"Preachin"

DATELINE: 12/12/2011
RE: "Preachin"


My wife's daddy was a school principal and they lived in a little small town up in the northwest corner of the state called Flintstone. Now Flintstone, Georgia ain't much of a town, and it is right across the state line from another little bitty town called St. Elmo, Tennessee, which is where her family went to services, at a little bitty one hundred year old church. These two little towns is so small that both of them together is about the same size as Nankipooh. 

Now her daddy being an educated man and all, fancied himself to know a bit about public speakin, him bein the school principal and all. It seems that the old preacher at the church they went to had a bad habit of not lookin at the congregation while he preached. Instead he usually stared at a patch of ceiling back behind them while he gave his sermon. Now after a few years of this, Pa, as I called my wife's daddy, got just about fed up with this, since the man's sermons were kinda borin anyhow. Now Pa was a man of action, so he decided that he would take that old preacher aside and teach him a little bit about talkin in public.

So one day after the service was over, Pa took the preacher aside and said "look here Reverend, I been standin up in front of folks and talkin for most of my life, and I know that it is important to look at people when you talk to them. It seems that you are always lookin up at the ceiling while you preach." Well that old preacher looked Pa straight in the eye, and said, "I don't look at the people cause I'm lookin up to God hopin that he will tell me the right thing to say." So Pa says, "Well God must not be lookin back very often, cause if you was lookin at the people while you preach, you would see that half of them are asleep every Sunday."

Now Pa and his family kept goin to the church afterwards, but you might say that him and that old preacher never quite saw eye to eye after that little talk. It got me to thinkin about how important it is to look someone in the eye when you are talkin to them. It helps folks believe that you are being honest with them. Course a professional politician knows how to look you in the eye and not even see you.


"Now, that's the way I see it, and you can tell'em I said so!"

Bascomb Biggers