Read a Feb. 21, 2009, Tampa Bay Times story about two wrongful-death lawsuits dealing with Scientology’s stance on psychiatry. One has been settled; the other was just recently filed.

Kim Sheridan is the author of the Animals and the Afterlife: True Stories of Our Best Friends’ Journey Beyond Death. She says that as more people have brought animals into their homes, they have increasingly come to see them as spiritual teachers and guides.

The Rev. Mitzi Lynton is an interfaith pastor who participated in a grief support Webinar for Best Friends Network that discussed how animals grieve and how people mourn the deaths of animals. She is based in Arizona.

Allen and Linda Anderson run the Angel Animals Network, a website for those who believe animals communicate and guide people before and after their deaths. They are the authors of numerous books about the spirituality of animals, including Angel Animals: Divine Messengers of Miracles and God’s Messengers: What Animals Teach Us About the Divine. They are based in Minneapolis.

Read an Oct. 8, 2006, Jeff Jacoby column in The Boston Globe about Amish forgiveness.

Read an Oct. 31, 2006, essay in The Christian Century on Amish forgiveness by Donald Kraybill.

Jennifer Collins is a law professor at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. She is co-author of an article on issues raised by Octomom, “Eight Is Enough,” in Northwestern Colloquy.

Roberta Springer Loewy is an associate clinical professor of bioethics at the University of California, Davis. She is co-author of The Ethics of Terminal Care: Orchestrating the End of Life and the author of Integrity and Personhood: Looking at Patients From a Bio/Psycho/Social Perspective.

Stuart Rosenbaum is a philosophy professor at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and co-editor of Caring for the Dying: Critical Issues at the Edge of Life.