MORGAN'S MOMENT...

A springtime moment for me…
      arriving at our cabin
      in the off-season.
We’re never there for the trilliums…
      but they bloom anyway
      by the hundreds.
Delicate and clean
      turning fragile faces
      toward the light.
They’ve been doing this
      all my life
      and I’ve missed the show.
I wonder how many moments
      of wonder I’ve missed
      in my fleeting lifetime.
— Art Morgan 
  
BOOK CORNER
    Here’s a new author to me, Michael Shermer. I ran across him accidentally while perusing at Kepler’s Book Store in Menlo Park. He was giving a book review that I couldn’t help overhear. Soon I was hooked. I ended up ordering several of his books from the library.
    I finished “The Science of Good and Evil — Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share and Follow the Golden Rule.”  He takes an anthropological and evolutionary approach to how various qualities get built into the human species, which includes us.
    He writes for “Scientific American,” and has good credentials. He is director of The Skeptics Society. He informs and makes you think.
•

MOMENT MINISTRIES
March 21, 2005
home address:  25921 SW Airport Ave.
Corvallis, OR 97333   541-753-3942
email at a-morgan@peak.org


STILL DOING EASTER?
Easter is still among the top two religious/cultural observations in America…maybe in the world. Like, Christmas, it is well commercialized and exploited. Churches make the most of it with all kinds of services and events.
Gone are the days when we used to do several services on Sunday, including special breakfasts and baptisms. It was a physically devastating time. Also exhilarating. Most clergy find it good to arrange for a guest preacher the Sunday after Easter. If the preacher isn’t beat after Easter, he/she isn’t covering all the bases.
I don’t do that anymore, but we still do Easter. There are plenty of services for those who like the crowds. Our events tend to be small, just enough to fill a country home.
We sing the Easter song, read the Easter stories, speak an Easter faith. Maybe not exactly the same line you will find in churches, but the Spirit is lively. If all falls flat, there is always the champagne brunch we share that follows.
There are children (including all my grandchildren) who have never known anything different. There are adults who wouldn’t be doing Easter anywhere if not with us.
So we’re still doing Easter. For anyone who doesn’t’ know, it’s at...
INAVALE FARM
this Sunday, March 27,
Music and Service Begins at 10
Famous Shared Brunch follows
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AN AFTER EASTER THOUGHT

“After his death, they experienced Jesus as a spiritual (non-material, but actual) reality. These experiences were not confined to a few weeks or years or decades after Easter, but have continued centuries to this day. Thus the truth of Easter is not grounded in what did or did not happen on a particular Sunday, but in the on-going experiences of Christians throughout the centuries.”  (Marcus Borg, Jesus at 2000)

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THE ART, SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY OF CUTTING TREES
 
       Every Easter time, more or less, I take out my chain saw and cut down some trees. Every time I do it, I feel remorse. I believe in letting trees grow.
       My properties, both at home and the cabin, have lots of trees. I’ve watched the trees at the cabin grow for more than 50 years. There are giant trees on what was once a nice grassy hillside. I’ve watched trees grow around our house in Corvallis for 35 years. I counted rings on a tree I took down last week. 32 rings.
       As I say, every Easter time I take down a few trees. I take them partly for next year’s firewood. They need to get seasoning. And they can’t begin seasoning until they get taken down and split and piled where the sun can get at them in the summer. Jean loves her winter fires. She also happens to love splitting wood.
       I select the trees. We have a lot of oak and numerous tall firs. I’ve pretty much thinned out the oak so that there is room for the others to grow. This year it’s time for some firs to go. They are predator trees as far as the oak are concerned. They move in, grow up, eat the sky and kill off the oak. I’m taking sides. I’m choosing to let the oaks, which are the natural trees here, to flourish. The forestry people talk about restoring the savanna. I’m doing that and also making a bit of firewood.
       There is some art to taking a tree down. Sometimes I’m a good artist, but sometimes not. Like one tree last week. Its neighbors, which happened to be oak, hugged it up high with their branches. It refused to fall in spite of my proper saw cut. So much for art. Now time for some real art. I turn to my rope and Jeep. I tie the rope as high on the tree as I can and run the rope to the Jeep out in the field. A bit of tugging and the tree is down, right where I want it.
       Artistic, right? Well, not exactly. I didn’t tie my usual bowline knot on the towing hitch and the knot jammed. No way to undo it. I spent a half hour trying and figuring, then finally decided to cut. Was it art or science? At any rate I created two mighty fine ropes. These things happen when you are cutting trees.
       Back to my reluctance to cut trees. I talk to them. They are living things. If they were discovered on Mars it would be the biggest news in history. When I cut through with the chain saw I cut right through the heart. Pitch oozes somewhat like blood. The tree cannot live.
       But there is a strange and wondrous thing about life. There is no life without death. All things die. All life depends on death. Every morsel of food that sustains our lives is created out of the death of something. The death of that tree helps the oak to live. It even helps us with warmth for our bodies in the winter.
       And I can guarantee you that getting rid of that one fir will not end the growth of baby firs around here.
       Easter is Christianity’s version of the virtually universal death and resurrection story found among people through the ages. Joseph Campbell says, “The death and resurrection of a Savior figure is a common motif in all these legends.” (p. 106, “The Power of Myth”)
       Though we are agents of death, for good or ill, life ultimately triumphs.
       That’s science, isn’t it? Or is it theology? It is optimistic at any rate.
       I hope it’s true. Our people have been agents of death in various times and places in the world. We said that we dropped the bombs on Japan to save lives. We say the same about the deaths our people have caused in Iraq. We rationalize, just as when I take down trees. It’s necessary, we say, if a new regime is going to come into being.
       So I try to explain that to the tree as my chainsaw cuts away its life. “This may not be good for you, but it’s good for the forest.” 
       I wonder what we say to those innocent civilians and children we’ve destroyed in Iraq. “This may not be good for you, but it’s good for Iraq?”
       Early Christians tried to fix the suffering of Jesus with that argument. His death was not nice, but it was necessary for the sake of the rest of us. I never liked that theology and don’t buy it.
       I’ve breathed too much chainsaw exhaust. How do trees and Iraq and Jesus get all mixed up in the question of death and dying being good and necessary for life? Maybe it’s better to kill trees rather than kill people. Maybe it’s better not to kill anything. There’s an idea. “Thou shalt not kill.” It’s one of Moses’ big ten commandments from God. Of course no one has ever paid attention to that. But the sentiment is nice.
                                — Art Morgan, Holy Week 2005