MORGAN'S MOMENT...
It’s a strange feeling…
      getting used to walking
      on a carpet again.

It’s strange to find a kitchen…
      inside the house
      instead of outdoors.

It’s strange looking out at dawn…
      and not seeing Jean
      sitting at her campfire.

It’s strange to walk in our house…
      looking into all the rooms
      wondering what they’re for.

It’s strange looking in my closet…
      seeing clothes I haven’t missed
      for more than four months.

It’s strange to see Christmas trees
      instead of our sailboat
      floating in the water.

It’s strange going to Saturday Market
      meeting people who didn’t know
      that we were ever gone.

It’s strange to realize
      that we’re known when present
      and forgotten when absent.

It’s strange to feel at home again
      and enjoy renewing belonging
      to all things strange.

— Art Morgan 

Some summer titles I read:
The World Without Us
Banker to the Poor
John Adams
The Man Who Loved China
Train Your Mind Change Your Brain
The Last Lecture


MOMENT MINISTRIES
– October 14, 2008 –
    A MOMENT MINISTRIES production – Art Morgan a-morgan@peak.org

WERE WE CONNECTED?
We tried to keep up a connection with our list this summer. Some of you were on an e-mail list. You received a link that allowed you to download a “Summer Blue Sheet.” Some never gave me an e-mail to send to.
I have no way of knowing whether many actually read the e-mail version. If people are like me they tend to skim through too many e-mails already. I’m sure I got “skimmed” or simply not “linked.” Very understandable.
So it’s back to this form of connection. Almost everyone gets a hard copy in my version of blue. I think the odds are better that it will get a bit more attention than an e-mail and is more likely to be copied, shared with another and possibly discussed. Some out there claim to keep a collection. One actually willed his collection of blue sheets to a son! That’s a bit extreme I think.
The best thing about the e-mail version is that it’s free. But my sense is that the printed version is worth my expense.
My goal is to remain connected with colleagues and friends and a few relatives. It’s also good for my thinking to have to put down some thoughts to share.

WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?
Let me remind us all that Moment Ministries doesn’t do anything. We want our people doing the doing where life and opportunity allows.
We will gather our local friends occasionally. This Thursday the 16th I think, if we can get the word around. (After all, we just got home after 4 ½  months!)  We’ll certainly gather in November and for a pre-Christmas Brunch as well as Christmas Eve at the Deli.
We do whatever comes next and as I often have said, something always comes next.

MY FAVORITE BACK PAGES OF THE SUMMER
Oregon’s Mane Event (About Inavale Farm)
My Shoppe
On Neuroplasticity
Josh
Sarah Get Your Gun (Annie Oakley)


 
                                                                                     (back page)

NEW BLUE SEASON
        I was sitting with nearly 100 clergy and spouses listening to a lady named Diana Butler Bass give her final lecture.  One of my thoughts was typically irreverent and maybe irrelevant. Inside this comfortable church hall we were being happily entertained by this witty professor. She was trying to buoy up the spirits of main line church people with results of her research.
        This was the very week the stock market was plunging 1,000 points. Most clergy really don’t have a feel for the immense emotional investment that much of the nation has in Wall Street. Even retired clergy have been fortunately protected by a well-managed Pension Fund with Social Security on the side. They need to know that many in the pews have bet their retirement on Wall Street and were seeing their nest eggs being stolen away in the night. Mental health people are doing big business. People are feeling very blue. They say that they are even turning some red states into blue.
        But I was reporting on Diana Butler Bass. You could trim her up a bit, change her glass frames and sweep her hair up in the back and mistake her for Sarah Palin. I tried to forget Sarah Palin and Wall Street blues and give her my attention during this final lecture. She was going to fly away home and we were going to drive back to our cabin. She is recently famous for her book called “Christianity for the Rest of Us.”
        Among other things, I heard her say that we in the west have the largest percentage of unaffiliated church people in America. In fact “unaffiliated” has a larger constituency than such groups as Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Mormons, or whatever. We west coaster’s are leading a movement. I think we have been in that lead for some time. It also occurred to me that our Moment Ministries attachment to “unaffiliated” puts us in big time company.
        I should confess that we aren’t especially successful in rallying vast gatherings of our group. We make a little splash on Christmas Eve at the Deli. Actually, we don’t work at it. I’m not sure that the unaffiliated want to get tied down with other unaffiliated’s.  We find that they do occasionally want some level of attention or ministry. I sometimes joke that when folks don’t want much of a ministry they call on people like me or Paul.
        I talked with a hospice chaplain in Illinois the other day. Many of her clients are among the unaffiliated. She had three funerals in a recent week because the people were disconnected from any faith system. This is a growing clientele, not only in hospice but in our whole society.
        Those who have followed the news of Moment Ministries for the past 30 years have heard us say time and time again that we have no intention of becoming another institutional group. We declared ourselves available to “outsiders” with a promise not to try to make them into “insiders.” Our life among people was about dealing with “moments” in people’s lives, not about creating a long-time connection.
        That, in fact, has been how it has gone. We can identify several hundred that have been part of our group at one time or another through the years. There must be many, many more than that that have been touched in ways we can never know. These are the “moments” we all experience in our life journey.
        We try to encourage the idea that everyone sparks “moments” with words, notes, actions and other contacts that actually help and change others. I argue that Jesus probably never knew of the outcome of his presence among people. Those who experienced his presence or a word were the ones who remembered that “moment” and passed on the story. We would all be surprised by what our personal presence and words have meant to others.
        People ask me what I do. I say, “I do whatever comes next…and something always comes next.” That means that if I am to do anything I have to be alert to “moment” opportunities and take the time to listen to a story, answer a note in a more personal way, follow intuition into being present when I don’t know why. I can be fully engaged every day. I don’t do it like I might, but its how I’ve occupied myself for 30 years.
        This blue sheet is the first of a new season. The haphazard list of back page topics reflects my approach to doing my life. We write about what we happen to be thinking about at the moment. It goes out I know not where, I know not why and I know not what results. It goes out to many faithfully working within their churches and to many more who are unaffiliated and happy not to be. There is no intention to change the minds of anyone. I’m happy enough if people get their own thought processes stirred in some way by these blue pages.
─ Art Morgan, October 12, 2008