MORGAN'S MOMENT...
My insides are full of bugs…
     and so are yours…
     millions even maybe billions
     of bugs and wormies.
Leading of course
     to introspection!
     and theological speculation.
I am an organism
     in which (or whom?)
    dwell uncountable numbers
     of active organisms.
Each living its own life
     yet doing its existence
     part of a much greater organism
     of which it knows nothing.
Which makes me speculate
     the mystical possibility       
    that I am also part of
     a much greater life system
     than I can comprehend.
“Yonder is the sea great and wide
    teeming with things innumerable
    living things both small and great.”
Am I one of those small things
     teeming in a great wide sea
     of life beyond my imagining?
— Art Morgan 

BOOK CORNER
I read books people recommend I don't necessarily recommend them. I just report. “The Marketing of Evil,” by David Kupelian is one such book. He's a northwest writer of a website that talk show hosts and others patronize called WorldNetDaily.com. If you read it I recommend starting at the back where he reveals his true agenda as an advocate for conservative Christianity. Go from there, if you want.
I did like “Bono in Conversation with Michka Assayas.” Interesting and insightful. I'm now listening to his songs.
•
MOMENT MINISTRIES
Jan. 8, 2007
home address:  25921 SW Airport Ave.
Corvallis, OR 97333   541-753-3942
email at a-morgan@peak.org

HAPPY NEW YEAR…(We can at least hope!)
Here's a bit of unsolicited advice that I haven't tested but which I was assured by the radio news reporter as true. You know, one of those “latest study shows…” reports. The study reported that the way to overcome pessimism is to “Smile.” There's something about smiling that makes your body feel optimistic. The carrot was that optimists live longer than pessimists, that smilers live longer than those who don't. Try it for a year and report back.
This is the first blue sheet of the season, in case you wondered. It was intended earlier but I spent the week finishing up last year's moment business and cleaning up my computer, etc. If all works well I’ll be putting it in the mail shortly after finishing up our first gym weight training class of the quarter and before leaving for Seattle. Why Seattle? Well, my cousin, Hollis, died shortly before Christmas. I've been working with his executor. The four brothers of us were his only living relatives. He didn't want a service but I pushed for a gathering of his coffee buddies and any other friends he might have had. The plan is to meet in Ballard and remember Hollis. He was close to my age, so we had a number of youthful adventures together. Maybe I’ll tell you some of our better stories someday.
Many of you read about our Christmas Eve service in that article in the newspaper (which people also read on Internet). Standing room only. We didn't actually need the publicity. I've reported locally that mailed Christmas checks paid the insurance, newspaper ads, costs of doing the service as well as the annual mailing permit. I'm always amazed how we get what we need without advertising. I hope I always say “Thank you.”
We're doing Thursday night “moments” when we can find enough people on the same schedule at the same time. We're using our email list to get ourselves together on a particular date. It’s sometimes easier for Paul and me to flex schedules than it is for others. We like to play to a crowd when we can. So the proposed date for this Month is
Thursday, January 18.
Confirmations are beginning to come back, so I'm betting it will go. Is this any way to run a church? No, but we're not trying to run a church.
A Spokane reader suggested that if anyone wants to read more about a book I mention to try Googling it on the Internet. I'm also willing to forward the comment page I always write on every book I read.
Are you smiling!

 
                                                                                     (back page)

WILL VALENTINO GO TO HEAVEN?

Among my emails the other day was one from a lady telling the sad story of her 21 year-old cat's terminal disease. She ended her report with these words:
“What I want to know is about heaven for animals…I am beginning to question heaven in general. I just need some comfort here, Reverend Morgan. Will my sweet Valentino go to heaven? Will someone or something, come to guide him to the next world? Will he be at peace? Please help me."
I hate that kind of question, but will not escape by quoting the church's traditional theological answers. And I will not lay claim to any special inside information. And, comforting as it might be, I won't say, “Yes, of course Valentino will go to heaven. Of course he will be at peace.” For all I know he may.
This kind of question may not mean anything to people who have never loved and lost a pet. A pet is like family or a best friend. Death is a loss, a separation. And separations produce grief. The lady, of course was anticipating this grief and wanted to lighten it.
What pet owners and lovers know is that these animals have distinct personalities. They have minds and senses and feelings and understandings that don't show up in words. Many people, especially those who are alone, talk to their pets and pour out their feelings. Many pets respond with uncanny understanding. If humans have a heaven why should pets be left behind? In many ancient cultures pets are depicted as entering the afterlife with their owners.
I think that we can learn something about our relationship with nature by paying attention to our ability to relate to our pets and them with us.
There is a connection. We “civilized” people have lost too much of that. One book that will give us a wake up call in this regard is “The Spell of the Sensuous,” by David Abram. He combines history, anthropology, ecology and philosophy to call us back to a time when human beings did not consider themselves separate from pets, animals or any part of natural life.
The sections on language remind us that spoken, and especially written, language is late in the evolution process. Long before human language there were other forms of communication. When humans were closer to nature we understood the language of birds and animals and insects and other creatures. A fisher can read a river, a geologist can read a landscape, and a sailor can read the sky. You get the idea.
We've gradually quit most of our interaction with the world outside of human beings. We have become rather arrogant about assumed superiority. The loss of this ability to talk to trees and rocks and rivers and creatures has led to great disrespect for the world of which we are a part.
What I did say to the lady about Valentino and heaven was that
“We all share the same web of life, whether we are oysters or eagles or humans or cats. Each is unique in that we have had the wondrous opportunity to have landed on this small planet that has proven especially hospitable to the evolution of a species like our own, as well as unknown numbers of other equally amazing appearances of life.

We share the same journey, although in different lengths and with different awareness. Your Valentino is part of this miraculous web as are you. Most religions have some sense of continuation, although ideas and religions differ. The idea of “heaven” is a sort of umbrella term for the great unknown ‘in which we live and move and have our being.’ It is natural to hope for some kind of life and recognition of loved companions after death. You may hold a hope in your heart that is as true as that of anyone else.”
Those of us raised in the Christian tradition need to understand that the early church, which wrote the New Testament, held out heaven as a hope to encourage faith during persecution. We also need to understand that Jesus hardly talked about heaven, but about abundant life here and now and living in right relationship with one another. That's how to love God, he taught, by loving our neighbor as ourselves.
It is a good thing, I think, that people grieve over their pets. It’s a reminder that there's more to nature than human nature.. And it’s encouraging to know that people love enough to wish for their pets what they wish for themselves. Would that we felt the same toward the whole earth.
─ Art Morgan, January 5, 2007