MORGAN'S MOMENT...
Holidays…
    Holydays…
        Hollydays…
If you're a student…
          It's Freedays
If you're working…
    It's Offday
If you're not religious
    It's Playday
If you are religious
    It's Prayday.
If you're all alone
    It's Aloneday
If you're indifferent
    It's Nothingday.
If you're pagan
    It's Solsticeday
If you're hungry
    It's Soupkitchenday
If you're a kid
    It's Gettingday
If you're a mom
    It's Cookingday
If you're decorating
    It's Hollyday
If you're Christian
    It's Holyday
If you're in luck
      It'sHoliday!
— Art Morgan 

BOOK CORNER
I am grateful for book suggestions. Some come out of our book club. Others come from blue sheet people. For instance, one suggested by Brian Cleary on Orcas Island ─ “The Power of Intention,” by self-help guru, Wayne Dyer. After trying to be intentionally non-intentional for the last 28 years, I should probably read it.
Dick Wing occasionally sends a title insisting that “this you've got to read.” So Curt Vonneget’s “Man Without Country is on order.
I believe good preachers are good readers. I'm not sure that it always works the other way around, but it can't hurt.
Teddy Turner in Spokane keeps me in titles as well, as does Walt Naff in Texas. Jean orders them for me. When I read them I’ll give my report.
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MOMENT MINISTRIES
Nov. 29, 2005
home address:  25921 SW Airport Ave.
Corvallis, OR 97333   541-753-3942
email at a-morgan@peak.org
Christmas eve 2005
We've run the same ad for almost 20 years. That's one good thing about Christmas Eve. Always comes on December 24. We do our thing the same hour every year and do the same thing. It's called tradition!
It's only a half hour ─ 6:30 – 7:00 but everyone seems to know that you'd better be there closer to 6 if you want to be sure of a good seat.
We advertise minimally, just enough to let people that we're still doing it. We're not competing with the numerous churches that do multiple, fine services. We just do a simple thing for people who feel more comfortable outside a church setting.
As far as I know we are the only Christmas Eve service held in a Pub setting. Jesus should feel right at home
Old world deli on Christmas eve!

USE THE WEB SITE
We've had some people who want an extra copy of the back page of the blue sheet, or one of the back copies. We rarely have more than 3 or 5 extra copies. But all of them are on our web page, thanks to our Webmaster, Bill Gilbert. He posts them about the same time I mail them. You who receive this by regular mail probably won't need to use the www page, but others might. Feel free to refer them to www.moment-ministries.peak.org. If nothing else it has a nice view of Puget Sound and the Olympics from our cabin!
I WANT TO STAY ON THE LIST
She had just moved from Oregon to New Orleans. I assured her that it's as easy to send to New Orleans as anywhere. We send to Williston VT, Pittsburg, Bethesda, Wilmington, St. Petersburg, Columbus, West Lafayette, Delaven WI, Bloomington, Billings, Great Falls, Enid, Albuquerque and Velarde NM, Fort Worth, Aurora CO, Boise, Pocatello, Phoenix, Tempe, Sun Lakes and  Casa Grande AZ, Las Vegas, Henderson NV, Kailua HI, Unalaska and Ketchikan Alaska as well as dozens of people in Washington, Oregon and California.
It’s fun thinking of folk in these many places. And it has been a great way to stay connected. I like scattering ideas and hearing your ideas as well. I get nice notes and thanks. I am the one who should thank you for reading these pages. The next blue sheet should be out in January, 2006.
 
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MISCELLANEOUS
Deck the halls with boughs of jolly!
         A little bit of “ho-ho” for the season. It’s always needed in life and in the world. Ancient people knew that and cheered themselves with thoughts of longer days following the Solstice. Christians liked that idea as well.
         There are lots of reasons not to be jolly. Our personal concern list has far too many names on it ─ some of you probably know who you are ─ people living some hard days that are not at all jolly. If you're not sick one way, you're probably sick about national and world conditions of one sort or another.
         My point during Advent has been that jolly and merry and joy are not because of our circumstances, but in spite of our circumstances. We are people with the capacity to choose jolly anyway!
Merry Christmas to some and to the rest “good night.”
          Where did my jolly go? Those folk we elect to go to Washington DC in our behalf have given another Christmas gift to the wealthiest Americans in the form of billions of dollars in tax cuts. At the same time they are debating which programs for the neediest Americans will be reduced. This political statement is all the more relevant at Christmas when we sing lullabies to the manger-born Jesus.
em-i-grant ─ “moving from one place or country to settle in another.”
          The Christmas story should make us think of emigrants. There are 100 million emigrants right now, people without a homeland or home, on the move to a better place. They are moving because of natural disasters, hunger, and political turmoil, just to name a few things. Many are refugees, or like the earth quake survivors in Pakistan, both hungry and homeless. They would go anyplace for a chance at life.
         We were all emigrants, or descended from them. Even the Native Americans trace their origins to a river area in Siberia. At one time or another our blood flowed in the veins of people who abandoned familiar homelands and neighbors and family to journey afar. We can only imagine the hardships involved.
         The reason Christmas should make us think of emigrants is because of the several threads of stories we lump into the big story. Most of us realize that the line between history and legend is blurred. We also know that there are reasons for the stories being told as they were that are mostly theological. Look at them anyway. The “holy family” journeys from Nazareth to Bethlehem. You could drive it in an hour or so, but to walk probably took a week or so. If you use the stories as a basis, Jesus never got back to his parent's home for several years. He was an emigrant.
         The coming of the wise men tells of another migration. In a nomadic time it was hard to tell emigrants from tent-dwelling herdsmen. These wise men are alleged to have come from regions to the east, which could mean Iraq. Note that they came at Christmas time bringing gifts. This Christmas time we have three major oil companies in Iraq lining up to take a gift of immense profits for extracting oil. (Sorry about that. I lost my jolly).
         The journey into Egypt was a typical migration. According to the story, Jesus was taken to Egypt as an infant to avoid Herod’s slaughter of infants designed to eliminate a future king. So Jesus was an Egyptian for a couple of years before presumably journeying back to Nazareth. Again this story told by Matthew sounds like something right out of the story of Moses escaping the slaughter of infants by the Pharaoh. I'm not vouching for the accuracy of the story, but only reminding us that emigration is part of the Christmas story.
         The sad thing is that the story is being lived out by 100 million people as we speak. People still on the run to avoid slaughter. Infants and other innocent people are dying of AIDS and starvation and the ravages of left over land mines and errant missiles. How can we do Christmas without remembering these things? We send a bit more to Church World Service this time of year because they deal with emigrants every day of the year. It’s sad. But we're going to be jolly anyway, aren't we?
Is there anything up there?
          A guy stooped down to where I was lying on my back between weight lifting sets. I was staring blankly at the ceiling, so he looked up too and asked that question. Christmas holds another answer. “No, up there is not where it’s at. The divine is here, among us and within us.” It’s the season for having an eye out for a sign of the Holy. If Christmas has it right we'll find what we're looking for in the least likely place, even possibly in ourselves. So, deck the halls with boughs of…well, you know.
 — Art Morgan, Christmas 2005