Vignettes

About the Book

A clergyman is frequently "set apart" more by the thinking of parishioners than by any ordination by ecclesiastical authorities. An aura seems to be apparent to many lay people, that the clergy person is "different." This is defined in a variety of ways especially in the matter of behavior. Not that a person of the cloth is expected to have reached a state of perfection, but, well, really he should have. After all, the parson's whole profession is that of extolling the virtues of a good life—shouldn’t there be an example to give validity to the words? The critical evaluation comes because the pastor-preacher-priest-rabbi function is seen, by definition, not just by ordination, as a different and special approach to life. The ordination is always validated or invalidated by the life. The idea finds expression in a myriad of ways. If anyone makes a Christian profession, outsiders, as well as initiates, have their own, sometimes strange beliefs as to what they ought to see. Every preacher could tell of amusing, derogatory, and almost libelous ways they have been perceived as somehow different in being. We are thought of as blue-noses, wet-blankets, kill-joys, holier-than-thou individuals who aren't in touch with life that really is, hypocrites who have a cushioned life, sheltered from the real world. This not only in the realm of morals and the appetites of ordinary folks, but in the world of business and the wider worlds of politics and international affairs.

The dictionary points out that the term "parson" comes from the Middle English word "persona", which is a borrowing of an Old French word for "person.” Some comfort may be taken in the fact that for centuries the words have carried a kind of double burden; parson-person. This puts some added possible meaning into Chaucer's title, "The Parson's Tale", the concluding story in his "Canterbury Tales". In the Middle English rendering it comes out as "The Persones Tale", and deals with Penitence, with heavy emphasis on the Seven Deadly Sins. One of the reasons a parson can deal in a helpful way with parishioners is that they have this in common; the parson is a person with a special slant on the problems of persons. So, by this somewhat circuitous route, we come to our title. A vignette is an illustration or picture, in the center of a page, "having the edges shading off into the surrounding page." This parson's tale is, like Chaucer's on the road to Canterbury, a series of vignettes, giving evidence that the parson is a person dealing with persons as a parson-person. Chaucer, according to scholars of the first rank, mixes in a good deal of humor, and some of these jottings are here because, in the midst of the experiences they record, they suddenly gave off humorous vibes. No offense is meant. They are vignettes that shade off around the edges, because there has been no intent to provide a manual or training book in counseling, or therapy, only a recording of the sometimes sad, sometimes tragic, sometimes challenging, sometimes maudlin, sometimes funny, but always human and interesting experiences of one parson's life.

About the Author

Noel C. LeRoque, a United Methodist pastor with a career of fifty years of appointments to churches in Arizona, California, and Washington, served several of the largest congregations of the denomination on the Pacific Coast. His reputation was one of a builder and administrator, as well as a first class preacher. He served in many Conference capacities and was active in efforts at community improvement. Along the way, he developed a list of books he ought to write, since no one else was apparently going to do them. This book is one of them. From his student days in Boston, driving to a two-point charge in Western Massachusetts, he objected to a young service station attendant who always shouted “Hi, Rev!”—a greeting which haunted him whenever he later faced misinterpretation of the clergy function, even in circles where one would think it poor taste at best. His intention here, through a series of vignettes, is to demonstrate that clergymen are just normal human beings, with the warts on. A graduate of the University of Redlands, with a graduate degree from Boston University, LeRoque also had an honorary doctorate from California Western University (now USIU) and lives, retired, in Sacramento, CA