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If shame were personified, its main characteristic would be its ability to creep into the darkest depths, avoiding any trace of light and any discussion of itself.

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

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

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 to come out of the AFL is not about a nail-biting final or freakishly skilled player.

Before I started looking for the meaning of life, I thought I had already found it. Or, that it had been given to me. In the world I came from, the road was clearly laid out. My life's major events were all mapped out, and precious little was negotiable.

Eskimos don't have the word "quarrel" in their vocabulary. They live in a particularly harsh climate, so no one wants to risk getting pneumonia (or dying) just to prove that they are right.

Urban alienation is one of the great themes approached critically by many artists.

The generation born with the tablet and the smartphone in its arms, but which ends up being exploited by big data cultivators and controlled by radicalization and polarization, can become the generation that implements anti-democratic movements.

Children have big feelings. Even worse, children have big feelings over what seem to be rather inconsequential things.

The book "Sometimes I Don't Feel Like Praying" is a hall of mirrors. It strips you of religious clichés and the trappings of spiritual practices that mask a dysfunctional Christianity. It reveals spiritual failures that are hard to admit. Above all, however, it is an extremely useful tool for Christians for whom the concept of grace remains largely unexplored.

The hues of the rainbow, once considered the seal of peace between God and humanity in the Bible, have, in just a few years, become the symbol of an ideological conflict among people in a society where the “shame axis” spins according to the dictates of the public agenda.

"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force." (Ayn Rand)

One of the small joys of my childhood was to visit my maternal grandmother at the house on the hill.

"If there is anything more heartbreaking than a body perishing for lack of bread, it is a soul which is dying from hunger for the light." (Victor Hugo)

In the February 2023 issue of Signs of the Times, I wrote an article titled Gambling’s Dark Underbelly. Here in Australia, gambling is a multi-billion-dollar industry with a few very rich winners and millions of losers. In the article I concluded that “Gambling in any form is designed to bleed you for as long as you’re willing to bleed, with no regard for...