MORGAN'S MOMENT...
We have a “Pole-ish” son-in-law…
     Karen’s husband who
     turns our world upside down
     with Antarctic adventures.
He is drawn by the magnetic pull
     of compelling instincts
     toward the fascinating beauty
     of the South Pole.
It’s his third venture there…
     landing by small plane with skis on ice
     into sub-freezing weather
     to do his work.
For three months or so
     he does “summer” there
     while we do Christmas here
     without him.
Our upside down globe in the window
     with the South Pole on top
     helps us remember that to him
     he’s on top of the world.
We’ve had word via Internet
     of his reaching the South Pole
     after more than a month or more
     traversing 1000 miles of Arctic ice.
Now we wait news of a safe pick-up
     before the season worsens…
     that he is heading home
     to his eager family.
Scientists will head to their homes
     to do global research
     with samples Lynn help them gather
     from this international ice cap.
And our little world
     will celebrate the return 
     of our “Pole-ish” son-in-law
     and turn the world right-side-up again.
— Art Morgan 
BOOK CORNER
Only room and time to report on books actually opened. Like Vernon Parrington’s, “Main Currents in American Thought,” published in 1930! I went looking for founding patriots, especially Thomas Paine. Or, “Lend me Your Ears, Great Speeches in History,” edited by William Saffire. I looked first at speeches about war and peace. The other book I hope to finish and never be finished with is Rachel Carson’s, “Silent Spring.” Our book club is doing this 40-year old book. Stephen Hawkings always challenges me, so I am poking into his latest, “The Universe in a Nutshell.” Maybe I’ll report.
MOMENT MINISTRIES
Jan. 12, 2003
home address:  25921 SW Airport Ave.
Corvallis, OR 97333   541-753-3942
email at  a-morgan@peak.org
25 YEARS!
     We didn’t intend to be doing “Moment Ministries” all these years. The day that a group of us gathered under the mattress at the former “Mother’s Mattress Factory” (really, there was such an eating place with a mattress suspended from the ceiling) and agreed to incorporate as “Moment Ministries,” none of us intended or expected a 25th anniversary.
     Our web page has a record of some of our founding principles if anyone is really interested.
     We have succeeded in our goal of not attempting to be “successful” in any usual sense. How can you measure the impact of ideas, small groups or individuals? The thing one must not do is think that absence of “success” means absence of impact.
     We have only occasional anecdotal reports of impact. No matter. We remain committed to the idea that no organization or individual can really know the degree of significance in the life of the world. The one clue we get comes when someone sends an e-mail or note in response to the blue sheet. It’s a compliment to be read. And by the way—thanks to so many who put funds into our check-book to pay year-end Annual Postage Fees, Insurance, and Christmas advertising and service expenses, publication and postage. We don’t expect this and gladly fund these things ourselves, but are humbled when we get help. 
     We still have trouble answering the question: “What is Moment Ministries?” What do you say?
JANUARY MOMENT
The next Thursday Night Moment Potluck will be on January 23, 2003. A time for our local constituency to share some warm, supportive, time together. Welcoming winter lights are up inside and out. Maybe a little time for some inspiration from Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring.” We’ll be starting our 26th year. Gather anytime after 6. We eat at 6:30. 

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IN-RAGE AND OUTRAGE
“If I don’t cry out, the stones will shout…”
          These words come from a “contemporary” song by Jim Strathdee that we used to sing 30 or more years ago during the Civil Rights and Vietnam wars. Some cried out while most just went along.
          I think what I may be trying to write about is the necessity of an alternate view.
          No, more than that, I am trying to write about the necessity of the alternate view having expression.
          So, you ask, what ticks him off this time? 
          To answer that question you have only to read the papers. I found myself tearing out columns that reported removal of long time international agreements and removal of environmental regulations. I am old enough to remember having campaigned in a mild way for many of these and cheering when they were put in place. I find it unbelievable that so many could be removed by “executive order.” No chance for debate. My collection of such columns continues to grow. I can hardly believe it.
          You know, sometimes, how something bothers you in the gut and you don’t quite understand why? You get in a general funk for no apparent reason. We learned in counseling classes about anger that gets buried and what happens to it. I call it “in-rage.”
          We were taught that in-rage will get you one way or another. It needs out.
          I was talking with a friend not long ago who told me that he no longer read the papers. I probably didn’t need to know why, but asked anyway. “Because I can’t stand what I read.” I sure wasn’t going to get him started on just what he read that he couldn’t stand. Besides the daily bad news there is increasingly daily worse news.
          He has withdrawn from the struggle. He is now among the uninformed. His rage has turned in-ward. In-rage.
          I have wondered how long it would take for a significant number of people to turn in-rage to outrage. Of course, with all the focus on our playing “chicken” with Baghdad, public question of anything has pretty much been deemed unpatriotic. There are aspects of the Homeland Insecurity Act (did I get that wrong?) that discourage expression of outrage.
          For some reason Tom Paine came to mind. He was a friend of Thomas Jefferson. Those two loved this country into existence with their passion for independence and belief that authority always needed the discipline of public scrutiny. Tom Paine, a Quaker and friend of humanity and the world, thought American democracy (republicanism) depended on freedom of the people to be heard.
          He would be ashamed to hear that less than half of those who even bother to register to vote actually vote. Most are barely informed about the heart of major issues, and few have much rage beyond what affects them directly. The established powers despised, vilified and ridiculed Tom Paine and called him “the infidel Tom Payne” when his pen turned his in-rage to outrage.
          I know there are folks out there who are feeling some variety of rage just in reading these words. I rest on the words of my Christian pacifist granddad, written in a time when public outrage against war was under fire:
Dost thou despise the Radical? Of rabid speech and shaggy locks and flaming eyes,
Thou safe and sane conservatives?
And dost thou smile, the while in thy vast pride and comfort-calloused hide?
And yet a man who calmly can behold, unmoved, the awful useless, self-inflicted tragedies
Of his own time and race, And not be swept, betimes from off his feet…
Who never flames with fury and does not long to blast the wretched wrong…
Is scarce a man! And often is not fit to wash the feet
Of him who shouts and pleads upon the street. (Arthur D. Weage.)
          Revolution breeds on seething in-rage. Outrage is what saves democracy from political tyranny. There is a time for the song, “If I don’t cry out, the stones will shout…” There is a time for outrage, a time for crying out. 
— Art Morgan, Jan. 2003