This past Sunday I had the privilege of being a guest speaker at a church in a nearby city. I am accustomed to speaking to college students, so this was a bit of a stretching experience for me, although a good one.
They were a very welcoming congregation, and also very responsive to my message from Psalm 63.
There was, however, one interesting tale to be told regarding congregational response.
The church holds three services, the first one of which is at 8:00 A.M. As you can imagine, attendance is rather sparse at the first service, and the predominant hair color is not black, brown, red, or yellow.
I illustrated Psalm 63:7 ("in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy") with a picture of a Canadian goose sheltering her young under her wing. I mentioned that I had never seen this phenomenon personally, since I grew up in the suburbs of Dallas and not on a farm. In my nervousness and haste, I accidentally referred to the baby geese as "chicks." BIG mistake.
After the service, a kind and chronologically gifted woman approached me with a few short critiques of my message. (For those of you who are not speakers, beware: Immediately after a sermon is not the best time to give criticism to your pastor.) Among other things, she mentioned that baby geese are actually called "goslings." I thanked her for her input and fixed my blunder in the later services.
I forgot about it until this morning, when I received an email from another church member. He expressed his thanks for my message. Then, there was this postscript: "
"p.s., baby geese are called goslings not chicks and geese don't cluck, they honk. :-) !!! "
Thanks. Really. I get it. Gosling. Gosling. Gosling.
Oh, and one more thing: I did some research of my own.
Canadian geese honk AND cluck. In fact, they double cluck (don't ask me what that means -- if you are an ornithologist, feel free to add your two cents here).
So if they double cluck, does that make me twice as correct? And doesn't that make up for the whole gosling thing, huh? Huh? C'mon!
Fine. Gosling. Gosling. Gosling.
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3 comments:
One of your funniest posts yet, Morty! You seemed to have proven your point as well as illustrated the difference between a college audience and a more adult audience. Too funny!!
Love this post! Would you please explain exactly what you mean by "chronicologically gifted"? Just kidding! Guess somewhere along the way we failed to include gosling in your animals lessons!
Ooops! Just realized I mispelled chronologically. Not intentional, I assure you!
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