The vicar kept forgetting what he had last said. Perhaps we should have left, because he kept knocking things over. The vicar never got better. He was the same during each visit. We all passed though, and I told Dad I was confirmed.  But Dad said,

"That's what he is, CONFIRMED!  A confirmed drunkard!"

For some time after that Dad stopped us going. But one summer's evening, I felt the urge to go to church again, this time in the evening on my own, to learn about God, and to be a better person. Besides, I thought, Sunday school stories didn't seem enough, somehow.

There weren't as many people at the evening service as I had expected, about twenty. I  always thought a lot went. The grown-ups kept looking down at me and smiling. I felt very special, though it was a bit like being patted on the head. The vicar began raising his voice, and some of them nodded their heads in agreement. I only grasped some of the things he said, it was too hard for me to understand.

 It was while I was trying to understand the coloured pictures in the stained glass windows, that I realized the vicar was shouting. I stopped looking up at the windows. The vicar was very annoyed     about people who drank liquor: "The parents are to blame, and it's at their feet," he said.

He was still shouting when the Jackson family in the front row got up and left. They looked very sad, their heads bowed. I told my mother about it when I got home, how the vicar had to be carried down the aisle on a chair on the men's shoulders because he'd fallen over at the altar.  Later, Dad told me,

"The Jackson's eldest son was recently killed in a road accident while under the influence of drink."  He also said that the vicar had, "probably had one too many again… he's the bloody hypocrite… and you can stop going there from now on."
 

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