MORGAN'S MOMENT...
He was installed in to office
    on Tuesday January 22 ‘09
    at high noon (EST).
Lots of pomp and circumstances…
       a couple of lengthy prayers…
    one lumbered the other soared.
Two musical pieces
    a song full of soul
    frozen instruments abetted by a CD.
An honest to goodness poem
    clothing the meaning of the moment
    understandably and movingly.
A swearing in moment…
    where a Chief Justice bumbled
    and the elected one followed along.
An 18 minute speech of sermon length…
    full of audacious hope
    spoken to awestruck multitudes.
Applause waved from the White House
    to the Washington Monument
    to the Lincoln Memorial and beyond.
Tears and joyful smiles shared the same face
    while cell phone cameras flashed
    sending the scene across the land.
The benediction touched my soul…
    “Lord, in memory of all the saints
    who from their labors rest…”
As they left to parade and dance
    I was remembering those now gone
    who kept the dream of this day alive.
— Art Morgan 

BOOK CORNER
Mitchell Gold has put together a much-needed book called “CRISIS – 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social, and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing Up Gay in America.” In addition to this book, Gold has a website dedicated to ending religion-based prejudice against the gay community. (www.faithinamerica.info)
The book is a must-read for clergy, educators, politicians who are in positions where words and attitudes can do great harm, especially to gay teens. The book is also of great value to parents, relatives and friends who need help understanding and accepting some who need it.
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MOMENT MINISTRIES
– January 27, 2009 –
    A MOMENT MINISTRIES production
Art Morgan a-morgan@peak.org
WILL WORK FOR A CUP OF COFFEE?
   Starbucks has a deal this week. Volunteer to help someone for 5 hours and they’ll give you a free cup of coffee.
   Maybe it’s part of a stimulus package. Do you get a double shot?
   Or maybe it’s a signal of something more. There may be a political tilt away from an ethic that has shaped national agenda for a couple of decades. The core idea was that it doesn’t help people to help them. The mantra was that when you help people you take away their personal responsibility and initiative.
   There are those who thought the Good Samaritan story naïve and obsolete and who believed that caring for your neighbor as yourself was socialism.
   I don’t know where all those volunteers are going to go. Goodness knows that we have an organization for every known need in Corvallis and probably the highest ratio of volunteers anywhere. We also know that there are problems we haven’t fixed and that there are increasing needs to help hungry, homeless, mentally ill and addicted people. I think people care and would like to get plugged in.
   It will take more than a cup of coffee to get all the needs filled. But it’s a start. Lots of people are walking around with good hearts waiting to be challenged. Some have the Jesus servant model embedded. Others have an ethic from other religions, or simply a human valuing of other humans.
   I was feeling guilty about my lack of volunteering. Jean jumped on me about the fact that my unemployed life of “doing what comes next” has been almost totally volunteer. I already have earned two cups of coffee getting this blue sheet published!
   Lots of retired people put in more hours than mine following their own compassions. Bless them. Most won’t be taking up Starbuck’s offer. Serving is nothing extra-ordinary. It is part of who they are.

SPEAKING OF VOLUNTEER ORGANIZATIONS…
What about the Corvallis Repertory singers? They do professional quality choral events for the community.

MUSICALS from every decade of Oregon’s Statehood

Saturday, February 7, First Congregational Church

Paul has 2 of the solos. There’ll be a crowd. 7 p.m.
Tickets at Grass Roots or at the door.
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STILL DREAMING
     We’re still singing the songs – at least we do during MLK week in our Thursday Night Moment group.
“I Woke Up One Morning with My Mind Stayed on Freedom”
“O Freedom, O Freedom, O Freedom over me”
“There’ll be Sunshine in the Morning One of These Days”
“Come and Help Me Build a Land Where We All Can Live”
“We Shall Overcome One of These Days”
     Sometimes Linda sings “Let Me Tell You About Harriet Tubman”
     And Paul sings “Abraham, Martin, Bobbie and John” about four who were assassinated, three in my life-time.
     My thoughts and emotions were stirred as I remembered their stories and stories I could add from my own experiences, especially during years of our Los Angeles area ministry. It is a very sentimental journey our group has shared with me for 31 years here now, singing songs we first learned before the Civil Rights Bill was passed and before voting, housing and employment laws were enacted.
     During the Inauguration events and speeches, overlaid with endless words of commentary from people who have no direct memory of the wilderness years, we heard excerpts from the “I Have a Dream” speech. We were reminded of the 50 years journey of the dream spoken at one end of the Capitol Mall to the Inauguration of Barak Obama at the other end.
     We heard of “the dream” and of the “Promised Land.”
     I had an irreverent thought that someone ought to raise a banner: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! In fact, I think someone did.
     Of course such a sign is always foolish. It is raised by someone who hasn’t read the story of the “Promised Land” that Martin Luther King knew so well. The story is clearly revisionist history. It is a story told and re-told with a heavy religious and nationalist spin. This was a story that grew to tell where the Jewish people came from, their journey of struggle and faith, their gift of a “Promised Land.”
     The story never mentions that the promised land was occupied territory and that the occupants were not happy to surrender it to outsiders. It does tell us that Moses saw the promised land, but died in the wilderness where he had languished for the previous 40 years. Joshua was inaugurated to lead the triumphant crossing of the Jordan.
     The mission was not accomplished at all. In fact the troubles continue to this day in Gaza. Martin Luther King would be the first to tell us that the mission is not about land and victory but always about justice and peace.
     He would also know the rest of the biblical story and see the truth in its metaphor. We can never be allowed to put the dream to sleep. The boundaries to the promised land are ever shifting, ever changing. The Israelites found the land was sand, that the high tide went out and washed away all the gains they thought God had given them as a right.
     And so it goes. Most of us who lived through the last 60 years have been involved in struggles to achieve what seemed to us to be justice. We got legislation passed. We saw voting rights, housing, employment, education – many injustices corrected. Sometimes we were foolish and thought our mission was accomplished.
     But the battle is never done. A new group of people comes along to rescind the gains we thought were made. We must march again and stand again. King reminded us that “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” It would be dreaming to think that a land exists where this is not necessary.
    We better not forget the original story and how it does not end. We need to keep singing the marching songs of peace and justice. We need to keep speaking the lines of “I have a dream” until they are embedded in our nation’s psyche.
     We must never be so foolish as to raise a “Mission Accomplished” banner. We may still be wandering way out in a barren wilderness where peace, security, a rising financial market, and secure pension plans are a far off dream. We may think we have crossed over, but there’s still a long, hard distance ahead.
     We ended our evening with a toast, using champagne from South Africa, claimed as Nelson Mandela’s champagne of choice and used by Obama to celebrate election night. We used it as a communal moment during which we remembered our connection with people who lived and died in the march toward a promised land.  And we pledged ourselves to keep the dream alive, no matter what.
─ Art Morgan, January 27, 2009