Spark Of Hope Research Articles

The Untold Stories of People Who Had Suicidal Ideations: A Phenomenological Study

This study explored and described the lived experiences of people who had suicidal ideations. It gathered information and real-life experiences to reveal the significant life stories of persons with suicidal thoughts. Descriptive phenomenology was employed to explore and describe the lived experiences of young adults who had suicidal ideation. The study included eight participants who were selected purposively. A semi-structured individual interview was utilized in gathering the data. Data analysis was done immediately after every data collection using Colaizzi's seven-step processes. This study has three central themes that emerged from the data which included a) emotional experience, b) life's crisis, and c) sparks of hope in life. The main themes are classified into eleven categories: the feeling of emptiness, feeling of worthlessness, feeling of emotional pain, feeling of giving up, family conflict, intrapersonal conflict, challenging life situations, isolation, restoration and installation of hope, sustaining positive relationships, and sense of life. This research revealed that all have their battles to fight. Coping with their issues, becoming independent, and trying to bridge the gap between their dear ones and, most importantly, with themselves entail emotional labor, as each participant from a different context with different backstories shared their unique experiences. Therefore, student nurses should uplift these vulnerable groups' spiritual values and morals and encourage them to vent their feelings to trusted friends.

Fraud Against the Law in the Legal and Religious System of Iran

Along with the formation of legal requirements, lawlessness and fraud against the law have also increased. The idea of combating fraud, in order to counteract its consequences, gradually led legal scholars to institutionalize the doctrine of the "general theory of fraud against the law." Modern civilized societies do not tolerate the non-fulfillment of legal obligations and requirements, they have made an increasing move in accepting this theory. Of course, the thought of religious scholars in enriching the theory in question, in the light of the institution of trickery, has fueled this important issue.It seems that although some religious scholars and jurists still have doubts about accepting this theory as an independent and specific establishment, but the existence of some signs in the subject law of Iran, sparks of hope in accepting this theory. . In this regard, the exclusive enforcement guarantee of "inability to invoke fraudulent action" has emerged. The article in question is an attempt to prove the above and intends to analyze the fraud against the law by carefully studying the legal and religious system of Iran.

A spark of hope: histopathological and functional recovery after critical COVID-19

BACKGROUNDThere are substantial concerns about fibrotic and vascular pulmonary sequelae after coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) associated acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).AQ1 Histopathology reports of lung biopsies from COVID-19 survivors are scarce.CASEWe herein report results of functional and histopathological studies in a 70 year-old man undergoing a co-incidental tumor lobectomy six months after long-term mechanical ventilation for COVID-19 pneumonia.CONCLUSIONDespite several unfavorable risk factors, this case presentation shows a completed pulmonary recovery process within a few months.

Gastric peroral endoscopic myotomy for gastroparesis: a spark of hope.

Gastric peroral endoscopic myotomy for gastroparesis: a spark of hope.

Gastric per-oral endoscopic myotomy for gastroparesis: a spark of hope

Gastric per-oral endoscopic myotomy for gastroparesis: a spark of hope

Initial Spark of Hope: A Case for Attachment Tune-Ups First

Using a clinical sample of couples, this study considers the association between couples attachment levels, stability of their relationship, and severity of their presenting problems at first session. Attachment levels were established using the Brief Accessibility, Responsiveness, and Engagement (BARE) Scale. Participants were divided into tertiles by BARE score. Findings showed that at the beginning of therapy, there is a significant difference between the top and bottom BARE tertiles for 9 of the 10 presenting problems as well as for relationship stability. The authors suggest that marriage and family therapists first work to build attachment to hopefully decrease drop out, bring stability to clinical couple’s relationships, and to indirectly reduce concerns or severity regarding presenting problems.

Not all Bad: Sparks of Hope in a Global Disaster.

The focus of discussion about the ethical issues associated with the COVID-19 pandemic has been on the great suffering to which it has given rise. However, there may be some unexpected positive outcomes that also emerge from the global disaster. The rupturing of entrenched systems and processes, the challenging of certainties that seemed beyond question, and the disruption of the assumed consensus of modernity may contribute to a rediscovery of the challenges that compose an ethical life. Elements of such a process are evident in the surge of community support and mutual caring, of spontaneous acts of joyous solidarity, of suspension of past conflicts, and exploration of new forms of reconciliation. The experiences are tentative and the outcomes uncertain, but at least for a moment the hope of a new way forward has been raised.

Nadzieja na jedność? Herezje i heretycy w listach św. Ambrożego

This article presents the results of the analysis of the correspondence of St. Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, concerning heresies and heretics and the hope of their final reconciliation with the Church. The article consists of two essential parts, the first shows the definition and essence of heresies and heretics, including examples of heretics and how they act. The second part focuses on dealing with heretics and fighting for the unity of the Church. This section shows the ways in which this fight is taking place and the parties responsible for it: the bishops and the emperors. Reading the letters of St. Ambrose does not leave any illusions – the Bishop of Milan has gradually been losing the hope for ending such conflicts, above all with the Arians. Reasons for such an attitude are repeatedly presented in his letters – the conflict of the basilicas, the attitudes of the heretics, the weakness of orthodox believers and priests. It seems, however, that in spite of everything still smoulders in him spark of hope, because to the last letter of preserved cor­respondence he calls for return to the bosom of the Church and orthodoxy.

The lost chance of public education. Fatal heritage, escapism of the elites, sparks of hope

Summary The article raises the question of the causes of the public education crisis, both the crisis in recent past and that conditioned by several centuries of Poland’s past. The position of Adam Podgórecki on the subject of comprehensive analyzes of Polish society is particularly important. It combines two positions. He believes that the causes of Polish systemic crises are the experiences of post-totalitarianism and specific Polish defects persisted for several centuries. The author of the article negatively assesses the possibility of overcoming the crisis of public education by academic elites, which are responsible for the collapse of universities and the crisis of higher education. Common beliefs about public education have turned out to be illusions. The author sees the hopes of improving the state of public education in resistance to the destruction of democracy and to the strong ideological and political pressure. Openness to Europe and the world, which Poles do not give away, also gives hope.

The Originality of the October Revolution

The only historian capable of fanning the spark of hope in the past is the one who is firmly convinced that even the dead shall not be safe from the enemy if he is victorious.– Walter Benjamin, The...

Emergency futures: Exception, urgency, interval, hope

Emergency as a descriptor, technique and legal-political device has become a taken-for-granted way of apprehending and governing events and situations. In this paper, I explore the temporality of emergency, through reflections on the use of declarations of emergency in relation to US-based Black Lives Matter protests. I do so in the context of claims and counter-claims about contemporary transformations in what Rheinhart Kosselleck (2004: 241) terms the ‘expected otherness of the future’. Arguing for changes in the form of the ‘expected otherness of the future’ rather than its simple loss, disappearance or absence, I describe how emergency operates around a temporality of exceptionality, urgency and interval. Formal and informal declarations of emergency are, in addition, imbued with hope: the hope that time remains and action can make a difference to events. What the use of declarations of emergency by Black Lives Matter activists does is disrupt the geo-historically specific divide between the everyday and emergency by naming conditions that mix the endemic and the evental as emergencies. In the spark of hope that is the act of declaring that ongoing conditions should be treated as emergencies, the ‘otherness of the future’ folds into and becomes part of the present.

Imagining Social Transformations: Territory Making and the Project of Radical Pragmatism

Saskia Sassen today and Jane Adams more than 100 years ago are both social scientists and public philosophers of reconstruction. Both offer defining contributions to a philosophical tradition that will be identified here as “radical pragmatism”. Sassen’s theoretical stance “before method” serves as a key to understand Addams’s locally embedded urban activist projects as a form of social scientific inquiry. Sassen introduces the concept of “territory making” as a spark of hope against rampant and destructive global trends of “expulsions”, which her approach reveals. In this article this concept of “territory making” will be explored in various contexts and with particular attention to Addams’s Hull house project. It will be shown how a pragmatist brand of human imagination is critical in “territory making”. This leads to reconsidering the role of art in social transformation projects.

Remarkable lives: Rachel Taylor in conversation with Jerome Carson

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a profile of Rachel Taylor. Design/methodology/approach – Rachel provides a short biographical account and is then interviewed by Jerome. In the biography the search for happiness and belonging is discussed. Findings – Rachel talks about focusing on what we are good at, what we love and how discovery can light that spark of hope that there can be better than what has gone before. Research limitations/implications – Rachel’s story shows the potential that lies not just within some of us, but all of us. It is but one story, but its message is sure to touch many. Practical implications – How do services promote hope and build resilience and wellbeing? While another service user said recovery was about “coping with your illness and having a meaningful life” (McManus et al., 2009), services have perhaps focused too much on symptom reduction and not enough on helping people find meaning and purpose. Social implications – Rachel asks the question is Positive Psychology a movement for all or is it just for the elite? Originality/value – Rachel is someone who has discovered for herself the benefits of Positive Psychology. Hopefully Rachel’s own discovery will lead to bringing this promising approach to people with mental health problems.

Sparks of Hope in a Dark Night: How Social Entrepreneurs Can Help Renew the Republic

clear in recent months that one of the brightest hopes for the country is to build upon a historic strength: its spirit of innovation. From Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Edison, Eli Whitney to Henry Ford, Mark Zuckerberg to Oprah Winfrey, Americans have dazzled the world with their creative powers. The U.S. often sends its scholars to Japan and China to understand why their students are so good at memorizing and mastering fields of study, but they send their scholars here to understand why U.S. students are so imaginative. Over the past five years, Americans have won 30 Nobel prizes in science and economics, while the Chinese—with a population four times as large—have been awarded one. There are dangerous signs that the U.S. is slipping, but still, there is something in the nation’s DNA that is reassuring. “The American, by nature, is

THE DEATH OF BIOETHICS (AS WE ONCE KNEW IT)

Fast forward 50 years into the future. A look back at what occurred in the field of bioethics since 2010 reveals that a conference in 2050 commemorated the death of bioethics. In a steady progression over the years, the field became increasingly fragmented and bureaucratized. Disagreement and dissension were rife, and this once flourishing, multidisciplinary field began to splinter in multiple ways. Prominent journals folded, one by one, and were replaced with specialized publications dealing with genethics, reproethics, nanoethics, and necroethics. Mainstream bioethics organizations also collapsed, giving way to new associations along disciplinary and sub-disciplinary lines. Physicians established their own journals, and specialty groups broke away from more general associations of medical ethics. Lawyers also split into three separate factions, and philosophers rejected all but the most rigorous, analytic articles into their newly established journal. Matters finally came to a head with global warming, the world-wide spread of malaria and dengue, and the cost of medical treatments out of reach for almost everyone. The result was the need to develop plans for strict rationing of medical care. At the same time, recognition emerged of the importance of the right to health and the need for global justice in health. By 2060, a spark of hope was ignited, opening the door to the resuscitation of bioethics and involvement of the global community.

Muthanga: A Spark of Hope

On 19 February 2003, the armed police of the currently rightwing government of the Indian state of Kerala descended on over one thousand adivasi1 families men, women and children—who had peacefully settled on the fringes of the Muthanga range of the Wayanad Wild Life Sanctuary, driving them out in a most brutal fashion and even killing one of those women who resisted. The state had failed to give any prior warning of the police action, nor was any attempt made toward a mediated negotiation. The police unleashed a reign of terror in the region; physical molestation of women was also reported, the latter having been substantiated by the National Women's Commission. Those who fell into the hands of the police were brutally manhandled en route to the police station; in a bizarre innovation, the activists were forced to beat one another. The movement had been launched by the Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha—the Grand Assembly of Indigenous People—led by a tribal woman, C. K. Janu. The demands of the Adi vasi Gothra Maha Sabha for land, food, shelter, the enforcement of constitutional provisions, reparation for losses incurred by the intervention of foreign compa nies in their environment, etc., are paralleled in indigenous movements else where, e.g., the Zapatistas in Mexico (see Collier 1994; Gledhill 1997; Hellman 2000; Weinberg 2000; Womack 1999). However, unlike other indigenous move ments, the situation in Kerala has received little world attention. Adivasis are the only ethnic minority in the state of Kerala, constituting 1.14 percent of its 31.8 million population. These indigenous people, belonging to dif ferent clans but of a common social origin, are spread over an adivasi belt that straddles the highlands of Wayanad, Palakkad, and Idukki districts. To under stand the trajectories of the adivasis in Kerala2—largely their social exclusion and resistance—one has to briefly look into the genesis of their misfortunes. They were largely displaced from their traditional habitat. This displacement began from the early nineteenth century with the razing of forests of Malabar and Tra vancore for the British navy and, by the 1850s, for the colonial railways. The process of dispossession gained momentum from the second half of the century

Rethinking Power in Africa: Theological Perspectives

AbstractIn this article I reflect on theological, perspectives on power and argue that the telos of power is to work for greater freedom and the empowerment of the society. This is an appropriate subject to raise in the context of an exploration of the dialectics of agony, because religion plays a major role in all African societies. I contend that in creating or reconstructing a road map for dealing with the socio-economic and political crisis, we need to tackle the question of power before we question whetlter religious communities can become the sites where we can kindle a spark of hope, healing, and possibilities of restoration. I begin with a review of recent theological perspectives that have called for reconstruction, follow that with a brief reflection on Mbembe's suggestive discussion on the erotics of power, and argue that God's phallus should be seen as a redemptive symbol and a marker of freedom. I next discuss religious and theological, perspectives on power, reflecting on Yoruba conceptions of power and Paul Tillich's ontological anchoring of power. In the last part of the article I reflect on the implications of the ideas explored and offer preliminary proposals for a theological understanding of power in light of the contemporary crisis in Africa. In a brief conclusion I suggest that religious communities in Africa ought to rethink the lessons learned in fighting apartheid in South Africa and return to a more activist role in society.

Fanning the Spark of Hope in the Past: the British Marxist Historians

Walter Benjamin wrote in his Theses in the Philosophy of History : 'Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy [the ruling class] if he wins. And the enemy has not ceased to be victorious'. The British Marxist historians - such as Rodney Hilton, Christopher Hill, Victor Kiernan, George Rude, E.P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm - had that gift. Possessed with Marx's grand hypothesis that 'The history of all hitherto existing societies has been the history of class struggle', and committed to recovering the past 'from the bottom up', especially the experiences, struggles and aspirations of the working classes, the British Marxist historians refashioned the history of the making of the modern world in a critical and democratic manner. This essay reviews their collective contributions to historiography and political thought, and considers their intellectual legacy in view of the historical and political challenges of the Twenty-first century. The author recognizes that we will have to ask new questions of past and present and develop new means of connecting our labours to popular historical memory, consciousness and imagination; but he argues that - if we, too, are to 'fan the spark of hope in the past' contra those who would declare the end of history - we would do well to appreciate the gifts of the British Marxist historians.

Chemical Earnings Downward Drift Continues in First Quarter

Earnings at major chemical companies in the first quarter continued to decline on average, but there were some sparks of hope within C&EN's sample of 30 firms. Meanwhile, earnings were up at major oil companies that also produce chemicals and at pharmaceutical companies, but earnings fell at diversified firms with significant chemical operations. Earnings for the 30 major chemical firms fell an average of 8% from the same period last yeara much better earnings performance than that of the 11 diversified manufacturers, whose earnings fell an average 26%. For the 13 oil companies surveyed, earnings were up 40% from first-quarter 1990, while at nine drug companies, earnings rose an average 50%. The 8% earnings decline for the 30 chemical firms brought their total earnings down to almost $1.39 billion. Sales for the companies totaled almost $21.8 billion, an increase, however, of 3% over the same period in 1990. Thus, the average profit margin for the ...

Arthur Bliss's New Ballet

‘Miracle in the Gorbals’ unquestionably ‘knocks’ one. A single performance causes a deep dent in one's artistic consciousness and memory. In violent revolt against modern civilization, the ballet gives a vivid picture of the horrors of hooliganism lit up by a peculiarly livid lamp of idealism in the person of the Stranger. Glasgow at its worst will have none of him and his miracles, and after tasting blood intends to go on in the same way with its knife-fiends and prostitution. We are not left with any hope, only with horror: the criticism of human nature is not relieved by any faith in the benefits or comforts of religion or even philosophy. Or is one meant to find a faint spark of hope for the future in the women and the old man left on stage as the curtain falls? To me the futility of the death is the tragedy itself.