MORGAN'S MOMENT...
Why do you suppose
     that all these great causes
     hitch-hike on Jesus’ birthday
     to gather our gifts?

Why does generosity
     rise like a gusher
     especially in this season
     like none other?

All these needs are year around
     and appeals know no season
     but they overflow our mail box
     outnumbering Christmas cards.

The people of faith say
     that the spirit of Christ
     calls forth generosity.

Others analyze our psyches
     and decide that guilt
     stirs up giving as compensation
     for excessive commercialism.

The cynic declares
     we give at Christmas
     only because it is ahead of
     year end tax deduction time.

I hate the process but love the causes
     more numerous than I can support
     but at Christmas cheer them on…
     whatever works!

— Art Morgan 


BOOK CORNER
       Another book that will remind you of “Omnivore’s Dilemma” is Barbara Kingsolver’s latest, “Animal, Vegetable, Mineral.” The books meet on topics such as benefits of home grown foods, environmental impact from eating closer to home, the economics of food production and consumption, the personal satisfaction factor, benefits to the local economy and much more. Lots of good ideas for growing and preparing food along with many good recipes. Many are reading it and putting it into practice.

MOMENT MINISTRIES
December 17, 2007

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

Christmas eve at the deli
6:30 as always
     Come early if you want a good seat
     We create a Christmas pageant with children
            and a baby, if one shows up!

     Carols of course and Candles
7:00 ending
     A half hour to catch the Christmas feeling
            For the whole family.

A Moment Ministries Gift to the Community
with The Old World Deli and Pub on 2nd Street in Corvallis


(REMINDER - We don’t have any committees but it sure helps if a few show up about 5:30 to take down tables and set up chairs for Christmas Eve.)


A CHRISTMAS EVE PRAYER

We gather in this place…
A brewery and a pub and public place
With cobblestone floor
On a stage where belly dancers perform
To celebrate the birth of Jesus
Who was born outside hotel and hospital and church
In a cave used as a barn beneath a tavern inn
In a little town.
Only one more unlikely place is He born this night ─
In us!

(Christmas Prayers at the Old World Deli and Pub ─ Art Morgan)


YEAR END MAILING
This will be the last Blue Sheet of this year. It’s been such a short season I’m almost embarrassed. We didn’t get back to Corvallis until mid-October. Even so we managed to get a half dozen or so mailings out.
You have no idea how much I appreciate responses, most of which come by e-mail. The dialogue about different subjects stirs my mind and fills in gaps I haven’t thought of. That so many read, think about, pass on, and even copy some of these is a surprise and compliment.
I try to remind folks that I’m more interesting in stirring thought than directing it. From many responses I realize that people do take my ideas and go far beyond them. It’s scary how thoughts create thoughts.
One of the most valuable parts of this mailing for me is that it keeps me in touch with many I care about and am interested in. My community of friendships is wider and closer because of it. Thank you for being a part of my life.

 
                                                                                     (back page)

THE STAR SHINES
        Every Christmas season I look for the star at the top of our neighbor’s high fir tree. There was one Christmas season several years ago when I wondered whether that star would be there. Jason, their high school age son, had recently died. The house had been mostly dark ever since. I didn’t know whether they would be there for Christmas that year.
        People handle such losses in different ways. They hear folk advice like “Time heals all wounds,” and “Let go and move on with your life.” A lot of this comes from the influence of Freud who taught  those in grief to separate themselves from the one who is died and let go of the past. If you know the story of Freud you have heard how he couldn’t live by his own advice when his son died. He remembered and grieved for his son all his life. Love does not forget.
        But one night the neighbor’s star was shining against the darkness. I wrote at the time about “Jason’s Star.” That’s what the neighbors all call it now, and so does Jason’s family. They have turned it on each season since. It’s there now. And so is memory of Jason.
        I believe that story plays out in scores of homes every Christmas. I’m getting notes from a lot of people who are facing Christmas without someone precious. Pain and emptiness fill with special memories. Love puts up a star to remember by.
        A few weeks ago I wrote about my pain in deleting names of friends who have died from my mailing label and e-mail lists. Dick Wing wrote that he leaves the names on his Palm Pilot so that he is reminded of them. There is no reason to forget love or let it end.
        There is a new custom being promoted these days ─ pre-decorated Christmas trees. It’s easy, but it takes away some special moments. We have decorations that remind us of people who are only present in our memories. It is warming to be reminded.
       As I fasten on blue sheet labels I remember some circumstances of people. More than a few are for people in confinement of one sort of another. Maybe it’s a health issue, a life situation issue, or some other situation that separates from where they want to be or from those they want to be with. I was reminded of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Letters and Papers from Prison.” He was a pastor in prison toward the end of WWII for participation in a plot to assassinate Hitler. He writes about the separation that many feel at Christmas:
         “Nothing can fill the gap when we are away from those we love…The dearer and richer our memories,
          the more difficult the separation…The beauties of the past are not endured as a thorn in the flesh,
          but as  give precious for its own sake. We must not wallow in our memories or surrender to them,
          just as we don’t gaze all the time at a valuable present, but get it out from time to time, and for the rest
          hide it away as a treasure we know is there all the time.
” (p. 120)

       I don’t know how many can deal with their emptiness like that, but that’s the way he managed it in his circumstance.
       There are many I know that deal with Christmas like Silas Marner in that classic little book I often read at Christmas. He was urged to attend church on Christmas Eve by Dolly. Even a sample carol sung by young Aaron didn’t sway him. She went to church without him.
                        “And so Silas spent his Christmas day in loneliness, eating his meat with sadness of heart.
       Some refuse to put up the lights. Others light a star.
─ Art Morgan, Christmas 2007