The rift between us grows deeper and deeper, and as religion is left behind, people find themselves in a spiritual void.

The collapse of the ideological basis for communist rule in the rush towards a free-market economy has left a spiritual void.

But deeper than that is an inborn native loneliness, a spiritual void that words, for some reason, help fill.

A 57-year-old insurance salesman, married for decades, awakens one morning with a grievous sense of spiritual void.

Still, he is bothered by the spiritual void that nags him from time to time.

A spiritual void needs to be satisfied, so what is offered as serious and sacrosanct must be as good as it pretends.

Francis Tursi, a 36-year-old money broker, said he joined Emmaus last year because he was looking to fill a spiritual void in his life.

Students are in a spiritual void, he believes, stripped of old patriotic and religious certainties and lacking anything to replace them.

"We became so secular, so partisan that we created a spiritual and moral void," which the 900-pound gorilla filled.

Everything precious and familiar was being engulfed in a spiritual void.