My dear friends,

  It has been a long time since I have written anything here.  So much has been happening, life so packed I simply have not been able to find the time to write.
  For the last week I have felt weak and not well.  I think I get some bad food again, like last year when I got so very sick for a week.  But worse, I am in the midst of consulting urologists and waiting to get important information that will lead to a decision about a medical procedure or, less likely, surgery.  In any case, I am not sleeping well because I have to get up every 90 minutes or two hours to go to the bathroom, with little results.  There is a blockage that has to be rectified.  I walk around at times like I am in a stupor, half asleep.  Life has not been fun!
  At the same time God is doing something in my prayer that is beyond any words I can find.  I am overwhelmed by God, I am simply overwhelmed.  I sometimes feel I will burst open and fly off into pieces here, there and everywhere.  I cannot get over God and how beautiful God is.  I wish I could put this into better words.  What is happening so urgently in me is that I must, I MUST write another book before I die.  I have to get out on paper what I am being given, on what I am being given.  I know I will find a way to make some of this understandable to plain, ordinary people, the kind of people I feel at home with and can share this with, not the "experts," not the scholars--I never was one and do not have the makings of being one--but oh my, what is happening now is overwhelming me while at the same time my body is a distraction, but not so much that I can still go to prayer in the morning, and I sit with Him in quiet for 45 minutes either before or right after breakfast.  And he is right there present to me, not saying anything, but just there, so present, so real, so overwhelmingly real, ordinary yet extraordinary beyond words at the same time.  I can identify with the words of St Paul, "I know the One in whom I have believed!"  I know Him without the shadow of a doubt but what is even stronger is the love that pours out of me for this One.  His goodness and beauty are greater that anything in nature or in the animals or even in the best of people.  There is no parallel!  He is unique and beyond all comparisons. How do I talk about his??  How do I tell people how very real and close this God is to each one of us, who cares so for us, way beyond what our little hearts and minds can take in, so total in His care and rich in promise??  He is closer to us than we could ever imagine.  Once one sees this, there is a peace that wells up that assures us about our world that suffers so right now from unspeakable cruelty,  It assures us that all the violence, cruelty and evil going on at the present will not have the last say, that all the refugees and victims of war and brutality will be brought to a comfort that is forever.  Mercy is stronger than any other force in the world.  Nothing compares to this love, nothing.  All evil is dwarfed by it.
   The monkey is no longer around, for some reason or other.   Two weeks ago it broke into the convent of the four nuns who work at this retreat center while they were all up at the retreat center having lunch.  Somehow that character slipped through the bars of the grating over the windows and proceeded to go through the entire building looking for, you guessed it, bananas, and found a bunch and proceeded to eat them all before escaping.  The peelings?  You guessed it.  Left lying on the floor.  No effort to cover up the evidence of the theft!  What upset many of us was the monkey climbing a tree that is full of nests of weaver birds (they look like large canaries, beautifully plummed with black and yellow feathers) and proceeded to eat the eggs these birds were caring for in their nests.  The birds have since gone elsewhere and don't come to our back porch in the morning for bread pieces we normally put out for them.  Right after that the monkey was no longer to be seen.  We were saddened by the loss of the birds and their beauty which we enjoy so.
  Enough for now.  I am going back to my work, which is piling up   like snow for you.  Here it is in the high 80s every afternoon.
  Oh before I forget, I want to say a big 'thank you' to the many of you who sent Christmas cards and greetings.  It took a month for them to get here in many cases, but I so appreciate hearing from you.  Every Wednesday I celebrate Eucharist for "all in the Manresa family" and all of you who read this are a part of that family.  I will continue to meet you across the miles and oceans through that prayer He gave us on the last night of His life.  What a powerful way to connect and to sense our oneness and the hope He assures us of.   May you all have a blessed Lent.

Bernie Owens