(Un)certainties after a year of war in Ukraine

On February 24, 2022, Russia attacked Ukraine, and the fall of the Kyiv regime seemed to be only a matter of days. The war in Ukraine has just crossed the one-year mark, and the prospect of peace seems increasingly distant, as none of the belligerent parties can afford to lose this war.

No tomorrow morning: the unexpected consequences of a disturbing law

In front of the camera, the woman smiles calmly. The dimple on her right cheek, among the wrinkles, shows that Annie has repeated this smile many times in her 81 years of life. Today, however, only her lips are smiling. A strange tension weighs on her eyebrows. Today is the day Annie has decided to die.

The parents who cancelled Christmas

For parents, Christmas is always a stressful time: how to satisfy the child's desires without spoiling them and giving them the impression that they deserve to receive whatever they want, just because their decibel level exceeds the parents' level of calm and patience.

Complaining too much? Here’s 5 things you can do instead

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?
life

The road forwards that actually goes backwards

I am visiting two sick people who share the same terminal illness. Their suffering is increased by the fact that they are brothers and that a mother’s broken heart lies at the core of it all. One of them is a businessman. The other, a servant of the altar. Their mother’s greatest frustration is that her wish to take some of the suffering...
2021 year in review

2022: A new dawn?

When the ball dropped in New York’s Times Square on December 31, 2020, the world breathed a collective sigh of relief. The chapter had closed on what TIME magazine declared on its December 14 cover to be “The worst year ever”. 2021 was supposed to be a bright light at the end of the tunnel—potential treatments like the Astrazeneca vaccine promised to fight the Covid virus, the...

A birthday gift out of the blue

Until that point in our marriage, my wife and I had shared a car. She worked in the city, close to public transport and wherever we went, we went together. And she preferred me to drive. When we had our daughter, the situation didn’t change much. Covid-19 made it hard to go anywhere and we found our four-door sedan big enough to tackle...

A short guide to the socialisation of children

Even after the World Health Organization replaced the term social distancing with physical distancing, people are still feeling the effects of social distancing.

The constraints that make us happy

American psychologist Barry Schwartz's counterintuitive study argues uncomfortably similarly to communist philosophy, while offering a stunning argument for Christianity, the enemy of communism.

Successfully going back to school

Want to start the new school year on the right foot? Here are some back-to-school tips that will help make that transition from holidays to school a lot easier.

The Dunghutti Destroyer and the fight of his life

Renold Vatubua Quinlan is a “proud Dunghutti man” with Fijian heritage. He grew up on the mid-north coast of New South Wales around Port Macquarie and Kempsey. Known as the Dunghutti Destroyer, Quinlan is a professional boxer who held the IBO super-middle weight title from 2016 to 2017. “My biggest experience in my life was winning the world title,” he said. 
woman praying

God’s silence

Renee James was 18 when she decided to stop praying. If God was going to be silent, she thought, she would be silent too. She had been praying for years for the healing of her brothers, Sean and Niall, one suffering from autism and the other from Down syndrome. Yet there had been no answer.

The great COVID-19 supermarket stampede

Last year, most of us were blindsided when we entered our local supermarket, trudged down the toilet paper aisle and were confronted with extended shelves of emptiness. Somewhat disappointed and definitely a little bit anxious (especially if we were running low on the soft, white goodness), we began to wonder how long it would be before we sighted toilet paper again.

Don’t mess with George Soros!

When former US President Donald Trump suggested at a press conference in Helsinki that the FBI could be wrong to accuse Russia of meddling in the US presidential elections, citing President Vladimir Putin's testimony as an argument, the media became fixated on the lamentable insult Trump threw at the secret services. 

Consoling faith

I generally don’t like going to funerals, but they come in many different forms and feels. Some seem sadder than others; some feel more hopeful. But often there’s an unexpected bittersweetness. We are all there because of something good—the life, love and relationship that we are there to remember and honour—that has come to a tragic end, always too soon.