You have Permission to be Joyful

Last updated on: August 26, 2024 at 1:55 pm By Vance Morgan

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. During his remarks at the Democratic National Convention last week, Rev. Al Sharpton quoted Psalm 30:5—“Weeping may stay for the night, but joy comes in the morning. As an excellent preacher should do, he repeated joy comes in the morning several times with increasing volume, met each time by the increasing cheers of the crowd. He knew his audience—these... Read more

What To Do with a Difficult Teaching

Last updated on: August 24, 2024 at 12:37 pm By Vance Morgan

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Today is the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost. Here is my entry for this Sunday in my forthcoming book A Year of Faith and Philosophy. Today’s gospel is the last of several Sundays spent in John 6, Jesus’s “Bread of life” discourse. A number of Jesus’ followers have finally had enough, complaining that “this teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” When Jesus responds with a few more of his patented cryptic remarks, “many of his disciples turned back and no longer... Read more

Non-Toxic Masculinity on Display

Last updated on: August 22, 2024 at 3:05 pm By Vance Morgan

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The non-toxic masculinity that has been on display at the Democratic convention in Chicago this week has taken me back more than five decades to my high school years. My high school in northeastern Vermont was a relatively small public school (around 500 students freshman through senior) with a few boarders. We were proud of our sports teams (or at least some of them). Our ski team won the state championship two of the four years I was in high... Read more

Jesus the Teacher

Last updated on: August 19, 2024 at 2:25 pm By Vance Morgan

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I begin the first chapter of my teaching memoir Nice Work If You Can Get It with a scene from my favorite television show. In an early, first-season episode of The West Wing, presidential speech writer Sam Seaborn is attracted to Mallory O’Brien, a fifth-grade teacher who is also the daughter of White House chief of staff Leo McGarry. Sam has managed to offend Mallory unintentionally and wants her to know what he really thinks about teachers: Mallory, education is... Read more

Dr. Seuss on Immanence and Transcendence

Last updated on: August 17, 2024 at 11:54 am By Vance Morgan

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Today is Ordinary Time 13, the thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost. Here’s the section for that Sunday in my forthcoming book A Year of Faith and Philosophy. The appointed Psalm for Ordinary Time 13 Year A is Psalm 139, a meditation on perennial questions that plagued the psalmist three thousand years ago and continues to challenge contemporary humans. Am I good enough? More fundamentally, Do I matter at all? Just about everyone is familiar with “imposter syndrome,” the conviction that although... Read more

What I Learned About Teaching From My Favorite Movie

Last updated on: August 15, 2024 at 12:29 pm By Vance Morgan

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Last Sunday Jeanne and I had guests over for dinner whom we had not seen in twenty-five years. Jess and Liz are former students of mine who graduated from Providence College in 1999; after a number of years in California they have recently moved back to southeastern New England. They brought their eight-year-old son Jack along, the first youngster who has been in our house for a while. Liz told me that I looked the same as when she had... Read more

Having the Right “Niyyah”

Last updated on: August 12, 2024 at 5:21 pm By Vance Morgan

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I recently heard an interview on NPR with Rami Nashashibi, a professor of sociology who is also the founder and executive director of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network in Chicago. Particularly memorable was a brief exchange toward the end of the interview, when Nashashibi told the story of how his four-year-old daughter came to understand the meaning of her name. He explained that his daughter’s name, “Niyyah,” is in both Swahili and Arabic the word for “spiritual intention.” Muslims are... Read more

Speaking the Truth in Love

Last updated on: August 9, 2024 at 1:20 pm By Vance Morgan

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During my youth and adolescence, my father was the president and primary fundraiser for a small Bible school that he had cofounded around the time I was born. I spent a bridge year there between graduating from high school when I had turned seventeen just two months before graduation and going away to college 2500 miles away from home. In addition to my father, the school had about a half dozen faculty, several of whom were pastors at local churches... Read more

Where Hatred is Disguised as Love

Last updated on: August 8, 2024 at 6:46 pm By Vance Morgan

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A few days ago Jeanne said “I’ve got something you have to go to.” I’ve learned over 35+ years that her ideas about what I should do are, more often than not, on point–this was one of those times. Not too many spouses would realize that “Theology Beer Camp” would be a perfect fit for their significant other–it’s a little niche–but within 24 hours I had arranged for my son and I to attend (he lives just a few hours... Read more

Get Up and Eat

Last updated on: August 5, 2024 at 3:33 pm By Vance Morgan

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In one of the possible readings from the Jewish scriptures for this coming Sunday, we find the the prophet Elijah sitting under a broom tree, exhausted and possibly suicidal. It is the middle part of a story from First Kings that contains a great deal of spiritual and psychological wisdom. Here’s how I treat this story in my forthcoming book A Year of Faith and Philosophy. In the Ordinary Time 2 Year C reading from the Jewish scriptures, we find a... Read more