The Dead in Christ Part 4: Not Such a Quiet Place

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Ten years on, Vicar Penn sat in his car on the rise behind Egger’s Lane. The lights of Colwick twinkled in the evening haze below.

The vicar often told his parishioners Egger’s Lane was his ‘quiet place’, where he came to commune with God. When he did have something important to pass to the congregation—such as its tendency to focus on the upcoming ladies’ tea instead of the crumbling masonry of the parish hall—he would preface his observation with ‘when I was in my quiet place the other week…’ He meant he was speaking from his heart; he didn’t mind the parishioners inferring God had placed those opinions there.

In fact, the vicar spent very little time in his quiet place communing with the Eternal. He would be pressed to remember what biblical book and chapter lay exposed on the seat beside him. Instead he ruminated on things more of this world: where he might find the money to replace his black shoes that had been mended now one too many times; how he might convince the Mitkins sisters to forgive each other; what he could say about next Sunday’s lectionary passage he hadn’t said a dozen times before.

The lack of communing didn’t bother him very much. That’s how life with Christ becomes, he reasoned. Faith, as one grows older in it, becomes like a comfortable sweater. Eventually one forgets one even has it on.

An auto whisked past, startling him out of the aphorism and reminding him Egger’s Lane was not as deserted as it used to be. So much about Colwick had changed since he had taken up the charge of St. Marian. The small town had grown into a suburban community, with landed estates and a population whose heart and life were away in the city.

The town had also changed demographically. The most prominent clue of that, to the vicar, was just down the rise from where he parked: a new two-thousand-seater church, built by Pastor Johnson’s congregation, round like a fairground stand and just as brightly lit. Pastor Johnson’s new congregation could do this, while his former dwindled to less than twenty and the vicar’s church struggled to keep its masonry intact, because of that demographic change.

Colwick had, about seven or eight years ago, become a West Indian enclave. Most of the West Indians that the vicar knew (for a number of them remained loyal to their Anglican roots) worked at the hospital or the Regional Social Services Centre, both of which were directly accessible by rail. These West Indians brought with them a spiritual vibrancy that the vicar found both fascinating and disconcerting. They had no concern for doctrinal niceties: they flocked to Pastor Johnson’s services for their liveliness and Pentecostal fervour.

“Well, Lord,” the vicar whispered, “You give and you take away.” He started the engine, letting slip a half-breath of apology for cutting short his time with God. But he needed to get home early. He had promised Nancy the next morning he would ferry her and a van-load of children to the airport.

To be continued…