The Vicar
April 3, 2020. By Bella Gamboa, JE ‘22. Bella is majoring in Humanities.
But Lent is a season of disruption and attention, essentially antithetical to the Vicar’s life.
The following is a short story followed by a brief Lenten reflection.
The Vicar
On a certain day in mid-May (it is impossible to know the specific date, given that the event has faded from every memory — not even the year is known, so the precise day cannot be tracked down by any features like weather or weekday), the Vicar of Lyminster awoke, ready to face his exceedingly overwhelming duties in a village of exactly 54.38 other people. (An elderly lady had insisted that her favorite pug be considered a resident of the town, and the four-person Village Council determined that the dog was worthy of recognition as exactly 0.38 of a person.) Yet, despite the scant population of his parish, we must forgive the Vicar his seemingly overblown concerns on that day in May, for he was expecting a visitor. His friend from seminary had succeeded in climbing the ranks of the clergy and was himself a rector in the town of Bude, which had the reputation of being quite an up-and-coming place. The Vicar, upon waking, was in the habit of telling himself he would pray before promptly distracting himself with some other thought, like his recognition of the smell of bacon from downstairs, or a reminder to himself that he had to replace his painted-shut window as soon as possible. He had, in truth, realized some time ago that his calling did not lie in ministry, but he managed to overlook such concerns through his deep passion for his daily routine, by which he strove to circumvent ecclesial duties while assuring himself of his own great skill and suitableness for his position.
On this particular morning, the Vicar pushed away his white quilt (a gift from his Great Aunt Rosamund) and sat up to face his bedside clock. The infernal device read 8:47, and, right on schedule, he inhaled deeply and caught a whiff of exquisitely cooked pork. He stretched, stood up, and, having determined that a shave was not necessary today, he donned a black shirt and pants. He rifled around in his drawer for a moment to find his clerical collar, but he found nothing other than several pairs of shoddily knit socks. The Vicar found the collar’s absence troubling for only a moment, as he always found the cloth constricting and was glad of an excuse to not wear it. Even so, he determined to ask his wife and make sure that it hadn’t been sent off to the cleaner or, worse, donated to some charity. He pattered down the worn wooden stairs and into the kitchen, where his wife, perhaps the only devout person in the whole parish, stood over the stove. As was her wont, she placed his two pieces of bacon in a cross pattern, which she thought was awfully clever and a sign of her devotion to God. (She never considered that a vicar destroying a cross every day with his breakfast did not bode well.)
“Mary, have you seen my collar? I couldn’t find the dratted thing anywhere,” the Vicar asked, his mouth full of residual bacon as he struggled to swallow. She, helpfully, placed his favorite cranberry juice next to his plate, and he managed to recover himself quickly.
“Not lately, my dear. You ought to check the washing; are you sure you didn’t toss it in there? I haven’t gotten to yesterday’s yet on account of preparations for the Rector’s visit,” she replied, as she finished washing the bacon pan and set it on the rack to dry.
The Vicar discreetly rolled his eyes as he licked the grease from his lips. His daily bacon was his sole indulgence (or so he told himself); he did not make much money, like most lower-level clergy, even though he had decided to enter the Anglican Church because of rumors that he would receive a respectable salary relative to his position. The other reasons he chose the Anglican over the Catholic (in which a fair amount of wealth and glory can be found, certainly beyond that available to Presbyterians or Methodists) were the convenience of having a wife, rather than hired staff, to manage petty affairs of the home, and the alleged ease of rising in the lower levels of the hierarchy. Granted, his last bit of logic did not work out as expected, as the Vicar remained a mere vicar at fifty-seven years of age. Anyhow, the Vicar tried to forget about his professional stagnation. He often credited it to the fact that he had little exposure to the Church’s higher-ups in his present post — if he had had an audience with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the other man would have recognized his brilliance, and he would be a bishop himself by now. He also comforted himself with two ever-concurrent statements (so he called them in his own mind; a discerning reader might notice that they would seem rather out of place in the realm of fact) — he was filling an important and necessary post in Lyminster, and, though the clergy was not his true calling, he certainly would have reached great heights professionally if only he had chosen another path.
Conceding to his wife’s wisdom in the ways of disappearing clothes, the Vicar left the table (and his wife) to rifle through his pile of dirty laundry. His garments were all nearly identical — his extensive collection of black button-down shirts and black pants from his early days as a vicar, faded now to a greyish color and devolved from smooth crispness to perpetual pilling and sagging; his originally white pajamas, likewise turned to grey, though a paler shade; the various accouterments of Anglican clerical garb, which provided the only color in his wardrobe. Yet, even after sifting through his entire wardrobe, he could not locate his dog collar. He realized — somehow for only the first time — that it was silly of him to have only one collar when he wore it every day. He shrugged, credited the disappearance to God (something he rarely did, but it seemed appropriate in this situation), and went to his wife’s linen closet to steal a napkin. He himself did not mind the collar’s absence, but he wanted to look suitably professional for the visit of his prestigious old friend. He fumbled with the fabric and tried to shove it into his shirt, but he utterly failed and decided that any effort was futile — clearly God did not want him to wear a collar, he determined. (One would think that the disappearance of his clerical collar managed to make him more devout.)
Conveniently enough, he heard a knock at the door just as he made the decision to dismiss the issue of his collar; he had a moment to compose himself and grab a necklace with a wooden cross, which he kept on hand for such occasions, before returning downstairs. Upon opening the door, he saw the familiar face of his old friend, the Rector of Bude. The two men heartily embraced and settled themselves in the sitting room. They got to talking about whatever one discusses in such a circumstance — “What happened to so-and-so?,” “Apparently that slacker is eligible for a bishopric,” “Your wife bakes terrific lemon cake,” etc. — until the Vicar noticed a strange bulge in his companion’s left pocket.
“What’ve you got in there, old friend?” he remarked, made jocular by his special-occasion rum.
The Rector looked at the Vicar, then at his own pocket, with momentary confusion. He reached into the pocket and withdrew a crumpled pile of stiff white cloth; he raised his eyebrows at the sight. “Well, that’s rather odd. I seem to have collected some…,” he paused as he unraveled the bits of fabric, “…well, some dog collars. Speaking of, are you missing yours?”
Indeed, the Vicar found his very own dog collar in the heap (he identified it by the embroidered initials on the inside, a feature he had long complained about due to its scratchiness against his neck but now welcomed). No matter how much the Rector was pressed, however, he could not explain how he had come to have a bunch of clerical collars that, according to their various tags and initials, seemed to belong to priests from all over the region. With the help of the Vicar’s wife, the two men obtained and addressed envelopes to send off each collar for which they could identify the owner (thankfully, most of the priests involved would not have suffered a similar crisis to our Vicar, since most clergy have more than one clerical collar). The Vicar returned his dog collar to his neck and felt a surprising sense of wholeness; he resolved to immediately request another collar or two from his wife in an effort to avoid another such catastrophe (and because, though he scarcely admitted it to himself, he was quite fond of the little thing). Afterwards, the two men passed the rest of the morning and early afternoon in pleasant company, and each had more than his fair share of cake and tea.
At the very least, I hope the story made you chuckle. I thought I might resurrect this rather old piece of writing, originally inspired by Nikolai Gogol, for several reasons — as a momentary distraction or relief from all the current chaos, and because I do think our Vicar has some relevance to the current season of Lent. He is quite the picture of unexamined and undisrupted routine — small habits and complacency define his days — and unengaged faith. And there are times when even those who are active in faith, unlike the Vicar, fall into complacency, in our daily lives and in our relationships with God.
But Lent is a season of disruption and attention, essentially antithetical to the Vicar’s life. Some people choose to intentionally disrupt routines by intentionally fasting from something, like social media or chocolate, in order to break the habits of their typical lives; fasting prompts you to redirect yourself to God in the moment in which you might otherwise start mindlessly scrolling through Instagram or reaching for a sweet. In that sort of conscious change, attention to God is more acute and impactful. Even for the Vicar, the disruption in his routine — the loss of his collar — leads him to consider God and His place in his daily life (ever so slightly) more than before!
And of course, this year we find ourselves with an even greater and thoroughly unexpected disruption. The coincidence of Lent and pandemic is not insignificant, I think. In extreme, difficult, and really rather scary ways we are being forced to recognize our dependence upon God and our own vulnerability. Parts of our lives we take for granted have been suspended. We’ve been torn from routines and even the semblance of normal life, and instead thrust into different places and the overwhelming reality of a pandemic. Fasting, loss, and absence have emerged in every aspect of life.
But perhaps this period offers us an opportunity to turn to God in ways we are not able to when on campus, with well-established schedules and the illusion of security. In the midst of all this uncertainty and fear, rather than anticipating the pleasures of breakfast like the Vicar (or lamenting its lack — I certainly haven’t bothered with hot breakfasts at home), we can pray with the psalmist “Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love, for in you I trust. Make me know the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul” (Psalm 143:8). If we go towards Him, even when we’re physically not going much of anywhere at all, He can render our days more fruitful and offer an enduring hope and love which even the greatest crises cannot topple.