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It is hard to remain indifferent to a life story like that of Terri Roberts, the mother of a young man who, in a still-unexplained moment of madness, stormed into an all-girls Amish school and began shooting, killing five of the students before killing himself.

The first part of my life was marked by multiple barriers that placed me in a minority status.

Dr Kendra Haloviak-Valentine, Professor of New Testament at La Sierra University in Redlands, California, comes from a family with a tradition of theology and research.

Herbert Thorson Blomstedt has performed in over three thousand concerts with the world's most renowned philharmonic orchestras. He has held several long-term positions as music director of legendary orchestras in Dresden, Leipzig, and San Francisco, and recorded hundreds of works, including the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Bruckner, and Nielsen. He has won two Grammy Awards and received state distinctions in Sweden and Germany....

A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones, says a well-known biblical proverb. We don't have to be practicing Christians to recognise its truth.

What image comes to mind when you hear the word success? A blue-suited CEO? Internet billionaire Mark Zuckerberg? Perhaps Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela? But if you’re like me, you probably didn’t think of a person living an unglamorous, day-to-day, ordinary life.

Around 10% of Americans and 7% of Brazilians believe that the Earth is flat, that the moon landing was a hoax, and that those vaccinated against Covid-19 unknowingly received a microchip along with the vaccine. Several more percent remain uncertain about the veracity of official information.

A week before he left for college, megachurch pastor Steven Furtick’s oldest son asked him, “Out of everything you’ve taught me, what’s the best advice you can give me right now?” 

"I was wrong. I'm sorry"—these words can have a magical effect on a struggling relationship. But if we fail to show empathy, the apology will sound fake or hurt the offended person even more.

In the famous realist novel A Journal of the Plague Year, Daniel Defoe blends the factual with the imaginary, describing the social context just before the great plague struck London in 1665. Among the reactions described, two straddle the line between religion and conspiracy.

They say that "all roads lead to Rome". This famous saying originated in ancient times with the extensive network of roads built by the Romans to facilitate communication and travel throughout their empire.

"Man is born free but everywhere is in chains." (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)

I don’t think I did anything significant the afternoon I saw the movie “Awakenings”. The feeling that I had reached the heart of the human condition strongly impressed me with the idea that we are born captive in a limited nature, and that gave me a heavy feeling of loss.

Because life in developed societies follows a more or less regular pattern, sociologists have managed to identify the age at which conditions are most conducive to forming a friendship. It's not that people who are not of this age are unable to form meaningful connections with other people, but at other ages, life takes us on different paths, without asking for our permission.

Jesus's words could not have been foreign to the Jewish people of His day. In an eminently oral culture, narratives, stories, parables and metaphors occupied an important place.