Preserving dignity: the key to personal freedom
How do we recognise violations of dignity and their impact on daily life?
Stuck in the waiting room
“Why are you still single?” Even though I have been asked this question countless times, I still never know how to answer it.
Temperance: the lost virtue
Temperance was once upheld by philosophers, saints and stoics. In a world dominated by indulgence, its call to balance feels more relevant than ever.
One lottery ticket and an unexpected ending
Whether we admit it or not, our lives are conditioned by money—mostly by the lack thereof. There are few who manage to snatch themselves out from under its spell, and even fewer who want it just to be able to give it away. Among the latter is Rachel Lapierre.
The boots that filled a void in the soul
No matter how hard we try to hide it, there are days when we are struck by the overwhelming feeling that our lives, however beautiful and enviable, are missing something essential.
The problem of happiness
Would you rather “achieve great things or be happy?” That question was asked in a YouGov survey (United States): 81 per cent said they would rather be happy; 13 per cent wanted to achieve great things; 6 per cent were uncertain.
The father of modern education
“In the works of Comenius one feels that a prophet is speaking; he was indeed a colossal figure, but only in recent years have his ideas received the respect they merit”.
Trust, the resource of intelligent people
In a study published in the journal PLOS One, researchers came to the counterintuitive conclusion that people with higher intelligence have higher levels of generalised trust.
Our parents’ need for meaning
No matter how much we avoid it, the day will come when our parents will not be able to get by without us, just as we would not have been able to grow up without them.
“A Time to Forgive” | Book Review
"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.
From bootless boy to life-changing footballer
Footballers are often in the headlines for their off-field antics more than their on-field achievements. So, it is no real surprise that the greatest story...
A brief treatise on (dis)illusion
In some African communities, during the harsh dry season when food becomes scarce and mothers can no longer feed all their children, a tragic custom persists: some children are left in open-air enclosures to die of starvation.
Love beyond reason
In the book Love Beyond Reason, John Ortberg presents familiar and hidden nuances of a love that emerges revealingly from chapter to chapter, using lived out stories and biblical episodes, as well as familiar illustrations from literature.
What’s growing on your family tree?
From a distance, it looked like a simple picture of a tree: nothing very artistic—more of a sketch in subtle shades of brown and green. But as I looked closer I noticed something unusual. The tree had been constructed out of words and phrases. Someone had collected snippets of information about their family and their ancestors, and written it down to form the...
Methods to motivate a child to draw closer to the Bible
Regular reading of the Bible in childhood is a strong predictor of spiritual health in adulthood. If instilling a love for the Bible is a crucial factor in religious education, parents need to develop methods to reinforce a habit that keeps children on the desired spiritual trajectory.