The Sacrament of Sports Fanaticism

Last updated on: March 11, 2022 at 8:30 am By Vance Morgan

This is the first week of the best four weeks of the year: March Madness. This week is called “Championship Week,” when the thirty-or-so Division One basketball conferences play their post-season tournaments. The winners of those tournaments plus an equal number of other worthy teams get to play in the NCAA basketball tournament that starts next week. This coming Sunday is “Selection Sunday,” when the participants in the NCAA tournament will be announced, as well as brackets and seeding. Many... Read more

Confessions of a Tree Hugger

Last updated on: March 9, 2022 at 2:08 pm By Vance Morgan

For the twenty-five-plus years that Jeanne and I have lived in our house, the lot behind our small back yard has been vacant. We live in a city residential area, so such empty lots are rare. We often dreamed of purchasing the lot so that our dogs could have an expansive yard to run around in, so we could build a beautiful deck/patio, and so on. But it was both prohibitively expensive (for us, at least), and furthermore was not... Read more

A Stranger (Protestant) in a Strange Land (Catholic)

Last updated on: March 7, 2022 at 9:33 pm By Vance Morgan

Last Wednesday the student in front of me in line at the little on campus coffee shop in the building next to mine plopped what looked like a pre-packaged chicken Caesar salad on the counter. While fumbling for her card to pay, the cashier said “that isn’t chicken, you know. It’s tofu.” “WHAT?” the student cried. “It’s Ash Wednesday. We aren’t allowed to serve meat on Ash Wednesday or Fridays during Lent.” The exasperated student left her no-longer-wanted tofu Caesar... Read more

It’s My 66th Birthday, and I’m Still Here. Deal with it.

Last updated on: March 5, 2022 at 10:52 am By Vance Morgan

Early last week a friend emailed me the following comment in response to my latest blog post: How about something a bit more topical? There’s a humanitarian crisis going on in the Ukraine; and I feel we have to address it!!! Prayer? A call to discern? Other thoughts? Thks. The email caught me at the wrong time, in the midst of preparation for a complicated lecture I would be giving in less than an hour. Rather than doing the grownup... Read more

What if Jesus Turned the Stones into Bread?

Last updated on: March 2, 2022 at 1:07 pm By Vance Morgan

The Gospel reading in this coming Sunday’s lectionary for the first Sunday of Lent is Luke’s account of Jesus’ forty days of temptation in the wilderness. This story happens also to be the centerpiece of one of the great passages in all of literature, Dostoevsky’s tale of the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov. As chance would have it, my teaching colleague and I just spent a seminar with our sophomore “Faith and Doubt” students on Dostoevsky’s story just a... Read more

An Assignment for Lent: Learn the Difference Between Solitude and Being Alone

Last updated on: March 1, 2022 at 7:29 am By Vance Morgan

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to yourself. Michel de Montaigne Tommorow is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Whoopee. I freely confess that Lent is my least favorite season of the liturgical year. Over the past several years I have regularly posted something like “Why Lent is a Bad Idea” on this blog around Ash Wednesday. I have struggled not so much with the season, but rather with what Lent seems to... Read more

Stop, Look, and Listen: A Transfiguration Sunday Reflection

Last updated on: February 23, 2022 at 6:03 am By Vance Morgan

Today is Transfiguration Sunday, the last Sunday before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. Included in all three of the synoptic gospels (it’s Luke’s version this year), Jesus’ transfiguration is a strange story with multiple layers of possible meaning. Jesus is worn out by the crowds and takes his best buddies, Peter, James, and John, with him to the top of a mountain for a break. While there, he is transfigured with Elijah and Moses, looking like a great... Read more

The Cruelest Thing a Person Can Say

Last updated on: February 23, 2022 at 10:39 am By Vance Morgan

I detect that a rebellion against all things “religious” is growing on me. Often it amounts to an instinctive horror. Dietrich Bonhoeffer The assigned texts in my “Faith and Doubt” colloquium seminar this morning are the Grand Inquisitor materials from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and Confession, Leo Tolstoy’s poignant and brutally honest account of his journey toward faith. I’ve led class discussions on the Dostoevsky materials several times over the years, but this is my first time with Confessions. There are many passages... Read more

Faith and Insecurity

Last updated on: February 19, 2022 at 3:41 pm By Vance Morgan

Have you never felt like one of those pawns forgotten in a corner of the board, with the sounds of battle fading behind them? They try to stand straight but wonder if they still have a king to serve. Arturo Pérez-Reverte On tap this coming week in my team-taught “Faith and Doubt” colloquium is the Grand Inquisitor materials from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s brilliant final novel, The Brothers Karamazov. As I have been reviewing these materials last week, I was reminded of one... Read more

Faithful Failures–A Presidents’ Day Reflection

Last updated on: February 19, 2022 at 10:15 pm By Vance Morgan

It’s Presidents’ Day weekend, which for college professors means–as do all Monday holidays in the middle of the semester–“catch up day.” It’s the Spring semester’s version of Indigenous Peoples’ Day. I will be spending most of the day catching up on the grading that never seems to end, particularly since I have this nasty habit of assigning my students a lot of writing assignments. But it’s also a time to think about Presidents as well as social policy and politics.... Read more