A New Name: From the Vicarage

On forming little corners of the internet for one's own

Hello friends,

A joyous Easter to you and I hope spring and Eastertide together have cascaded into your corner of the world with blossom and joy. Thank you for following me here on Substack! I suppose this is an official sort of welcome. I’m delighted you’re here and I’m looking forward to cultivating this corner of the internet.

On which note, you’ll probably notice that I’ve changed the name. You signed up for Beautiful Truths, you’re receiving now from From the Vicarage. I do apologise for the confusion. The thing is, I’m in a state of reconfiguring, honing, experimenting with where I want to show up online. I love what is happening creatively and communally on Substack and originally thought I’d start something new.

But I’m in a season of life with four small children, a vicarage, only briefs time to work (which I want to spend mostly on writing books) and about a few hundred other things, and I think it’s better that I continue in the good way I’ve gone than start afresh… for now.

So I’m going to eventually migrate my newsletter – From the Vicarage – over here. The posts you see here regularly will be either the newsletter, or the separate feature I sometimes include called Books, Beauty, and Theology in which I include a short recommendation for a book or piece of art or quote in each of those categories. I’ll also occasionally be doing some longer essay posts here, but for now, you can expect fairly regular newsletter updates and BBT features. I love that the newsletters can stay up here as posts to which my readers can return. I also love, which I’ll be regularly featuring, that I can include a recording of me reading each newsletter aloud for those who would enjoy that regular more personal touch.

I chose ‘From the Vicarage’ as a name a couple of years ago when we moved to our current home, a giant, drafty, gorgeous old Victorian vicarage that’s impossible to warm and has the most beautiful bones and cut glass windows. I chose it because I’m very much writing from a placed and shaped season in my life. This is where I am. In the vicarage, in our garden with the willow and four small children, in the church, in my study with the wild cherry tree out the window. I’m pondering great things and small things, grief and joy, academic books and novels, poetry and picture books, all from this place. This place.

So when you read these letters or posts, imagine for a moment that we are talking in two chairs, pulled up beneath a cut glass window. Wild cherry or old willow, some great tree sways benevolently above. We have hot drinks, we may have music, we certainly have piles of books and many questions and a conversation that never really comes to an end…

Welcome, and here we go, and onward…

Sarah