MORGAN'S
MOMENT...
Geese all across the sky
    wave after wave
    flying west.
“Why west” I asked?
   “what ever happened
    to south?”
The geese now stay
    to winter over
    in our valley.
Grass seed farmers
    are unhappy hosts
    to hungry guests.
Are people farther south
    missing these guys
    in winter?
Is warmer weather moving north
    so geese don’t need to fly
    so far south?
Solstice is at hand with promises
    of sun’s renewal
    and a time of warming.
Maybe geese hanging around
    are another warning
    of earth’s warming.
— Art Morgan 

BOOK CORNER
It’s a bit raw for Christmas, more appropriate for Columbus Day. I’m talking about James Reston’s history, “Dogs of God – Columbus, the Inquisition and the Defeat of the Moors.”  This is the side of the Inquisition and Columbus that should embarrass Christians and dispel the notion that the only “Talibans” in history are Muslims.
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MOMENT MINISTRIES
– December 17, 2009 –
    A MOMENT MINISTRIES production – Art Morgan
a-morgan@peak.org
CHRISTMAS EVE
AT THE OLD WORLD DELI AND PUB
A 30-minute family event of carols and candles
With an unrehearsed Christmas story
There’s a part for every child
6:30 – 7:00pm
Those in the know come a half hour early for seating and a chance to sing some extra carols.
Those who come an hour early get to help set things up.
Those who stay 15 minutes after get to put the Deli back together.

The following is a Christmas card to all men…
and any who are delaying medical testing for whatever reasons. I write this in memory of people I have known who are not around for this Christmas either because they, or their physicians didn’t think early testing makes a difference. Give those who care about you a gift to cherish. Get tested. 

New European Study Confirms Effectiveness of PSA Test
Prostate Cancer Deaths Cut by Up to 31%
and Unnecessary Biopsies by 33%
     New data from the European Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer (ERSPC) shows the PSA test reduces prostate cancer deaths by as much as 31 percent.
     ERSPC also announced yesterday a new research study showing biopsies could be reduced by as much as 33 percent…  “The PSA test is as important to men as a mammogram is to women. Everyone has the right to know if they have cancer.”
     ERSPC is the world’s largest randomized screening trial on prostate cancer, consisting of more than 162,000 men in seven European countries who were followed over a 17-year period. Preliminary ERSPC findings earlier this year (New England Journal of Medicine, March 2009) noted that PSA testing produced a 20 percent reduction in prostate cancer deaths.
(January 2010 European Urology)

A SEASON OF PRESENTS AND ABSENCE…AND PRESENCE
Those who have felt the sting of grief and feeling of absence feel it all the more at Christmas. Many on my list are in that number. We celebrate a season of the “presence from on high”. Let us be the flesh of presence to all who experience absence this season.
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THE THEOLOGY OF GLOBAL WARMING

    Don’t get your hopes up for any breakthrough thinking here (as if you ever did!)  But the subject is alive with lots of hot buttons and hot heads among the cooler heads who think (with scientific data in support) that the globe is warming. Evidence of warming is strewn from the North Pole to the South Pole. If in doubt ask a polar bear or penguin.
    When the Pentagon is studying how the military might be forced to respond to the results of global warming in a few more decades, you realize that something is happening that is not good.
    I don’t know that there is a theology for this. It is laughable for mere human late arrivals in the universe and on earth to wring hands over a passing change on planet earth. There has been nothing but change in the universe since the Big Bang some 13 or 14 billion years ago. Living means having to adapt ourselves to change.
    What makes this change something humans should take seriously is that for the first time in planet history (as far as we know) humans may be responsible for altering natural process.
    In another time – and to our dismay, even in these times – some argued from Genesis that humans were given dominion over the creation which allows freedom to exploit the world for personal benefit. That is a theology that should be challenged and that is rejected by responsible thinkers.
    A more responsible theology is one that sees the human species as part of the creation rather than apart from it. The operative word is not “dominion” but “stewardship.”
    When dominion theology is in play humans argue for the right to expel poison gases and pollutants into the air to do what it will to plants, animals and humans, especially if it creates jobs and makes money. We see the theology at work in environmental debates about controlling production of pollutants. Profitability and jobs for workers trumps all even when health and life and climate are threatened. “We can’t make changes now due to the economy.”
    Where stewardship theology is practiced, the priority shifts to working so that the earth and its creatures are allowed to flourish as nature allows. Vehicle emissions are reduced or eliminated, renewable energy is created, and dams are breached so fish runs can be restored and so on.
    Progressive theology welcomes science as a light into the unknown darkness which religion has previously attempted to explain in ages past.
      A major problem in our time is that the majority of humans are seriously deficient in both theology and science. Religious fundamentalism, which seriously disputes science, is dangerous in itself – whether, Christian, Muslim or Jewish. Carl Sagan once commented in “The Demon-haunted World – Science as candle in the dark”:
      "95% of Americans are scientifically illiterate." (p. 6)
       How can we expect a reasonable outcome to a serious discussion of global warming? Writing more than a decade ago Sagan adds,
      “The consequences of scientific illiteracy are far more dangerous in our time  than in any that has come before.” (p. 7)
       Mix biblical and theological illiteracy with scientific illiteracy and you can see why planet earth is in trouble.
       ‘Tis the season to sing “Joy to the world…let heaven and nature sing…” together!
─ Art Morgan, Christmas 2009