clearly ‘justice and peace and the integrity of creation’ World Council of churches, that little phrase that. We were always dedicated to healing, being about the environment, the Earth, you know, people, yes, of course, but healing was much bigger and it was always to do with justice, couldn’t you couldn’t really have healing outside of issues around justice, so people were unwell or we were unwell because maybe a political issues, social issues, relational issues. Things that were unjust that make us unwell and so on that kind of idea. So a lot of what we felt then is still there now and we also within a few weeks we’d became organisational membership. Members of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy straight away. So we set up a team of all volunteers and one member of that team is still with us now, hugely experienced and she’s our clinical manager. She appeared at the door the very first week we moved in and said, how can I help? And she’s been with us ever since. Hugely qualified and experienced woman. And a classical musician, actually. And she lives just down the road as she is a member of the Methodist Church.

Gillian Straine: Yes.

 Elizabeth Baxter: Of course I was a campaigner, as Stanley was, for the ordination of women and so when I arrived of course I was a Deacon, one of the permanent deacons then for some years of course and then became a priest in 1994, which was a very important model I think, a woman priest and a male priest together offering something in the area of healing and that changed everything, of course, because there were a lot of people who needed a woman priest particularly in the area of healing. So people had that opportunity to be ministered to in different ways, and we felt that was very important and it was linked for us with this story of the Holy Rood ‘rood’ Anglo-Saxon for cross of course. You have the roods – rood screens in the parish churches of course and other church. And you have John and Mary at the foot of the cross, so you have a man and a woman at the foot of the cross. And we felt there’s something about modelling this, this equality and diversity, and of course it’s much more diverse now with our understanding of course of sexuality and so on. But that kind of idea was very important right from the very beginning. The ecumenical side was absolutely essential. So, so we asked if we had a Catholic theologian Mary Grey to be a patron alongside Rowan Williams. It was originally a consultant here, then became when he was Archbishop became our patron. So we got the diversity and in our trustee membership of people from other denominations, which is very important.

Gillian Straine: And at Holy Rood today, I mean, I’ve been there Elizabeth and I have experienced the welcome, the cake, the meeting of other people. That sort of centre of gravity kind of feeling you have when you go to Holy Rood house. Of course, with the gardens and the ducks and the other animals is sort of a whole person experience, just even going there but I wonder if for people that haven’t been there whether you can paint a picture of the kind of stuff that goes on, maybe your yearly programme, your day-to-day life so people can sort of get a grip on what you what you mean by in practise.

 Elizabeth Baxter: Well, I suppose Holy Rood house understands something about healing as being what we breathe. It’s very much about ordinariness, it’s no big deal, so you know whether people are of faith or no faith as they crossed the threshold they’re embraced and accepted just where they are and and as they are, just as they, our guests have to accept us as we are. So there’s a kind of mutual woundedness but a mutual hope. So together we have a sort of daily kind of rhythm which is, I suppose, centred around hospitality, like the sharing of meals and coffees and and walking round the garden, prayer if people want to come into the Chapel space which we try to make very creative so that anyone can feel OK there and you know can have their own integrity there is very important and it’s kind of…I often say that it’s ordinary. People say no, no, no, it’s not ordinary, but I think it is ordinary. It’s about what life should be really. Somehow the extraordinary comes out of the ordinary. It’s very grounded and earthed we don’t do anything odd or we’re not wacky or anything like that. There’s a there’s a lot of laughter in the house. Thing is, of course, many people come to us where laughter disappeared a long time ago and the fact that she come across the threshold is is quite something.

So again, we have to take great care with how love is shown and how we respond. It’s very important to be alongside and be where people are but bring them in as it were and gather them into a kind of ordinary space which may be very different to their own space they’ve just come from cause that might be in a space that’s cause their ill health or might be domestic violence or addictions or all sorts of things or from where they’ve come from. But they come into our home and somehow something special happens in the ordinariness of everyday.

Gillian Straine: Can you tell us some stories about, you know the journeys people have made to get to your door, because some and this feels a bit sort of theoretical as well in a way and and and you and I have experience in this, but this this will sound really alien to some people I think as well. So could you just sit and fill in the blanks or colour in the picture, like some of the stories that you’ve heard they have led people to your front door there in Thirsk?

 Elizabeth Baxter: It’s very interesting, stories, isn’t it? Because Holy Rood House is a story. Everyday is a story full of different stories. We have different stories coming in today through email and telephone and so on and those of us who live and work there, we all have our story too. And some of those who live and work there came at a time of their own need, work through some real healing in their lives, and then wanted to continue to be with us, which is a wonderful thing. There are whole loads of reasons why people come to us – they’re relational in some way or another, really. So there may be major trauma, absolute crises to do with, you know, accidents on the road, um diagnosis, terminal illness, sudden bereavements, carers – exhausted through caring who we welcome and we care for them and I hope they feel cherished while they’re with us. Children who come to us, perhaps with a parent who are having to make decisions as to which parents are they going to live with because of a divorce and they come into a healing space where they perhaps work in the art room with our art therapist or someone like that or a children’s therapist. We have lots of different counsellors who work alongside people and to help make decisions, a lot of it’s about transition. We have a lot of clergy who come our way, I do make it very clear that you know we don’t go around with looking like clergy at Holyrood House. It’s very important we’re just Fred or Susan, we don’t say, oh this is the Reverend so and so, we have a lot of GPs we have nurses to all sorts of professional people who come to us at a time of brokenness, time when they’re off work. Lawyers, you know who have been off work for awhile and they need to come and have some proper help. But we’re just who we are, we’re not labelled, which is very, very important. I think a lot of people have no idea I’m a priest, for example, for a long time and they may, you know they will do if it’s important that they know or in the Chapel or something like that, that might become evident, but.

Gillian Straine: So all these different types of people are led to your door for some for one reason. And I love your image there, Elizabeth as well as you meet them where they are, this is not about job titles or qualifications it is a welcoming community. But they’re at your door for some reason. They are welcomed into the community there. Where do you start discerning how are you going to help someone? How does that process work?

 Elizabeth Baxter: That’s really important, Gillian, this sort of this discernment is very, very important, and I think we get it near right. We do our best to discern as wisely as we can. We are a community, so we will talk together. We have to be very careful of confidentiality. There’s only two of us, Caroline and myself who ever book anyone in so no one else books anybody in otherwise we get into a muddle, you know so we know a lot, quite a lot about people, and if we need to talk together to try and get it right, for example, which which room do we give them if they’re staying residentially? Do they need to be on the ground floor? Is it wise to put them on a in a room that’s close…if it says a woman who’s experienced serious abuse from maybe a man, maybe we keep the woman on a different floor to where there are couple of men staying or something like that. We have to think of all these things. It is about discernment you’re absolutely right, right from the beginning. So first of all, somebody might tentatively phone or email and what a lot of people say, it happened this week, everyday so far – it’s Wednesday, well Monday, Tuesday, today this morning even now. ‘You know I, I think you might be able to help me. I’ve been googling your website, it seem to resonate with what you put, it feels as if it’s the kind of place where I will feel safe. Um, you know,  would it be possible to come? Does it cost very much money? All these things and and so we start an email conversation and if possible as soon as possible a phone conversation to reassure people that yes we work as safely and as we can. That again, you know, were able to say to them look, when you come, it’s it’s our home, we welcome you, it’s okay, it’s not a surgery, It’s not clinical. We have a lot of people who’ve come, who come who’ve spent time on psychiatric wards, and they need just an ordinary place, that may not have worked for them, or it may have done. Sometimes we have people coming  directly from hospital and that maybe they need sort of convalescent time that may be mental health, it may be physical, an operation or something, and that and so they need a kind of bridging place before they go home, so we reassure them. This discernment is about checking things out, reassuring, now of course, sometimes we’ll have somebody who will say or intimate, intimate that perhaps they’re not well enough to come because part of the discerning is that yes, everybody is welcome but of course there are conditions. It’s not completely unconditional, so as long as somebody is safe enough in themselves and are not going to make it unsafe for others, they are welcome, but I think one of the things we always, we follow this all the time, we never say no, you can’t come. What were more likely to say is, I might be talking to somebody, I might say, well thing is Fred, it is wonderful that you contacted us. It would be great, we’d love to have you here. My suggestion is you go back to your doctor, checkout your medication, maybe get back on it and then phone me again in about 6 weeks or so, let me know how you’re doing, we’re waiting for you to come, we want you to come so we kind of always…there’s no negatives. We don’t, when we do our emails, we don’t put ‘but this’ or ‘no that’ or it’s always about hope and it’s always believing that the person themselves are going to find their own healing. We provide the resources that may be needed, the space and also the professionalism and also just the community sense of belonging for people. And of course you don’t have to be unwell to come, that’s the other thing. And what we encourage here is all sorts of people to come along at the same time. People don’t need to worry or I’m not going there because somebody’s come from a psychiatric ward. It’s nothing like that at all, it doesn’t feel like…it’s not like that. It’s all sorts of people. Sometimes people come and they are doing their Masters, they want to write up their thesis or something like that, and we had a Jewish woman. She  lives in Leeds, who was some sort of, she was a survivor really of the Jewish Holocaust and she wrote her book. She finished her book. She wanted a safe place to come and write very unsafe stuff. So she chose Holy Rood House, and that book is in our library dedicated to us, which is lovely or little note to us. And so people come for kinds of reasons. 

Sometimes people come for retreat, they just want to come and retreat where it’s not too pious. Where they can…they don’t even have to go to the Chapel if they don’t want to. Nobody has feel guilty, they can have food on their own or with the community. They can have silence if they want or they can chatter away in the lounge with others. They can do weaving, they can go into the art room, they can walk down to the river, they can potter into Thirsk. It’s kind of an ordinary place in that to that extent. It’s not a sort of highly pious retreat centre but people do come on retreat. People, all kinds of people and people who have very little and others who are professional and have a lot and one of our policies which we started the moment we moved in – the policy…we said we will come on this understanding only, we came from the inner city, working among the very very poor. We were not going to change our commitment to that caring and working alongside the poor. And was that we have a policy that anyone must be able to come and access the services we offer, whatever their financial circumstances. Now, of course, that always puts this on the edge financially, always on the edge, but what’s new? Our guests are on the edge. So we work on the edge too. If we weren’t on the edge, I think we couldn’t really work with integrity and with our guests. But you know, it is wonderful that people who are able to give, give more. Those who aren’t able to pay very much, we work out all sorts of ways in which money might be found, and also of course we never say no. You can’t come because of those reasons so things going on in how we understand healing really here at Holy Rood.

Gillian Straine: And let me just get into that a bit more. Your understanding of healing, because Elizabeth, I find running the Guild, doing events and talking to people I spend most of my life trying to define what, what we actually mean by Christian healing. This is so misunderstood and there’s lots of definitions, and it’s not academic.

 Elizabeth Baxter: Yes

 Gillian Straine: This is real stuff with real people who are suffering it. And you’re right on the edge as you say, working with people, so this is a deliberately provocative question. I wonder can you describe the healing process – what is Christian healing and how can you tell it’s happened at Holy Rood house?

 Elizabeth Baxter: I think Gillian, this is a tricky one. Sometimes people ask us for example, for strap lines. ‘Give us a strap line. Just tell us in in a phrase what it is.’ For me and for the community here, I believe it’s what we breathe. We are Christians, we follow the pioneer of our faith, Jesus Christ. We read the story within the stories of the Gospels, and Jesus was both a healer and a teacher. So for us here, Christian healing is about both those things, which is why we set up the Centre of the study for Theology and Health. So teaching and healing are one and the same really they go together, you can’t split them up. It is something we breathe, which is our theology here, we we breathe Christ, we’re in Christ. So everyone who comes across the threshold thinking we might be able to heal them or God might be able to heal them, all that sort of thing goes on, of course, and so on. And what we here see people enfolded in love, Julian of Norwich from you know, Julian of Norwich enfolded in love, that everyone is enfolded in love. Everyone has that healing within them because they are in Christ and and Christ is the Healer and everyone embodies Christ, the healer. So our understanding of Christian Healing is deeply embodied we work a lot with embodiment ideas. For people who are interested in theological terms I would say we were very incarnational, you know the word became flesh, in flesh and blood stuff is flesh and it’s us. We have it within ourselves, so working with people here and I may well be sitting down with somebody who’s just arrived or or we’ve arranged an appointment to talk the next morning when they’ve had hopefully settled in a bit, and so on. And they may think that they are no more. Nothing. Often if they been churchgoers, have a lot of people who aren’t, of course, ever so many. But those who are have often been quite wounded with feeling that there nobody their wretched people need forgiveness, all this sort of stuff, so that they come feeling nothing. But what I would do is always find the goodness in them, the wisdom, the very fact that they’ve come to Holyrood House is hugely wise. The very fact that that person phoned us for the courage to ring us at a time of utter loss and abandonment and you know, feeling they were nobody that is their wisdom, it’s all in there, so I work…I say Christian healing is about what is there in us already and what we try to provide is resources and the space that that might be awakened in people, that what’s already there is awakened and comes alive and people find that they are healing. They are doing the healing, they are transforming themselves. Someone said to me recently and well, yes, of course you know,  Holyrood house transforms people’s lives and I’m thinking no, it doesn’t – People transform their own life.

Yes, we provide…it’s about the space and that’s where we, you know with the churches, you know what are the resources there? What is the space like? What are the words? What’s the language like? Does it help people to transform their lives or does it keep them into this way of feeling that they are not what they should be, and all that kind of thing? You know and it’s always to do with justice because it’s justice to be able to say to someone, actually, you’re a lovely person. You just told me that, you know, you had to find a carer for your mother because you care for your mother full time. You’re already a healer, you care for your mother quite apart from all the other healing things and yet that person may not feel they are at all and may feel completely crushed and at the end of life and cause we work with a lot of people who are on the edge.

Gillian Straine: So just um reflecting back a bit Elizabeth you know that you’ve got all these different people coming to Holyrood House attracted for one reason or the other, with such a variety of in inverted commas issues whether it is present or past trauma, physical illness, I know you work with people that with cancer and other life limiting conditions, psychological problems or breakdowns, or carers or clergy or on the on the burnout. I wonder is it possible to distil down what you’re trying to heal? You said there a few times that you work with people feeling worthless, that they’re separated from the sense of who God created them to be, or to love them. It seems to me you’re saying that you work with all these different people. And you, irrespective almost of what they have been through, you help them find themselves again. So, is Christian healing ministry about helping people find themselves?

Elizabeth Baxter: I think it’s part of that is partly what it is, Gillian, but it’s much bigger than that, because the Christian healing Ministry has to address the unjust issues of our world. Um, so it includes um how we work with the environment, how we work with food and what, what prayer is? You know, and what our theology is, it’s all those things, because it’s far bigger and we can make God very small with the Christian healing ministry if we’re not careful. We seek very…we work hard not to do that at Holy Rood House because it’s all encompassing and I think the Christian Healing Ministry is what we live and move and have our being in. Um, in the sense of the quote from book of acts, but I think it’s far more than just individuals finding themselves because just ourself – it’s not enough, we need community, we need others. So although we we do need to give ourselves permission to be selfish and say actually I need time at Holyrood House, it’s selfish, someone else has got to look after my mother, I can’t do it anymore, that’s selfish. That’s a good thing. It’s a good thing. But actually we need one another, so I couldn’t do the Christian Healing ministry on my own part of a community. We do it together, but we’re not just part of that community. You know we linked up with the Guild for example, our communities are wider than that with part of the local community of Thirsk. There are lots of people doing wonderful things in Thirsk for others, and we have links and connections with part of the prayer life of other churches around here and so on. But not just that, it’s also people who we have people working with us and as volunteers here who are not, they wouldn’t necessarily come to the Chapel for a service, that’s not where they are, but they connect with our spiritual ethos. They recognise something of the holism, the holistic approach, what the healing ministry is. They also recognised that how we understand the Christian faith is perhaps broader and more open and liberating in many ways than some people might find in the institutional church. In some parts of the institutional church And I think we therefore have a greater responsibility to keep looking and keep checking keep those balances of what, what is theology? How do we understand God? What do we mean by healing? The questions you are asking, have to be asked the question so far more important than the answers, because the questions are part of a process, aren’t they? Which is what Christian healing is, it’s always a process there. I’ve given you a strap line. Christian healing is always a process and always involved with justice.

Gillian Straine: It’s interesting though, because yes I am, I I’m asking questions and and but you listen to your answers is fascinating, Elizabeth, I’m sure you are aware of how many times you used the word connection in your answers and for me the healing ministry is helping people find their worth in the eyes of God and therefore almost liberating them to connect out, outwith,  because we, we were charged with a care for creation, were charged with looking after all people as well and, my experience being when people are Illi  or suffering that connection with others is really hard alongside other connections with God and with themselves.

Elizabeth Baxter: Yes.

 Gillian Straine: And we while ago, at the start there you talked about the members of the community at Holyrood House, how you offer hospitality and how you also offer yourselves. And I think you used the phrase wounded healers, ah this idea that we all need healing. That healing is an ongoing part of the Christian faith, and I wondered if you maybe were prepared to share any aspects of your personal story, your own woundedness, and in what ways you found healing. In what ways you’ve used your story to be a person of healing, running a community of healing? And what do you think still needs healing as we all need healing? What’s still there for you Elizabeth?

 Elizabeth Baxter: These are very important questions and thank you for putting it to me, I think, without sharing details and so on. I think when I first came to Holy Rood House in 1993, it was a very painful time because I had to leave where my heart was, in the inner city, um and well, we both did, but we’re different people and we were leaving different kind of ways of how we were leaving stuff and it all came out to the blue. In a moment. It wasn’t something we’d been working towards leaving and we started from scratch and we also became a clergy of a parish down the road at the same time. So we’re doing all this all the same time, which was that was all fine. But the loss of that connection of where one places ones heart really, among the lives of others was very big for me and the thing…one of the things that got me through it, was lots of things were going on, lots of different things were going on for me, and was… out of the blue, I became very angry and now of course with anger with different ways, particularly women are often sort of, well, particularly perhaps in my generation within Christian setting, women don’t, don’t get angry. You know women are the peacemakers. Women are all that sort of stuff. So we can often depress our own anger and what helped me through a very difficult time of massive loss when we were setting this up and it was happening very fast, you know, the house was almost full within the first month. You know, this sort of thing with very few people you know we were making the beds, peeling the potatoes, laying the table during counselling. You know we’re doing so much and that was wonderful, I loved it and Stanley loved it. We thoroughly enjoyed it. It was what we should be doing but still the loss of what we’d left with the poverty and the pain of the inner city, which was getting worse and worse. So I suddenly got very angry about loads of stuff. But I wasn’t always sure what the anger was about and I raged against God and I have to say that my rage against God help me turn the corner. It was hitting that painful edge that enabled me to turn a corner and I think I remember saying to Stanley at one point there, was almost within a day I turned him and I said, you know, I think I’m finding the healing I need and it was that. 

And of course, when we’re going through those difficult times affects our bodies that get with straight to my back. We often have..it goes to your back, doesn’t it? Or you get migraine or or shoulders or something. For me it always goes back to my, it goes to my back. So when I knew I was well. So this is a bit of a nutshell, you understand. When I knew I was well was when I’d had a full night’s sleep. I woke up in the morning and my back was better. That was it. I’ve been through the process I’ve worked through, but it was the allowing myself to go to the emotion. Within a safe place, Holyrood House, no one knew about it, apart from Stanley that I wasn’t well at that time. But I had gone to counselling, I’d gone to see a counsellor during that time and the rage came actually while I was travelling on the road. And it was a turning point, so I would always say that we need to provide a safe enough space and forms of liturgy I think too, rights of passage, all that sort of thing. Where people can go to that rage place, they won’t unless they feel safe enough to go to the unsafe space in their lives. If they can go to that unsafe space and let it happen, that’s a turning point.

And I think you see this in Jesus’s is life. You know Jesus’s rage in the temple is is one thing you, but you see other bits of rage coming through and there are times when he’s struggling with his life, to such extent and with the too much going on stuff where he says for…it’s like, you know, it’s Celebrity Get Me Out of here, you know, get that boat out on the on the sea, I need to go on the boat, I need to go up the mountain or when he’s on the cross ‘My God, why have you forsaken me?’ You know, those words from the Psalm, that utter abandonment, which is also a point of rage – a turning point towards resurrection and hope. So it’s how I understand healing, I I do understand Christian healing, I think, around the Easter story. I know this has often been said, it will be said again, you know it’s been said again this Easter, but for me the Easter Saturday experience – that a lot of our guests have been through the Good Friday, they’re still in it a bit. They haven’t got to the Sunday bit, they’re stuck in Easter Saturday. And Holyrood House is there, that community, as it were, pulling the stone away from the from that cave? And you know, Christ, there pushing us, pulling, you know the angels there altogether, the stone. And and there’s freedom and liberation, so that just a small example in my own own life of you know, without telling you the details. But it is all to do with utter loss which took me to a great place of grief.

Gillian Straine: Thank you very much for sharing that. I think what I find so fascinating listening to you and what I find so fascinated by the healing ministry it’s so often is not what people expect. They think it’s magic hands and getting better, but what you’ve just described, I think two things stand out for me, is this the way that you take very seriously the body, and how the body keeps the score and that we are psychosomatic we are mind, body, spirit, emotion all entangled together and when one is out of kilter with the other suffers as well.

 Elizabeth Baxter: Yes.

 Gillian Straine: Now that…and we don’t have time to go into how the Christian tradition has treated the body, particularly female bodies. But certainly it is liberating, isn’t it, this knowledge that’s part of what the Christian Healing Ministry brings to people, that that knowledge about wisdom around bodies. But also what you were saying there about, it’s okay to rage and be angry. And maybe as women, I I love what you said there, there is maybe less acceptance but I think it’s also broader than that that we go to church and we’re supposed to be nice and good and sing nice hymns, well maybe not during a pandemic, and have a cup of tea afterwards and maybe sign up for the vicar’s lent course.

 Elizabeth Baxter: Yes.

 Gillian Straine: But actually our churches should be hubs for healing for the whole community. Maybe places where people take their body seriously, and if they need to rage, then to rage, to get in contact with something that’s within them to help them find healing, now that’s a much more exciting, realistic view of Christian healing than just, you know, can I add your name to the prayer list which so often it is in churches?

And that has been some of the interesting things around the pandemic, I notice particularly in the early days were all doing lockdown, all doing zoom, all unable to worship together. Then I heard so many voices from our disabled brothers and sisters, people with serious illness or mental illness, which means they can’t leave the house. Saying now, you know, now you see what it’s like and there is, I hope I hope an opportunity to begin to do things differently as we come out.

 Elizabeth Baxter: It’s been a learning time, hasn’t it Gillian? And there will still be people who are housebound but who have learnt how to do Zoom. You, know, and people who can’t easily get to a building but who are now working with Zoom. So I think all that has to that kind of thing has to keep going, we have to look at how we do that, but we also have to jolly well, you know if we’re fortunate enough to have a car, jolly well, when we are able to get a car and go pick someone up and bring them to the place where there are people who will you know, be there, sit with them.

 Gillian Straine: We still need that, at least not need that with human contact. Then I’ve notice, you know, I moved house and lockdown so I don’t know many people where I live, but I bump into someone even if it’s just the  postie and have a conversation I feel better,  because we need that human contact in order for our own humanity to be recognised don’t we.

 Elizabeth Baxter: It’s connection again, isn’t it. I think connection lies at the heart of mission, um, and it’s, you know the connection also between healing and teaching, what that connection is, and we have to get that a bit better, right, than it is. I think we need to get it out there, yeah?

 Gillian Straine: I agree, we are united on that I think both through the work of both our organisations. It’s been fascinating doing healing training to a group of people with dog collars and they’re taking as many notes as the people who are lay members of communities who sometimes know more than the priests and ministers about about the healing ministry. There’s lots of education which can only lead to you know. It’s not about knowing stuff. It is about knowing stuff but it’s not about whether, it’s not about passing exams. It’s about confidence to proclaim Christ mission, which we know from the beginning was to make disciples and heal.

 Elizabeth Baxter: Yes, yes.

 Elizabeth Baxter: I think also Gillian, I think, you know sometimes when I’ve worked with PCCs and that and they want to me to do something on healing and I always start off with…a different kind of way of working with people so that they themselves see realise that they are already healers. And the other people on the PCC recognised Mrs So and so or miss so and so or Mr so and so, yes you are a healer, the other churchwarden, oh yes you you’re already a healer, you know, to get that sense that they, people are already healers. 

It’s always about mutuality, and that’s a theology, isn’t it? And it takes away anything over them and us, we don’t want them and us, we need mutual connection. And that we all do it together and the Earth is there trying to heal us as well, you know the pandemic is a bit of the rage of the earth, isn’t it. And you know, talk about rage, and we’ve got to sort of get through this. And it’s all to do with justice, cause it’s the you know it’s the very poor in India who haven’t got the vaccines. All this sort of thing, so it’s all tied up together. This all part of the wider mission and it’s the joy of our salvation. It’s what salvation is all about, isn’t it? Healing Mission, justice, working together, mutuality – all those lovely things, whether clergy, laity or people completely outside of the church today, no faith story, many people. Many people who come to us you know, even in sort of forties, fifties even have no connection, have had no connection with the faith story, and yet place them in a situation or environment where they pick something up that connects, they are awakened to their own spirituality and the possibility of discovering the Christian story, the Jesus story, which is wonderful, absolutely wonderful, life giving.

 Gillian Straine: So I just want to ask one more question Elizabeth and it’s a biggie, because you paint, I mean you, you’re a prophet, you’re working on the edge, you’re there creating this community hub with all sorts of different people coming for healing and you’ve been doing it for many years, and yet you still. I don’t know why I say still, but you, you are still fighting for the poor and I’m trying to wrap everything we do into the Justice mission of the church as well, you speak with such passion and you work with people in such difficult circumstances but that’s a huge ministry and I wonder, how do you, how do you keep healthy doing all this? Because I’m sure there’s lots of people listening who would want to know that. How do you keep going, how do you stay healthy? And how do you continue to have hope?

Elizabeth Baxter: Yes. Thank you, indeed. So during the pandemic at Holy Rood House we’ve, we’ve worked on our initials HRH not Her Royal Highness but Holy Rood House, so we’ve had a strap line Holding Real Hope, alright, alright, and so yes, we hold it. We hold real hope for our guests. We hold real hope for the wider world. You know, I feel held in real hope by the community and I also have a very loving family, so I’m very blessed with a loving family who hold me as well, which is wonderful and I hope that’s mutual that I hold them too so there’s this mutuality, so I think for me, the reason I you know, I feel I am relatively healthy, I mean, you know everything is relative, really, isn’t it? But I and I do,  I am passionate, I’m passionate. But that’s part of my theology. It’s passion and compassion go together, you can’t split them. You know I’m passionate about compassion, I fall short of the compassion I need to show and embody and I know that, but I have a community that when I fall short, other people in the community don’t fall short of it. We help each other. That’s very, very important.

But you say that I’m a prophet, you used that term, well, I think I’m, being prophets is part of the healing ministry because it is about not just speaking out but acting out. Justice and the hope that you speak of now for me here at Holy Rood House, um, I often will say, and I’ve written about this, that our guests are the prophets. They are the ones who are embodying something of the prophetic hope, it’s within them, and they come to Holy Rood House against all the odds and transform their lives. Now there are many actually who come to us in very broken place, and actually, outside of you know the faith stories who are now clergy in Britain –  certainly Scotland, Wales and England and ho found faith, they found a vocation, they found something within themselves, so so these people and the poorest of the poor, and I use the term poor broadly in a holistic way – who come to Holyrood house, they are the prophets, they are teaching us we are learning. We’re a learning community we’re a community of conversation, not just speaking, but actually how it’s acted out by those who have the courage to come across the threshold and meet a load of strangers. And actually who trust us. The fact that somebody trusts me to sit down with them and and listen to their story. Is is quite amazing, so I think it’s the community, the community which is the prophet, I’m part of that and we all have different gifts that we bring to that which is really important, but I’m glad you used the term prophet because it’s it’s absolutely essential.

But again, going back to the mission of the Church, the official mission when you when you read up mission things in the church. Where is that? I don’t hear it. I don’t know where our prophets. If you like, ah, where are our prophets in the world you know? So you got the pandemic. I would say that, um, Greta, Greta is a prophet. Alright, there’s a prophetic young woman, you know she’s a prophet, I would say, I’m looking out for others. But communities and the voice of the healing ministries needs to be prophetic, doesn’t it? It all needs to or it has to be really bold and radical. It has to go where others fear to tread, absolutely has to. If it’s going to have that depth of affect really. Um, but you know, we all we can do at Holyrood House is just in our very tiny weenie weenie, speck on the earth do what we can in our small corner of the world. But very holistically and hopefully be a voice, be be prophets in a way, in a small way that might help others and and help to model something or inspire others as well.

Gillian Straine: Elizabeth, thank you so much for giving us your time here at the GoHealth podcast. Thank you for your ministry, your prophetic witness, your passion, your compassion, and everything that you do at Holyrood House, I know that you touched the lives of so many people and I hope God continues to bless you and bless your work. And I continued look forward in the Guild for us, working together to be that prophetic voice in the world. I think the world needs.

Elizabeth Baxter: Yeah, well, thank you Gillian. It’s it’s really nice to chat with. You would be really nice if we could chat all morning properly together. I could ask you questions.

Gillian Straine: Haha.

Elizabeth Baxter: Do a podcast the other way round. Anyway, thank you so much and love and greetings from Holy Rood House community to all who listen.

 Gillian Straine: You have been listening to the Go Health podcast. To continue the conversation and to find out more about the Go health community go to our website gohealth.org.uk and find us also on Twitter Facebook and Instagram and there Join in the conversation because together we flourish.