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Love and lust have distinct but interlocking brain signatures: People often think of love and lust as polar opposites-love exalted as the binder of two souls, lust the transient devil on our shoulders, disturbing and disruptive. Now neuroscientists are discovering that lust and love work together more closely than we think. Indeed, the strongest relationships have elements of both. (rest of article not provided free) In Brief Brain imaging is revealing the distinct but interlocking patterns of neural activation associated with lust and love. Lust is most likely grounded in the concrete sensations of the given moment. Love is a more abstract gloss on our experiences with another person. Imaging is also helping to decipher the disorders of lust, including anorgasmia. Dozens of discrete regions across the brain fire at the point of orgasm-suggesting many different ways to develop anorgasmia.

'The recent historic open letter signed by 138 leading Muslim scholars ... from around the world - "A Common Word Between Us and You" - identifies some core common ground between Christianity and Islam, as well as Judaism. 'What is common between us lies in something absolutely central to both [and Judaism]: love of God and love of neighbor. 'The future of the world depends on our ability as Christians and Muslims to live together in peace. If we fail to make every effort to make peace and come together in harmony you correctly remind us that "our eternal souls" are at stake as well. 'We are persuaded that our next step should be for our leaders at every level to meet together and begin the earnest work of determining how God would have us fulfill the requirement that we love God and one another.'

UPDATE ON: 'In 1994, The New York Times reported on how those members, or "partners," as they called themselves, had settled into their first year of life as a community ("Retirement? For 11 Friends, It's Off to Camp"). It was one of a number of such experiments, known as cohousing communities, that were springing up around the country at the time, based on a Danish model developed in the 1960s.... How did the experiment turn out? On the 20th anniversary, the consensus was generally positive. As Helen Papke, 84, observed, it has been a lesson in patience. "When it's good, it's so good," she said. "And when it's bad, it's so bad, the angst and argument we have with each other. But we have a conviction to work it out - and we will." Dick Browning, 78, whose wife, Louise, died in 2007, was more effusive. "I love it," he said. "I love the community." Of the original 11 members, seven are still here, although apart from Ms. Browning, no one has died. (One couple and one woman left for personal reasons.) The community has taken on new members, so there are now 13 altogether...,'

UPDATE ON: 'In 1994, The New York Times reported on how those members, or "partners," as they called themselves, had settled into their first year of life as a community ("Retirement? For 11 Friends, It's Off to Camp"). It was one of a number of such experiments, known as cohousing communities, that were springing up around the country at the time, based on a Danish model developed in the 1960s.... How did the experiment turn out? On the 20th anniversary, the consensus was generally positive. As Helen Papke, 84, observed, it has been a lesson in patience. "When it's good, it's so good," she said. "And when it's bad, it's so bad, the angst and argument we have with each other. But we have a conviction to work it out - and we will." Dick Browning, 78, whose wife, Louise, died in 2007, was more effusive. "I love it," he said. "I love the community." Of the original 11 members, seven are still here, although apart from Ms. Browning, no one has died. (One couple and one woman left for personal reasons.) The community has taken on new members, so there are now 13 altogether...,'

...Love and understanding, even without knowledge, are tremendous gifts; and religious knowledge claims are hard to support. We should, then, make room for those who embrace a religion as a source of love and understanding but remain agnostic about the religion's knowledge claims. We should, for example, countenance those who are Christians while doubting the literal truth of, say, the Trinity and the Resurrection. I wager, in fact, that many professed Christians are not at all sure about the truth of these doctrines -and other believers have similar doubts. They are, quite properly, religious agnostics.

'The setting is simple, austere. The workspace occupied by the desk is small. I am impressed not only by the simplicity of the furniture, but also by the objects in the room. The spirituality of Jorge Mario Bergoglio is not made of "harmonized energies," as he would call them, but of human faces: Christ, St. Francis, St. Joseph and Mary.... 'I ask Pope Francis point-blank: "Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?" He...replies: "I ​​do not know what might be the most fitting description.... I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner." ' "...In the history of salvation, God has saved a people. There is no full identity without belonging to a people. No one is saved alone, as an isolated individual, but God attracts us looking at the complex web of relationships that take place in the human community. God enters into this dynamic, this participation in the web of human relationships.... ' "In Buenos Aires I used to receive letters from homosexual persons who are 'socially wounded' because they tell me that they feel like the church has always condemned them. But the church does not want to do this. During the return flight from Rio de Janeiro I said that if a homosexual person is of good will and is in search of God, I am no one to judge.... Religion has the right to express its opinion in the service of the people, but God in creation has set us free: it is not possible to interfere spiritually in the life of a person.... ' "The confessional is not a torture chamber, but the place in which the Lord's mercy motivates us to do better. I also consider the situation of a woman with a failed marriage in her past and who also had an abortion. Then this woman remarries, and she is now happy and has five children. That abortion in her past weighs heavily on her conscience and she sincerely regrets it. She would like to move forward in her Christian life. What is the confessor to do? ' "We c

'The setting is simple, austere. The workspace occupied by the desk is small. I am impressed not only by the simplicity of the furniture, but also by the objects in the room. The spirituality of Jorge Mario Bergoglio is not made of "harmonized energies," as he would call them, but of human faces: Christ, St. Francis, St. Joseph and Mary.... 'I ask Pope Francis point-blank: "Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?" He...replies: "I ​​do not know what might be the most fitting description.... I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner." ' "...In the history of salvation, God has saved a people. There is no full identity without belonging to a people. No one is saved alone, as an isolated individual, but God attracts us looking at the complex web of relationships that take place in the human community. God enters into this dynamic, this participation in the web of human relationships.... ' "In Buenos Aires I used to receive letters from homosexual persons who are 'socially wounded' because they tell me that they feel like the church has always condemned them. But the church does not want to do this. During the return flight from Rio de Janeiro I said that if a homosexual person is of good will and is in search of God, I am no one to judge.... Religion has the right to express its opinion in the service of the people, but God in creation has set us free: it is not possible to interfere spiritually in the life of a person.... ' "The confessional is not a torture chamber, but the place in which the Lord's mercy motivates us to do better. I also consider the situation of a woman with a failed marriage in her past and who also had an abortion. Then this woman remarries, and she is now happy and has five children. That abortion in her past weighs heavily on her conscience and she sincerely regrets it. She would like to move forward in her Christian life. What is the confessor to do? ' "W

Out of Tragedy, Questions About God: 4 out of 5 letters (surprising proportion for NYTimes) object to Wood's either/or view of theodicy: if God is omnipotent (& doesn't prevent suffering), he is cruel; if God is loving and good (and only comforts, but doesn't prevent suffering), he is weak and worth ignoring. They affirm the mystery "that God is deeply present in and through the events of the world - often inscrutably, but always powerfully and lovingly - and though we cannot for the life of us see how, even catastrophes include divine presence and power." A Christian notes that fellow believer "might counter [that] suffering and death come to all, even to a God who in his love took on our mortal, vulnerable condition as his own."

A.D. 375: Monks living in the desert in Egypt identify eight thoughts that weaken their devotion. Talking Back, a book by Roman monk Evagrius of Pontus, instructs monks on how to fight gluttony, lust, love of money, sadness, anger, listlessness, vainglory and pride. This article was originally published with the title History of Sin.

A.D. 375: Monks living in the desert in Egypt identify eight thoughts that weaken their devotion. Talking Back, a book by Roman monk Evagrius of Pontus, instructs monks on how to fight gluttony, lust, love of money, sadness, anger, listlessness, vainglory and pride. This article was originally published with the title History of Sin.

'When I began to spend time, 10 years ago, at an evangelical church in Chicago..., I soon came to realize that one of the most important features of these churches is that they offer a powerful way to deal with anxiety and distress, not because of what people believe but because of what they do when they pray.... 'Rev. Rick Warren's "The Purpose Driven Life," one of the best-selling books of all time, teaches you to identify your self-critical, self-demeaning thoughts, to interrupt them and recognize them as mistaken, and to replace them with different thoughts.... 'In my own research, the more people affirmed, "I feel God's love for me, directly," the less stressed and lonely they were and the fewer psychiatric symptoms they reported.'

'Raised in Pennsylvania, I grew up in the black church. My father was a religious leader in the community, and my sister is a pastor. I went to church every Sunday and sang in the choir. But for all that the church gave me - for all that it represented belonging, love and community - it also shut its doors to me as a gay person. That experience left me with the lifelong desire to explore the power of religion to transform lives or destroy them. I became interested in Uganda, an intensely religious country that attracts many American missionaries and much funding from United States faith-based organizations. The American evangelical movement in Africa does valuable work in helping the poor. But as you'll see in this Op-Doc video, some of their efforts and money feed a dangerous ideology that seeks to demonize L.G.B.T. people and intensifies religious rhetoric until it results in violence. It is important for American congregations to hold their churches accountable for what their money does in Africa.' - ROGER ROSS WILLIAMS

>'With unrealistic expectations of our ability to prolong life, with death as an unfamiliar and unnatural event, and without a realistic, tactile sense of how much a worn-out elderly patient is suffering, it's easy for patients and families to keep insisting on more tests, more medications, more procedures. >Doing something often feels better than doing nothing. Inaction feeds the sense of guilt-ridden ineptness family members already feel as they ask themselves, "Why can't I do more for this person I love so much?" >...At a certain stage of life, aggressive medical treatment can become sanctioned torture. When a case such as this comes along, nurses, physicians and therapists sometimes feel conflicted and immoral. We've committed ourselves to relieving suffering, not causing it. A retired nurse once wrote to me: "I am so glad I don't have to hurt old people any more." '

"...As a transplanted Englishman one thing to which I've become rather sensitive is which prejudices New Yorkers are permitted to express in public.... It's really fine to say totally uninformed things about Mormonism in public, at dinner parties or wherever."