My Dad...

Dear Reader.

My dad finished his job today (did I mention that?) he's getting a new job Vicaring in a different parish and all this week we kept saying "you see James you really had a wonderful life" (Its an "It's a Wonderful Life" reference! Shame on you for not knowing!) because everywhere he's been there have been people thanking him for how he's helped them and help them turn their life around and sometimes it was for things he'd almost forgotten about, tiny little things he's just turned up at right moment for and he's just done his job. That's the weirdest thing about my dads job because as a vicar you kind of float in and out of people's lives whenever they meet a cross road. So you're there for weddings and deaths and births and suicide attempts and messy divorces. So sometimes my dad ends up doing the service that becomes important to someone and helps them because you say the right thing to help them through what they're feeling or he ends up doing youth work and helping people then or doing a school assembly that brings people to a different life. A good vicar will be in the background of everyone's life changing moments but almost always like a ghost.
But with my dad its kind of bigger than that he seems to have been in the background of almost every comity in the Calder Valley so there seems to be hundreds of things where he was there with the little suggestion that drove things through or the little idea that someone else took up and changed things and got all the credit for. My dad effected so many lives in so many ways that essentially when the time came for his leaving party it felt like everyone in the village turned up.

I understand why my dad enjoys his job and I admire him for it, but there is no way I would ever want to be a vicar because you seem to just have to know what to do and then you do it.

He'll be missed at Crag and Mytholmroyd but he needs to go find another part of the world to change. I hope they're ready for him...