If your duck doesn't speak Spanish, will it still answer?

                Prayer has been in the news a lot lately from Oklahoma to the people on ‘Duck Dynasty’.  And I have felt a connection to both.  You see for one-half of third grade, my nomadic family lived in Moore, Oklahoma.  And someone recently asked me if ever watched ‘Duck Dynasty’.  I have to admit that I had not up to that point but I caught an episode the last time I was in DC at a conference.  As a side note, am I the only one who pictures a duck in a sequined gown with huge shoulder pads when someone mentions the name of that show?  Yeah, that’s what I thought.

                I didn’t really know what to expect other than familiarity seeing as how the Robertson family is from where I’m from.  West Monroe, Louisiana, is about 75 miles from my birthplace of Lake Providence, Louisiana, and I must admit that their family is not unlike mine except the Thornton/Thompson family has more funny stories and less facial hair but about the same amount of camouflage.  And prayer.  My much more famous not-really-a-cousin, Shelley Rushing Tomlinson of All Things Southern (visit her website) fame, is a friend of the Robertson family and that makes them okay in my book.

                Now I am about to tell on myself but I feel in the interest of full disclosure I must admit that I did not attend church this past Sunday. And it wasn’t to watch football either.  Is that on right now?   I was tired and various other things that are not very good excuses but I simply did not go.  Luckily God does not have a last nerve.  So, my backslidden-but-forgiven-self went to meet my new friend Julie (Hi, Julie!) for brunch.  We met at Starbucks when I complimented her gorgeous robin’s egg blue purse.  Isn’t it interesting the people you meet when you have no filter coupled with the mindset to be ‘met’ on any given day?

                Over brunch we talked about many things one of the being my father’s lifelong aversion to church.  As we have previously discussed, The Dad has not been the greatest of fans of the church itself.  While he professes to believe that church and loving Jesus are good things, he won’t go so far as to actually support either one in word or deed unless the words are “no pancakes (if you don’t go)” or the deed is “eating at fifth Sunday dinners on the ground”.  And while Presbyterians will have coffee and doughnuts before the service, there hasn’t been a time in the last two years where I have witnessed a cheese covered casserole and that hurts me to my very core, y’all.  Although I do not have to have the promise of food to get me to the church on time, it doesn’t hurt to have access to some groceries every now and again.  Can I get an amen?

                To be fair, The Dad has attended about 3 times in the last two years which is quite the feat considering he attended about the many times in the previous 20 years.  The first Sunday he attended in the land of the heathen, I took him to our 9:30 contemporary service, whereupon he accused me of joining a cult as the worshippers had the gall to clap along with the singing and actually seemed to enjoy themselves. 

                Old guard Southern Baptists are like Anglicans who sweat in that they believe in their heart of hearts that anyone who shows any emotion in church other than wretched heartache over their sins is secretly aligned with the unclean and that raising your hands in worship is akin to speaking in tongues and rolling around on the floor like they do at those “other churches” like Assembly of God and Seventh Day Adventists.  No offense.  Now I don’t know what Adventist actually means, and neither do they, but from what I gather it is definitely not “to frown while singing”. That’s what Baptist means, people; you heard it here first.

                And speaking of prayer, My Dad needs some right now as, unlike Jesus, I do have a last nerve and he is clog dancing on it, do you hear me?  Not only did he wake me up this morning by cooking pinto beans with a hambone at 5 o’clock in the AM, but I just discovered he ate my leftover quesadilla for his snack between breakfast and his “official” snack even though he admitted, “wudn’t too good, but [I] ate it anyway”.  And to top it all off he apparently decided he prefers my Garden Salsa Sun Chips to his pork skins and tried to sneak-switch the bags on our respective pantry shelves as if I wouldn’t notice I was eating chicharrones because even when I’m angry I’m at the very least bi-lingual and that is all I’m saying.