A Miracle in Motion: The Green Balloon Story

A MIRACLE IN MOTION is Reverend Mary Manin Morrissey's description of her struggle to find a home for Living Enrichment Center, her New Thought church. Membership had grown dramatically since its humble beginnings in Mary's Tigard, Oregon, living room. By the early 1990s the congregation of around 3000 needed a new home. Mary and her advisors, drawing on their belief that they are "Co-Creators with God," called upon His Divine Guidance for help. Eventually Mary and her congregation were led to the abandoned Callahan Center in Wilsonville, Oregon. The cavernous three-story Callahan Center, which includes an Olympic-sized swimming pool, several large meeting rooms, a kitchen and dining hall, and about 15 cabins, all situated in beautiful and lush forest on 90 acres in the "jungles" of Wilsonville, had been designed in the 1970s as a convalescent home for veterans. It was abandoned in the 1980s. (An interesting footnote is that the Callahan Center was something of an extension of Damasch Hospital, located next door. An underground tunnel connects the buildings. Portions of the movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" were filmed at Damasch.) Mary wasn't sure if the Callahan Center would be appropriate for her church, noting its great size, the neglect of the extensive grounds, and its distance from I-5. It was quite the fixer-up, and a remote one at that since most of Mary's congregation would have to drive at least 20 miles one-way to attend services. But then, looking over her list of requests from God, she realized that she never asked for a centrally located facility. A MIRACLE IN MOTION relates the story of how Mary resolved to buy the property and establish Living Enrichment Center in this beautiful location, detailing the wisdom that inspired Mary and her advisors to meet this challenge. Of course, the footnote to the story is that less than ten years later Living Enrichment Center has sold the property and will vacate the premises by the end of June 2004. So, that sort of ruins the uplifting intention of this book. In addition, Mary is now embroiled in a financial scandal that is all over the local papers. And she has stated from the pulpit that she may've gotten a little too caught up all of her "prosperity consciousness" and "positive thinking." She has said it may've blinded her to the harsher realities of managing a huge facility. But it wasn't all a loss. I worked at Living Enrichment Center and can testify as to the benefits Mary's church brought to my life. (One night, in an act that would've gotten us all fired, several employees took a trip through the underground tunnel to Damasch Hospital. Something out of a sci-fi movie, a great night I'll never forget!) Though I was never too captivated by Mary's sermons, I became involved in a few of the church groups and eventually began to volunteer to work on the grounds in my off-hours. The grounds were beautiful and, as Mary herself writes in A MIRACLE IN MOTION, they minister to you i