Pain is inevitable. Almost everyone is living with some kind of pain, whether the cause is physical, emotional, financial, social, or spiritual. A desire to escape it has led thousands of Canadians to seek euthanasia, and countless others into opioid addiction. What can we learn from people around the world for whom pain is a fact of life? How can we help others bear their pain? How might the wisdom of earlier eras help us? What answers does faith offer? On this theme: - Navid Kermani visits farming Madagascar battling drought caused by climate change. - Benjamin Crosby asks why churches haven’t spoken out against Canada’s euthanasia experiment. - Tom Holland sums up the history of pain in two artworks and three lives. - Lisabeth Button shares correspondence with a friend succumbing to Alzheimer’s. - Rick Warren demonstrated how our own suffering can lead to our best ministry. - Wang Yi, an imprisoned Chinese pastor, calls churches to face repression boldly. - Leah Libresco Sargeant profiles nuns providing palliative care. - Eleanor Parker considers an Anglo-Saxon poem, “The Dream of the Rood.� - Brewer Eberly tells what he learned from an insufferable patient. - Randall Gauger, who lost his son to cancer, finds lessons in C. S. Lewis. Also in the issue: - A report on the resurgence of bison by Nathan Beacom - Original poetry by Sofia M. Starnes and Julia Nemirovskaya - An excerpt from a new graphic novel, By Water - Reviews of Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, James K. A. Smith’s How to Inhabit Time, and Nick Cave’s and Seán O’Hagan’s Faith, Hope and Carnage. - Readings from Eduardo Galeano, Felicity of Carthage, Anselm of Canterbury, Julian of Norwich, Martin Luther, and J. Heinrich Arnold Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to apply their faith to the challenges we face. Each issue includes in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art.

‘When your grandpa was in hospital, he asked me one night to promise him that, when he had gone from us, I would teach you Islam – our Islam: the Islam I grew up with … In that dark, impersonal room, he was thinking of you.’ This is why one father began to teach his daughter night after night not only about his own religion, but about that which unites all believers, about God and death, about love and the infinity that surrounds us. This highly personal book is not only a magical literary masterpiece, but also a rich resource of knowledge, and this because Navid Kermani dares to venture into the darkness in order to give expression to our confusion. And because his way of talking, his openness, his knowledge which derives from his immersion in two cultures, are so unique, so light and so deep.

Navid Kermani is not only one of Germany's most distinguished writers and public intellectuals, he is also an outstanding public speaker who mesmerizes audiences with his well-crafted sentences and turns of phrase. Whether he is speaking about the plight of refugees or delivering a eulogy at his father's graveside, Kermani finds words that surprise his listeners, enlighten them, provoke them, disturb them or move them to tears. As a German of Iranian descent whose parents settled in Germany, Kermani is particularly sensitive to the issues raised by migration and the perceived tensions between Islam and the West. His speeches are a powerful demonstration of how much we stand to gain by adhering to the values of openness, tolerance and mutual respect for the beliefs and practices of those from other cultures who live among us.

Navid Kermani is one of the outstanding public intellectuals of his generation. Not one for drawing hard and fast conclusions, his style of thought is probing, observant, often straying from well-trodden paths and always peering beyond the present moment to trace connections and grasp the bigger picture. Well known for his prize-winning novels and major works of nonfiction, Kermani has also written for newspapers and magazines ever since he started working at the local desk of a newspaper at the age of 15.  Reporting from war zones and crisis hot spots, he gained widespread acclaim as a journalist, displaying a rare political sensitivity which manages to illuminate what politicians fail to see and to seek out solutions where all appears hopeless. This volume brings together his brilliantly perceptive writing from the last thirty years, on topics ranging from terror in the Middle East to crisis in Europe and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As a record of Kermani’s uniquely compassionate curiosity, this absorbing book is an antidote to the spectre of confusion and despair that stalks global politics today.