Jose Mourinho described Manchester United’s visit to the Bernabeu on Wednesday night as “the game the world is waiting for” but in the meantime the world had to make do with Everton, although not the same kind of Everton that upset the applecart at Old Trafford last season.

It was asking too much for this game to be as thrilling as the 4-4 draw in April, last season, when United twice squandered a two-goal lead and eventually had to acknowledge that it was the day when the title started to slide away from them. Even so, taking a 12-point lead in the title race was never supposed to be as easy as this.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Men • Sports • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

(Note that last season Dickey played with the New York Mets and he will be with Toronto this season--KSH).

This is Kamathipura, the red light district of Mumbai, among the most notorious sex-trafficking locations in the world. I am here as a guest of Bombay Teen Challenge (BTC), a charity that has been fighting human trafficking for more than 20 years, one I joined forces with last year, when two friends and I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro and raised $130,000 , much of it from generous and kind-hearted Mets fans. I have come with my two daughters, Gabriel, 11, and Lila, 9, to witness the fruits of our climb – the conversion of a former brothel to a health clinic. I want my daughters to share the experience not so much as a gratitude check, but to learn that each of us has a capacity to make a difference in this world, and to see that God’s grace makes that possible.

Read it all, noting please that its content may not be appropriate for some blog readers.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Globalization • Law & Legal Issues • Poverty • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • Sports • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • India • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

The new Archbishop of Canterbury has taken control of his work diary after Lambeth Palace officials presented him with a “monster” list of engagements for his first few months in office.

The scaling back of commitments by Justin Welby is in marked contrast to his predecessor Dr Rowan Williams, who ran a packed schedule.

Dr Williams diary for March last year contained 15 events, sometimes two in the same day...

Read it all (requires subscription).

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • --Justin Welby

Islam in America is growing exponentially. From 2000 to 2010, the number of mosques in the United States jumped 74 percent.

Today, there are more than 2,100 American mosques but they have a challenge: There aren't enough imams, or spiritual leaders, to go around.

Read or listen to it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

Burkina Faso played wonderfully well with a great deal of heart.

My thanks to ESPN 3 for making it possible for me to watch my first ever Africa Cup of Nations final--KSH.

Update: There is a lot more there.

Filed under: * By Kendall • * Culture-Watch • Sports • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Burkina Faso • Nigeria

A Mormon couple, an Episcopalian, a Baha’i, other Protestants, a religious seeker and others gathered on a snowy Saturday morning adjacent to St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in downtown Salt Lake City to learn how to transcend their differences.

The dozen participants at the four-hour Human Rights workshop, part of a monthlong celebration sponsored by the Salt Lake Interfaith Roundtable, explored questions of faith and hope, perceptions of themselves and others, and their thoughts about how to find common ground with those from different, even opposing, traditions.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Faiths • Hinduism

Check it out and see what you think.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • --Rowan Williams • * Culture-Watch • Books

In America, all men are believed to be created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. But Nigerians are brought up to believe that our society consists of higher and lesser beings. Some are born to own and enjoy, while others are born to toil and endure.

The earliest indoctrination many of us have to this mind-set happens at home. Throughout my childhood, “househelps” — usually teenagers from poor families — came to live with my family, sometimes up to three or four of them at a time. In exchange for scrubbing, laundering, cooking, baby-sitting and everything else that brawn could accomplish, either they were sent to school, or their parents were sent regular cash.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Poverty • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

The tell-tale empty box of decongestant pills lay crumpled and damp in the woods behind an abandoned trailer, and the people who used it to make methamphetamine were long gone.

Their trash pile was evidence of a quick method of cooking methamphetamine that is gaining popularity in South Carolina – causing the number of meth cases to skyrocket and allowing “cooks” to be more mobile.

Last year, six years after South Carolina made people show an ID to buy pseudoephedrine, the key ingredient in meth, the State Law Enforcement Division reported 538 meth-related incidents in the state. That’s four times the number reported in 2010.

Read it all--makes the heart sad; KSH.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Drugs/Drug Addiction • Law & Legal Issues • Church/State Matters • * South Carolina

Take interstate highways between South Carolina's largest metropolitan areas and the scene remains similar — thick forests, meandering rivers and lush farms punctuated with thriving suburbs and vibrant downtowns.

Get off those interstates and something else emerges — towns where poverty rules, illiteracy passes to children like an inherited disease, and diabetes strikes 9-year-olds because of bad diets and obesity.

This is the other South Carolina. It runs along the “Interstate-95 Corridor” through the mostly majority black counties made infamous by the “Corridor of Shame” documentary about inequities in public schools. It also includes the “Mill Crescent,” the swath of rural, largely white, old textile mill counties between the I-85 economic powerhouse and greater Columbia.

If you took this other South Carolina away, the state would no longer rank at the bottom of nearly every list you want it to be at the top of. Instead, it would basically mirror the nation as a whole in income, education and health.

Many crippling disparities linger in these metropolitan counties, but the areas have been pushed into the national mainstream by four decades of economic growth, desegregation and an influx of people from other states and countries with new ideas and high expectations.

The other South Carolina remains shrouded in despair by the legacies of slavery, dependence on a marginally educated workforce, and political and economic domination by an elite few.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • History • Marriage & Family • Poverty • * Economics, Politics • Economy • * South Carolina • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

China surpassed the U.S. to become the world’s biggest trading nation last year as measured by the sum of exports and imports of goods, official figures from both countries show.

U.S. exports and imports of goods last year totaled $3.82 trillion, the U.S. Commerce Department said last week. China’s customs administration reported last month that the country’s trade in goods in 2012 amounted to $3.87 trillion.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • History • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

It's been more than a year since a military-induced massacre in Cairo, Egypt, killed 28 people—mostly Coptic Christians. But the only people convicted thus far have been the Christians themselves.

Last week, a Cairo court sentenced Michael Farag and Michael Shaker to three years in jail, charging them with inciting violence, destroying military vehicles, and deliberately attacking soldiers. Farag and Shaker were among the more than 30 Coptic civilians arrested following the massacre, 12 of whom were given life sentences last May.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Middle East • Egypt • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Coptic Church

In the first major test of his leadership of the worldwide Anglican Communion the Most Rev Justin Welby will be warned that the Church’s move risks alienating millions of traditionalist Anglicans in Africa and Asia.

Leaders of churches around the world are flying to Britain for Archbishop Welby’s formal installation at Canterbury cathedral next month, when some of them will meet the Archbishop for the first time.

Many want the new spiritual head of the 80-million strong Communion to call for an end to “divisive” moves away from traditional church teaching on sexuality, such as the ordination of [non-celibate] gay clergy as bishops.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • --Justin Welby • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops

If Steve Boedefeld graduates from Appalachian State University without any student loan debt, it will be because of the money he earned fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and the money he now saves by eating what he grows or kills.

Zack Tolmie managed to escape New York University with no debt — and a degree — by landing a job at Bubby’s, the brunch institution in TriBeCa, where he made $1,000 a week. And he had entered N.Y.U. with sophomore standing, thanks to Advanced Placement credits. All that hard work also yielded a $25,000 annual merit scholarship.

The two are part of a rare species on college campuses these days, as the nation’s collective student loan balance hits $1 trillion and continues to rise. While many students are trying to defray some of the costs, few can actually work their way through college in a normal amount of time without debt and little or no need-based financial aid unless they have an unusual combination of bravery, luck and discipline.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Marriage & Family • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Personal Finance • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

O Lord God, perfect in us that which is lacking of thy gifts; of faith, to increase it, of hope, to establish it, of love, to kindle it; and make us to fear but one thing only, the fearing aught more than thee, our Father, our Saviour, our Lord, for ever and ever.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Spirituality/Prayer

"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD; and you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

--Deuteronomy 6:4-9

Filed under: * Theology • Theology: Scripture