NEW BLUE SEASON
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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