MORGAN'S MOMENT...
“I’m 87 years old” she wrote…
      proud I think
      more than complaining.
Making me check my list
      wondering how unique
      being “three-score and ten” plus!
So I open the mailing list
      making and educated guess
      finding 43 in the 80 + club.
Can anyone trump 93 years?
      maybe there’s a 97
      I’ve forgotten.
Amazing to me
      all the octogenarians
      who haunt my list.
Didn’t mean “haunt” literally…
      since most are colleagues
      and friends with long history.
As I think of each one I know
      all are sharp and thoughtful
      more current than many younger.
We’re not here forever
      raising the unexpressed thought
      of how much I value each one.
And it gives hope to the rest of us
      in the three-score and ten range
      for vital life at four-score.
— Art Morgan 
  
BOOK CORNER
Thom Hartmann, author and host of the nationally syndicated radio show, “The Thom Hartmann Show,” writes about the condition and future of democracy in America and the world in “What Would Jefferson Do?” He’s optimistic about the condition of democracy in the world, in spite of all. His research in original words of Thomas Jefferson leads to ideas you never learned in U.S. history classes. Did you ever hear that Jefferson got ideas about democracy from the Indian nations? He also sees big-time threats to democracy in America. An important read.
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MOMENT MINISTRIES
April 4, 2005
home address:  25921 SW Airport Ave.
Corvallis, OR 97333   541-753-3942
email at a-morgan@peak.org
 
THOUGHTS ON APRIL 1…No Kidding!
  
I write as Pope John Paul is dying, and surely he will be safely on his way by the time you receive this. His has been a historic papacy, in part due to the length of his tenure, and in part to his extraordinary public presence. He’s been a conservative Pope, especially when compared with Pope John of Vatican Council fame. He rose out of the Polish resistance movement and used his extraordinary brilliance—like his fluency in languages—to be a steady leader of his faith. Whether people agreed with him or not, there was no question where he stood on things. He gave some signs that he was more ecumenical than most realize. He has established himself in history as a courageous and admired individual.
When I wrote the back page, Terri Schiavo had not yet died. I have had several responses to this issue from people who have been involved in making end of life health care decisions for loved ones. It’s a very common situation. The various comments have not all been sensitive to the difficulty of some situations. My ethicist friend, Tom McCormick, owes us an encouraging word.
Jean and I have had care responsibility for both our mothers in a time when they could not make decisions for themselves. Having a Power of Attorney for Health Care was very helpful. We found that doctors as well as the care centers where our mothers lived were glad for clarity about who was in charge and what was desired. Multiple family voices can be a problem.
There are more family disputes than you can believe in such situations where parties either differ or are not fully aware of the whole situation. Some folks find the emotion of the dying experience interferes with decision-making. I have refereed such differences in waiting rooms outside of Intensive Care units. It’s not easy. Nobody ever went to court or appealed to the governor when wishes were disputed. Do everyone a favor. Get your health care directives signed.
April 1 is the birthday of Hayden Stewart, who was a guru during my youth and a life-long mentor. He died at 91. As I write on his birthday I re-read the 10 special things he taught me:
1. How to set up a room. 2. How to play ping-pong. 3. To be ecumenical. 4. To be different. 5. To be suspicious of institutionalism. 6. To trust intuition. 7. To be open to this moment. 8. To accept people’s differences. 9. To listen to “the still small voice.” 10. To stay in touch.
(From G. Hayden Stewart: “Life and Thought of a Contemporary Mystic,” by Art Morgan, presented to Northwest Association for Theological Discussion, 2003)

(back page)
 
DYING WHILE ALIVE
 
      I spent part of the afternoon after Easter trying to catch up on reading my magazines. They do stack up! You know how it is with a stack of magazines. You sort of skim and skip articles. I was doing that when I found myself hooked on page 40. A fair number of blue sheet folks are old enough to get the AARP magazine, so you probably read it too.
      The title caught my eye—“Too Late to Die Young,” by Harriet McBryde Johnson. If you haven’t read it, you might like to look it up.
      Anyway, it was Easter and I had been speaking to our Easter people about what we mean by “life,” and how Jesus used the term in his teachings. I thought it fitting at Easter to remember that Jesus was more interested in life before life than life after life. To add to the currency of the article, the news is full of the case of Terri Schiavo, with all the life issues that situation raises.
      I was expecting the sad story of a little girl who knew she was going to die very young. Instead, the girl kept on not dying. She was a bit surprised by the fact itself, because she had adjusted to the idea that she would not live a long life.
      She remembers at age 5, being glad that in spite of everything, her parents were going to send her to kindergarten. She thought, “When I die, I might as well die as a kindergartner.”
      She talks of living under the cloud of her death sentence but living a happy child’s life. “Why not?” she asks. As the days and years go by she keeps pushing the end time a bit farther away, with no illusion that she will live very long. She goes to school and studies hard, not for a future reward, but because she enjoys it. “When I die I might as well die educated.”
      Although her body slowly deteriorates she lives onward. She finishes college, then decides to go to law school. She thinks that she might have a couple of years to practice law. “When I die I might as well die a lawyer.”
      In this article, her thoughts come down on the family’s side in the Schiavo situation. She raves against doctors giving up on people. She opposes physician-assisted suicide. “While anyone may die young, it’s not something you can count on.”
      I wonder how far she would go in urging life support? If she knows about the Schiavo case, she doesn’t mention it.
      Here she is now, unexpectedly 47 years old. Her disease still progresses slowly. She dares think of maybe 20 more years. While she once imagined dying before she left her teens, now she thinks she could die old.
      It is a relief that she doesn’t burden us with the kind of theology in which God does for her what God doesn’t do for everyone. “Death is a natural force of nature, but not just. It is a random force of nature; survival is equally accidental. Each loss is an occasion to remember that survival is a gift.”
      Her last line is one that I wish I had read before Easter. It said my say better than I did.
      “When I die, I might as well die alive.”
      As I read through the various stories about Jesus and his teachings, they were not stories about giving up and waiting for some life outside of life. They were stories and teachings about abundant living, being fully alive, aware, useful and compassionate here and now. My Easter title was “Come Alive!” If I were doing it again I would change the title to “Come Alive Before You Die!”
                                — Art Morgan, After Easter 2005
(From AARP, March/April 2005, “Too Late To Die Young,” Harriet McBryde Johnson, p. 40 ff., an excerpt from her memoir "Too Late To Die Young: Nearly True Tales From a Life," to be published in April by Henry Holt and Company)