MORGAN'S MOMENT...
We wandered through the wilderness
     of electrical stores
     seeking the right light.
So many choices
     so many varieties…
     so many tempting us to choose.
We go back to our house
     to gaze into dim emptiness
     trying to imagine a light.
We’re waiting for the right light
      to attract us
      to end our seeking.
So the story of kings of the East
      slips into our minds
      as fellow light seekers.
How did those guys choose
      one light from among
      those billions and billions?
The legend explainers tell us
      how one star stood out
      and led them along.
They tell us one light
      will soon stand out
      from all we have looked at.
They even dare to claim
      that we will find it
      by Christmas
We’ll see about that
      but meanwhile
      we’ll keep looking.
— Art Morgan 

BOOK CORNER
“TRAFFIC – Why We Drive the Way we Do (And What It says About Us)” by Tom Vanderbilt.
This is not a bad book for one’s spiritual development because it makes us look at ourselves in the one place we feel safest from outside scrutiny – our cars
The book should have universal appeal even though we all think our driving is superior to that of most – but isn’t. He covers lots of driving facts and history in an interesting way. Worth the trip.
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MOMENT MINISTRIES
– December 4, 2008 –
    A MOMENT MINISTRIES production – Art Morgan a-morgan@peak.org

BAD MONEY
My book club met the day after the Feds or somebody finally declared what everyone knew already – that the U.S. economy was officially in recession.
On that same day the market plunged another 700 points.
As fate or the gods or inspiration planned it, our book for the evening was Kevin Phillips’ “BAD MONEY – Reckless Finances, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism.”
If you have read Kevin Phillips you know that he has the scope of an historian, the perspective of one who has been around a while, the shamelessness of one who forces you to see what you don’t want to see and hear what you don’t want to hear, and the audacity to tell you what you are seeing and hearing whether you want to or not. You only wish you had read this book last year or before. It’s a 2008 imprint that includes the plunge of August 2007 but misses the plunge of this past September, October and November.
Besides assuring us what we fear, that we’re in a deep hole, he says: “I would underscore the vulnerability of the national administration in office between January 2009 and January 2013 to a convergence of U.S. problems outlined in this book: debt and credit, currency weakness, asset losses, oil supply, climate change, potential resource wars, and the costs of overinvolvement in the Middle East. No matter what their alleged mandate, any governing-party coalition is likely to come under huge strain.” (p. 162)
Readers open to a critique of the role religion has played in this economic crisis will be interested in his repeated words that first appeared in “American Theocracy – The Perils and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century.” With its narrow agenda religion has “dumbed down” the national political debate regarding what really matters. An important book if you are up to it.

ADVENT SEASON SUNDAY BRUNCH
THIS SUNDAY DECEMBER 7
10:01 A.M.
Home of Barbara Ross and Joe Omelchuck
460 SW JEFFERSON in Downtown Corvallis
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ANGEL GUILD CHRISTMAS

     There’s a thrift store in Key Center, Washington about 8 miles from our cabin. It is a rare week during our residency there that Jean doesn’t visit that store. It sells discarded items and turns profits over to local groups in need. It’s a good place to shop.
     Jean always comes home with at least one treasure. Sometimes a bagful. She rarely spends as much as $5.00.
     We were there during Thanksgiving week which allowed Jean her last chance to visit Angel Guild.
     She came home with two brand new treasures.
     The first was a sight unseen purchase of a NATIVITY scene. She carefully unwrapped each of the eleven pieces. Surely some would be chipped or broken. Surely the baby Jesus or some other important piece would be missing.
     But lo! I tell you a mystery. That nativity scene was perfect. It will hold the place usually taken by the olive wood set I purchased long ago in Bethlehem. The pieces are ceramic I believe, hand painted. They came to us unexpected.
     We wondered where that set came from. Had it ever been used? Did the people get tired of it? Did the owners die and their children get rid of the old family Christmas things because they didn’t want them? Did the giver quit believing in Christmas or in Jesus? I don’t think we’ll ever know.
     So we have this abandoned holy family in our house for Christmas, along with I don’t know how many other Madonna’s and Infants and angels and kings.
     The other thing Jean bought was a large banner.
     We unrolled the banner to have a look.  It was perfect. Not faded at all. One loud word proclaims – JOY!
     It didn’t appear to have been used. Again we wondered why “Joy” had been abandoned at Angel Guild.
     I guessed that maybe the people didn’t have a place to hang it. Maybe they didn’t feel much joy this year. There are always reasons for heavy hearts that aren’t fixed by “joy” banners. Some people even feel worse at Christmas because they are bombarded with appeals to emotions they do not feel.
     On the other hand, people put up such banners against the sadness and darkness of their lives as a sort of defiant affirmation. They do Christmas anyway – in spite of. Like our neighbors who put up that star on their highest tree every year. We who know understand that the star remembers their son whose death some years ago still has its sting.
     So we took down the turkey that has occupied a prime place by our front door under the deck light during the Thanksgiving season and replaced it with this brand spanking new bright red banner that blares out – JOY!
     The nativity and the banner are only two of the treasures of Jean’s visit to Angel Guild. She found an unused “Unity Candle” set. You’ve seen them used at weddings to symbolize two becoming one. Jean already gave it to a couple who will use it at the wedding I am doing on New Year’s Eve. Again, we wonder why it was never used.
     She has other candles, all new. They are very inexpensive but their glow is perfect for this season of celebrating light in the world. They remind us that you can have the light of Christmas without spending a lot of money. Let there be LIGHT and there was light - via Angel Guild.
     I like these kinds of things that sort of sneak in with hidden messages. The whole Christmas experience is like that. I wish we would tell the stories and let them be without trying to explain their meaning. That’s hard for people like me with years of study and thought about all these stories. People really don’t want to hear all I know or think at Christmas time. Most people’s thinking and beliefs evolve through life. They don’t want a theology or need one. That’s why an Angel Guild Christmas can work its wonder into our lives. “How silently, how silently, God’s wondrous gifts are given. So God imparts to human hearts the wonders of His heaven.”
     You may be thinking of things that you always put out at Christmas because of special meanings and memories. We hang some small memorial photos on our tree. Some decorations have their own stories. It sometimes takes longer than it should to do our decorating because the memories slow us down.
     The season offers what Marcus Borg calls “thin places” – moments when we might come close to sensing that there is more to life than what we can see. There is more! There is a level of joy and light and hope that transcends the extremes of our lives. An Angel Guild Christmas may not work for you, but it works for me.
─ Art Morgan, The First Week of Christmas, 2008