traceyleslie

The Quack Clack

Posted on May 22, 2015 Updated on May 23, 2015

Click on “duck” below to see a pic of the Quack Clack

duck

[In the Spirit of Pentecost, I’m updating this blog… In my Pentecost sermon on May 24 at http://www.trinitylafayette.org, I challenge my congregation to ask the Spirit to equip us to communicate the love of Christ to others in a language they can comprehend.  Here’s the prayer I’ll be asking my congregation to pray every morning for forty days, beginning on Pentecost Sunday:

God, today I am ready and available to your Holy Spirit.
I am willing for your Spirit to come upon me
so that I might share the good news of salvation through Christ
with someone else who does not know the story.
Help me, equip me, to speak the love of Christ in ways that can be heard and understood.
I ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.]

I’ve now lived in two communities in a row with ponds loaded with ducks and geese.  Don’t get me started on how annoyed the geese make me, but I love the ducks.  My husband has bought me duck books and I think one day I’ll rise to his challenge to write an entire devotional on ducks.  But I digress from the point of this specific blog post…

Here in Lafayette we have these brown and white ducks that are actually domestic ducks cut loose in the wild (at least according to what I’ve read on the internet and how could the internet lead you astray?)  But here is what I find fascinating: this particularly quack clack is always together – 3 brown and whites (domestic) and one male Mallard (wild).  So, how did the Mallard break into that group?

I mean, it’s hard for us human creatures.  We tend to be drawn toward people who are like us – people in our economic bracket, on pare with our education level, in line with our theological and political bents.  Even more fascinating about the clack is that the brown and whites never mingle with any other Mallards.  One guy broke through the ranks.  How did he manage that?

I’ve been here in Lafayette for a year now and I think I’m fixated on this quack clack because that Mallard has accomplished something I’ve not yet figured out.  My church congregation is a very different culture than many of the people who live in the community around the church building and I wonder if that can change.  Many of us want it to change.  Recently we’ve been doing neighborhood walks to get ourselves out into the community more.  We are a friendly church.  You don’t need to take my word for it; the research of our church growth consultant bears it out.  Our world is increasingly global and yet I’m sure it’s made it any easier for us to forge true community among different sub-cultures.

Too bad that Mallard doesn’t talk…