Benedict on Religous Freedom: Can the Church Claim Rights for Itself While Denying Rights to LGBT Persons?

Simon Barrow's recent essay "Reform, Persecution and Future Church" at the Ekklesia website provides a brilliant response to Pope Benedict's growing insistence that religious freedom is a foundational human right, the foundation for all other human rights and freedoms.  Benedict developed this theme in his new year's statement for World Peace Day.

Decline in Reading Literature and Decline in Empathy Correlated: Implications of Recent Scientific Findings

At Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish site, Zoë Pollock reports  on a recent scientific study that appears to indicate empathy is on the decline among younger Americans.  Pollock links to a recent Scientific American article by Jamil Zaki analyzing this study.

Cooking to Save the Planet: More on Black-Eyed Peas for New Year's Luck

This is a quick addendum to what I posted yesterday about black-eyed peas as a new year's luck talisman in the American South.  It occurs to me that I may have sounded coy, when I didn't mention any instructions for cooking the peas themselves.  I didn't do so, frankly, because I assume that anyone who eats this particular dish probably already knows how to cook black-eyed peas.

"The Question of Love Itself Still Stays Unresolved": Tatamkhulu Afrika on the Love Between Men

I spent new year's eve in flight across the Atlantic reading Tatamkhulu Afrika's novel Bitter Eden (London: Arcadia, 2002), which I had spotted in a London bookstore.  At first, I had to work to appreciate the novel, which is written from an allusive first-person perspective that didn't grab me immediately.  I'm glad, however, that I persisted, since this is a story that gets under the skin.  I continue thinking about it now that I've finished the book, and want to share a few thoughts here.

Black-Eyed Peas and New Year's Luck: Our Interconnected World

Back home last night after a looong flight from London to Atlanta to Little Rock, a flight made more anxious by the line of severe storms through which we had to fly on the last leg, storms that caused fatalities yesterday in Arkansas and Missouri.  I'm thankful to be home safe and sound, though unhappy to learn that the storms through which we flew caused several deaths.

Safe and sound, if a bit travel-bedraggled, and as always happens when we travel, the gods who watch over safe journeys have exacted their usual toll for bringing us home safe--on this trip, a little bag of homemade candies I carefully selected at an open-air booth at the Covent Garden market, to give to friends on our return, which are now nowhere to be found in our luggage.

Advice for the New Year from the Author of "Cloud of Unknowing": God Sees Not What We Accomplish, But What We Desire

A beautiful aspiration, one fitting for the new year, from the unknown author of the 14th-century English mystical treatise The Cloud of Unknowing:

Work more with a desire than with futile strength.  . . .  It is not what you are, and not what you have been, but what you wish to be that God considers with his merciful eyes.

A Happy 2011: Cara Dillon Singing "A Parting Glass"

A traditional Irish song, "The Parting Glass," akin to "Auld Lang Syne."  "Parting Glass" is said to have been sung at the "wakes" held by Irish families and villages for family members and friends departing Ireland, most of them never expecting to see their family and friends in Ireland again, after they went across the seas.

To friends everywhere, a very happy new year, with loving memories of friends departed in 2010.