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My body felt like it was on fire, as if someone had pierced my skin with thousands of burning needles, and I could barely breathe. Fear had crept into my life some time ago, following me like a shadow that drained my soul and stole my precious moments of peace.

"Loneliness irritates me like a broken nail," says a line in a Romanian poem. The truth is, loneliness stings, pulls apart, and resembles the coffee dregs left at the bottom of the pot in which joy and love once brewed. Although the fear of loneliness is natural, we can choose to see solitude as something more than a "flowering wilderness" and embrace it...

"It isn't the man I married. It isn't the man I knew." This is how Sabina Shalom, whose husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, begins her confession. The woman, who has reached a respectable age, says that it all started with some serious quarrels between her and her husband: "Papers were lost, bills were not getting paid."

“They pour out arrogant words; all the evildoers are full of boasting” (Psalm 94:4).

On April 26th 1986, reactor 4 at Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine exploded. The effects were catastrophic­­—it was the worst nuclear disaster in history. The explosion let out the equivalent of 500 Hiroshima bombs-worth of radiation, and the area around Chernobyl—including the town of Pripyat—is now uninhabited. It will be unsafe to live there for the next 20,000 years.

Virtually every civilization has been characterised by religious beliefs about the end of all things, not least about the timing and the conditions that precede the end, and signs of its imminence. There are many differences between these beliefs across civilisations, but many similarities too.

Traces of the ancient kingdom of Israel occasionally emerge from the dust of the Holy Land. These discoveries are immediately and inevitably followed by fierce controversies among archaeologists. As amateur spectators, Christians are eyewitnesses to these debates and, in one way or another, their faith is shaped by them.

The child’s linguistic appetite must be stimulated from an early age, experts say, highlighting that the benefits the bilingual child reaps extend beyond the linguistic sphere.

At the age of 20, I graduated from the Orthodox Theological Seminary. I thought I was talented, I was confident, and I had a very clear idea of the path I wanted to take in life. I had all the answers. Or perhaps I hadn't asked myself enough questions.

Born in Africa, at the crossroads of three cultures—Arab, French, and Jewish—Jacques Doukhan was raised in a Jewish family. At the age of 18, he discovered the Christian gospel and became a Seventh-day Adventist, rejoicing that he did not have to renounce his roots in this church. Like Jews, Adventists observe the Sabbath and "share the same life ideals", explains Dr Doukhan.

Born into a family of surfers, one could say the love of the salty ocean air courses through the veins of his body. Named after legendary surfer Derek Ho, even his name embodies the hopes and expectations of what he was to become.

Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. – Rainer Maria Rilke

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.

"A Time to Forgive" is the story of a pilgrimage through the void of pain and trauma. A father, devastated by the enormity of his loss, struggles to forgive his daughter's killer.

According to experts and organisations that support this category of patients, people suffering from dementia and their caregivers need all the congregational support they can get.