Analysis

In the movie A Beautiful Mind, there is a scene in which the brilliant mathematician John Nash reveals how he manages to function, despite the schizophrenia that has tormented him for years. “I still see things that are not there,” said Nash, “I just choose not to acknowledge them. Like a diet of the mind, I just choose not to indulge certain appetites.”

There are three main qualifications I have as an amateur Road to Bethlehem actor: I am tall, I am prepared to wear a funny hat in public and I have committed to making myself available to do it each year for a week in December over the past 10 years.

Tueday, 31 March 2020, marked exactly three months since the World Health Organization, the Chinese office, was notified of incidences of pneumonia from an unknown cause. According to specialists from the Robert Koch Institute in Germany, we have not yet reached the peak of the pandemic in Europe. We hear about mild and asymptomatic cases, but also about many deaths globally.

From television stories to personal experiences, we live in a world where honesty seems to be an increasingly rare commodity and suspicion and scepticism become protective shields.

The troubled centuries that followed the Great Schism of 1054 and the corresponding climate inside the Christian church gradually gave way to profound shifts in the thinking and spirituality of Europeans.

Slapped, spat in the face, insulted, falsely accused, lashed, ridiculed with a crown of thorns, passed from judge to judge and booed by the crowd, the Son of God chose the most unusual form of defence. Silence.

This article is the third and last in the "Parenting School" series. The first two parts were published in the May and June 2020 issues of Semnele Timpului, the Romanian version of the ST Network.

Henry Ford is believed to have said: “Sometimes a mistake can be all it takes to make a valuable achievement.” Apparently paradoxical, the statement says a lot about us and what we consider at any given moment to be “a mistake.”

John Andrews and his family decided to cross the ocean against the current of that time. Therefore, many forgotten truths were brought to light, many hopes were reborn, and many dreams came true.

What do you do when things go wrong and everything around you seems to crumble? Do you keep your eyes forward and try to find a solution? Or do you fall into endless complaining?

I spoke very little in my early years and my mother says that my silence scared her. She never knew what was going through my mind. She was afraid I was hiding something.

Christianity is fundamentally built on the belief that the life and mission of Jesus Christ on earth were a continuation and fulfilment of God’s earlier revelation, known as the Old Testament.

We do not know what 2020 would have looked like without a pandemic, but we already know that some losses could have been prevented. And, if the future lies in the spectrum of pandemics, as the WHO warns, we should learn all the lessons that can be learned from this long journey.

Many doomsayers have “cried wolf” when it comes to the end of the world. Does that mean it’s not going to happen at all?

On the morning of the 15 November 2016, I awoke in a hospital bed, with no memory of how I got there. My favourite pyjamas had been torn from my body, and I lay in a hospital gown, a piercing pain in my head, impaling my brain. I was barely able to think and incapable of speech. I was scared, though this was...