Methodist Blogger Profile: Olive Morgan

Olive Morgan of Octomusings

Editor's Note: This is a great delight! At 85, Olive is the seniormost member of the Methodist blogosphere. She's a living witness to history: world, British, and Methodist. Alas, her blog server is presently down and her picture would not load, but I converted her picture into a .pdf file, which you can view here. Enjoy the story of this amazing woman.

I had the good fortune to be born 85 years ago into a Christian family with my father a long-standing Methodist Local Preacher and Sunday School Superintendent and my mother a passionate supporter of Women’s Work (the overseas mission work of the church). Methodism was very strong in the Durham and Yorkshire dales of the North Pennines where I grew up and I owe much to the strong faith found in those country chapels. I was fifth in a family of seven children and we had a family concert party. I made my own commitment to Jesus at the age of 16 during a Cliff College campaign and I treasure that ‘Great Decision’ slip still. At 17 I passed the Civil Service examination and was sent to work in the Unemployment Assistance Board in Westminster. Almost immediately, at Clapham High Street Methodist Church I met my future husband, Edward (also the fifth of seven children), who was studying at the Pharmaceutical College. We married in 1941 when he was called up for service in the 2nd World War and we had been married for 58 years when he died 6 years ago.

We have two children, Tony (who lectures in Music at Nottingham and Keele universities, as well as conducting his own choir http://www.rytonchorale.org.uk/ and his professional orchestra the English Pro Musica as well as running a thriving business http://www.bassbags.co.uk/ selling instrument cases world-wide) and Sheila (who set up the English Department of a University in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 13 years ago after teaching in various other Universities across the world.) On my husband’s death, the family set up a charity http://www.edwardmorgan.org.uk/ in his memory to further the education of disadvantaged young people under the age of 25, mainly in Vietnam but also in the UK.

Tony’s wife is also a Music Lecturer and they have 4 adult children – David helps to run Bassbags and has patented several of his own inventions that have helped quarrying and the building of Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport; Anna went into teaching after graduating from Durham University and married another teacher, Carl, last year, after which they became house parents at Bethany School in Kent; Richard gained his Masters degree at UMIST and is currently manager of a wine company; and Emily graduated from Durham last year before joining the accountancy firm KPMG in London.

I have been a member of Caversham Heights Methodist Church since coming to live in Reading in 1948 and have served in various ways at local and Circuit level. I am currently Media Publicity Director and pastoral visitor, as well as producing monthly Prayer Guidelines for the Northern Section of the Circuit, and I am a Circuit representative at the Southampton District Synod.

Why do you blog?
I was still itching to spread the Gospel, despite being told that after 80‘you should ‘leave it to the young ones’, when I read a half-page article in the Methodist Recorder in which Richard Hall made a plea for more Christian bloggers, arguing that ‘if John Wesley were alive today he would have a blog instead of a journal’.

What has been your best blogging experience?
The way in which the young bloggers accepted me as one of them and often asked for my advice. I became very involved with a 24-year-old New Yorker who escaped the 9/11 bombings but 4 years later was still in need of posttraumatic stress counselling, though refusing to agree to it. [If anyone in New York reads this, please get in touch with me for he is now in greater need of help than ever.]

What would be your main advice to a novice blogger?

• Blog daily if possible, even if you have to copy a poem or a paragraph from a newspaper (but don’t omit the name of the author or newspaper).


• Don’t use text speak; instead, use your blog as a way of improving your writing skills.


• Be as interesting and varied as you can.


• Visit other blogs and leave comments often.

If you only had time to read three blogs a day, what would they be?
http://www.theconnexion.net/wp
http://www.wesleydaily.com/
http://www.locustsandhoney.blogspot.com/
All three give a wider perspective than a single blogger.

Who are your spiritual heroes?
Helen Keller, Gladys Aylward, Selwyn Hughes

What are you reading at the moment?
I have just finished The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren and Rob Frost’s Lenten study book The Way of the Cross. I am just beginning Don Piper’s amazing 90 Minutes in Heaven and for lighter reading The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith (though at a casual glance it doesn’t seem as though it will be as interesting as his earlier books set in Botswana),

What is your favourite hymn and why?
Very hard to choose!
I will sing the wondrous story because it expresses my faith;
O Lord my God! when I in awesome wonder
Consider all the works Thy hand has made, because when I sing it I am girl again in the Pennines communing with God;
Lord, the light of your love is shining, because it expects revival

Can you name a major moral, political, or intellectual issue on which you’ve ever changed your mind?
I’ve certainly changed my mind about ageing! I used to think that 50 (and then 60) was OLD and that older people couldn’t preach the Gospel or, indeed, lead useful lives! I now know that, as long as you still have your faculties, you can still find many ways of service and of spreading the Word. All my contemporaries have given up their work for the church and are now, as one man said, ‘jut waiting to go up there’. All the talk this week of whether the Queen should abdicate now that she is 80 is indicative of the idea that you stop doing anything at 80!

What philosophical thesis do you think it is most important to combat?
Far too many people have a negative view of people, of policies, of proposed projects and of life in general. I am constantly telling them to ignore the negative and accentuate the positive. That’s the best way to build up anything, whether it be a marriage, a reputation, a church or an organization.

If you could effect one major change in the governing of your country, what would it be?
Put a Conservative government in power because I want to see if David Cameron can achieve what he promises.

If you could effect one major policy change in the Methodist Church, what would it be?
I was going to say that the Methodist Church should train Ministers as Chaplains to the Deaf, as the Anglican Church has done for years, but this is beginning to change with the announcement of the first Methodist Chaplain to the Deaf in London. Then I thought to advocate the abolition of Foundation training (for it seems to me to put off more people from becoming itinerant presbyters than it encourages, at a time when we need more), but today’s Methodist Recorder says that abolition is to be proposed soon!

What would be your most important piece of advice about life?
Keep your eyes upon Jesus, love him and follow Him as closely as you can. Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today – say to yourself often, DIN (Do it Now). Never say you can’t do things – if you want to do something badly enough you will find a way to do it.

What, if anything, do you worry about?
I don’t have anything to worry about.

If you were to relive your life to this point, is there anything that you’d do differently?
Not exactly. If circumstances had been different, I would like to have been able to take up the teacher-training place I won at College instead of having to go into the Civil Service, and I would like to have continued local preaching when my husband returned from the war - but I would not then have followed other ways of service that have been a blessing. So I don’t look back in that way, except for the day, twenty years ago, that I followed instructions from HQ to tell the JMA collectors of the need for latrines! I was accused of insulting the African people and it ended my 33 years as Junior Missionary Association secretary!

Where would you most like to live (other than where you do now)?
Nowhere. I’m very happy where I am now.


What do you do in your spare time? Spare time? What’s that?

• I do sight checking of Scripture for Wycliffe Associates (UK) - I have some Old Testament stories in Cuiba, a language spoken in Colombia and Venezuela, for checking just now. I also do research for Wycliffe Associates (UK)’s Bible for the Future project.


• I am about to take a six-week course in personal evangelism called ‘Lost for Words’ and in September I hope to start the Disciple 3 course.


• I like raising plants from seed and cuttings, reading listening to classical music, and Sudoku.

What is your most treasured possession?
Apart from the Bible, without doubt it is my computer! My family gave it to me for my 80th birthday and I’ve completed 13 courses since then.

What talent would you most like to have?
To play a musical instrument like the rest of the family. I did have piano lessons as a girl but my fingers were too clumsy and I was certainly not a natural. I can play enough to please myself but it’s not really ‘playing’!

If you could have any three guests, past or present, to dinner who would they be?
John Hull, the blind author of In the beginning there was darkness; the Revd the Lord Leslie Griffiths, former President of Conference and now Superintendent of Wesley’s Chapel, London; and the Revd Martin Lloyd, until recently coordinator of Easy English Bible (which has a limited vocabulary and so is useful for immigrants, educationally disadvantaged and Deaf people(http://www.easyenglish/info)
He is now travelling the world setting up teams to produce Easy Bible in as many languages as possible and has wonderful stories about the way in which ecumenical teams have, almost miraculously, come together in each new country.

UPDATE: Editorial changes made per Olive's request.