Introducing the Duck

What is this duck thing?! Here’s the story…

Michael Leunig — Australian National Living Treasure, cartoonist, philosopher, artist — invited me to take a path less travelled when I opened the first pages of “Common Prayer Collection” in 1994. The Collection comprised two earlier publications, “A Common Prayer” published in 1990 and “The Prayer Tree” published in 1991.

In Michael’s Introduction to “A Common Prayer” he had drawn this simple, yet beautiful picture of a person kneeling before a duck, “to symbolise and demonstrate my ideas and feelings about the nature of prayer.”

I have embedded a copy of Michael’s Introduction below, with his permission, and I encourage you to read it, preferably in a quiet place with a nice cup of tea. You can also click on the button below to visit Michael’s website where you can access his work, his thinking and philosophy. Do buy a copy of “A Common Prayer” and “The Prayer Tree”, both are truly beautiful and deeply spiritual works and both have been recently republished.

I have also created the short video below to explain my own thinking about Michael’s Duck and the concept of Duck Whispering why it’s so important to me.

Watch this short (12 minute) video: An Introduction to Duck Whispering

And here the text version of Michael’s Introduction to “A Common Prayer”, 1990, where he explains his picture of a person kneeling before a duck to sympbolise and demonstrate his ideas and feelings about the nature of prayer.