Back to index of vicar's letters - Back to the main index
Your Crackers, Sir.
At Petertide one of our former parishioners was made deacon. We were photographed together on the steps of York Minster. He looked just as I did the day that I was in the same stage of my ministry, youthful. I had the semblance a man who has had a hard paper round. The realisation dawned upon me that the Archdeacon was right, I needed a break.
Holidays are unfamiliar things to me. When we do take the occasional few days off we tend to go to places where there are not a lot of tourists, like Hull. This time we sailed off to Stronsay in the Orkney Isles, and we waited until it was nearly winter. There we spent a glorious morning in the company of that dedicated bunch of men, the Transalpine Redemptorists, on their little island at the far end of nowhere. It was not until we had safely returned home that the thought struck me that I did not find them in the slightest bit odd. Dressed as they were in all enveloping black habits, with rosary beads the size of the anchor chain of a battleship, and a life of prayer that starts at about the hour in the morning that I am going to bed, they would have been a strange sight to the man in the street, but to me they were normal.
December is the month where I, as a Christian traditionalist, am out of kilter with the rest of the western world. They must find me slightly eccentric. In Advent there are no decorations in our house, no lights round the window, up the roof and round the chimney, no grotesque illuminated snowmen dangling from the eaves or bouncing in the garden, no little fat bearded men in red dressing gowns. There will only be an Advent candle, and calendar, the latter without the chocolate.
In October the youngest son and I went to a show. Before the curtain went up they were playing carols and sundry unseasonal music. In the streets outside the Borough Council had already started hanging the silly decorations which blow down in the gales. The flower beds were still in full bloom at that time. Am I crackers, or is it the rest of the world? I may be considered to be mad but I sometimes think that I am the sane man in a world of lunatics. The season of the Nativity is well worth preparing for. In Advent we watch and wait and view the frenzied shoppers with a wry smile on our faces.
May God bless you all, Fr. Allan
Back to index of vicar's letters - Back to the main index