Dear Friends, Today is Tuesday, October 25, a week since my last letter. I am finally back to my routine of meeting daily with five out of a total of the fifty retreatants here at Mwangaza during the next eight days. I have a Belgian layman, a woman from Singapore, of Chinese ancestry and lately has worked in the refugee camps in northern Kenya, then three Kenyan nuns. After a two-week layoff, much needed and much appreciated, I feel truly good to be back into conversations of significant depth, with people baring their souls and letting me "see" God working in their lives and their own thirsts for a deeper life with God. Such conversations are ever new, never boring! Last Wednesday Fr. Bart Murphy and I went into the Nairobi Animal Park immediately south of the city boundaries of Nairobi. It is unique in the world. I learned it is about 30 miles from the western end to the eastern end and close to 20 miles from the northern most point to the southern edge. We arrived there at 7 AM; the morning sun had been up about an hour. We did not finish until 1 PM. What we saw was well worth the trip. While we did not see any lions or rhinos, we did see up close lots and lots of impalas, gazelles, antelopes, wildebeasts, zebras, hindebeasts(spelling?), also a few water buffaloes, two hippos asleep in the morning sun and sticking their heads and nostrils just above the water level of a lake they live in, then about 15 ostriches (truly aggressive characters!), a family of baboons (with babies on the rump end of two mother baboons, one monkey only and a really small one at that, then about 8-10 giraffes, some warthogs too (really ugly characters!). One giraffe, a very tall male, was standing on the road nibbling at some thorny bush with lots of green shoots on it. We pulled up our car abut 5 feet short of hitting the animal. We could not go around him but only stay on the road. The giraffe did not want to move. Soon two vans driven by drivers who are employees of the park and hired by groups of 8-12, were approaching behind us. I wondered how long this impasse was going to last! We inched a little closer to the animal and still the animal would not pay any attention to us but kept eating. Finally, after we revved up the engine while in neutral, the giraffe began to move and lopped leisurely by the car, right by the driver's door, almost brushing it, and continued past the car's right tail light (on the right side, the side of the driver in Kenya) and never once intimated any threat or irritation with us. This gave us an amazing closeup view of this gorgeous animal covered with a beautifully spotted coat and showing an enormously long neck. What a beautiful creature of God! What a privilege to view it close enough to touch it and then in the wild, in its natural habitat. In my previous letter I spoke about how sometimes I feel 'confined' while living and working here, that I don't get out often enough but can get on this treadmill of listening to people making their retreats, listening to what over time is emotionally and psychologically exhausting. In the last few days I have pondered the possibility of God letting this happen to me, having clearly called me here to Kenya (and I am sure He still calls me here), but is challenging me to find ways of changing my routine, spend less time on the computer, take that extra one hour nap in the afternoon (which I fight!) if I feel I need it, and very consciously choose to surrender to Him in any moment when I feel empty or alone, to set aside my preference and accept His ways, sometimes shown in the limitations of my body and its slowly diminished energy-level. There is a Reality, a divine presence waiting to be noticed and loved underneath the feelings of sadness, limitation, loneliness, being unloved. I think I am more and more understanding the ways of these especially impressive Carmelite saints whose biographies I have been reading these last few years (right now a biography on a Chilean Carmelite nun, only 19 years and 9 months old when she died in 1920 thanks to typhoid. St.Teresa of the Andes is her name, Juanita Fernandez her family names. There are deep stirrings that happen in me when I read the lives of these people. The descriptions of their hungers and thirsts for God are often quite stirring for me, as is the case with this teenager who went to God so early in her life. What comes through strongly for me when reading these lives is that it is God who makes saints, not saints who decide to become saints and put all their energy into the relationship they have with God. Each of us is loved and favored by God, usually far more than we realize. Saints seem to be people who really appreciate this, who take time regularly and often to pay attention to this presence and the movements of God in their depths; they walk with humility, endless gratitude, and the joy of close friendship with God. They are often struck with wonder at the goodness and lovableness of God, and this increases their sense of being utterly unworthy of such gifts. Anyway, I am sensing a new chapter in my walk with God while in Kenya and a challenge to experience God, to trust in God in the present moment and not wait for some future day to "start living again!" I am going to move on, pray Vespers, and get ready for dinner. I got new glasses today for distance viewing, tinted also to filter out the ultraviolet rays. I have to wait two weeks to get my new reading glasses. They will be bifocals. It has been four years since I had new glasses. The old ones were becoming increasingly inadequate! Oh yes, I continue to wait for donations to come in from people who promised me donations. I keep working on recruiting interested Catholics for the pilgrimage to the Holy Land I am leading next June 6-19. Are any of you interested?? Bernie Owens

Hi, Friends, It has been a month to this day, September 18, since my last letter. It is not a sign that nothing has been going on! I came back from the US on August 12 and jumped into the work of listening to retreatants three days later. This continued non-stop for a month, and then after two days another 8 day stretch, and after that a week of teaching some classes. Pretty soon I felt exhausted, little or no gas in my tank. I begged for a break and finally got it a week ago last Sunday. Sleep and plenty of it was the first order; then a chance to swim at an outdoor pool and take a car and get out of here for some sight-seeing in downtown Nairobi and elsewhere. Mowing lawn and weeding, pruning and watering the rose beds and buying and planting some flowers to replace some that had died have also been part of the change of routine. I am feeling much more normal now, but also aware that while this place is beautiful and a great place for very meaningful work, I sometimes feel rather confined here and am living in a place that leaves me feeling psychologically cramped, sometimes. Part of the problem is that I really have no friends beyond the walls of this place. I don't get to visit homes or share a meal out somewhere. I have to work harder here than I did at Manresa to find balance and stay fresh in my spirit. I see myself here at least another three years, so I have to make this work. So far, my first three years have generally been very, very fruitful and meaningful. But I also feeling the aging process and that makes me think more than I have in the past of my future here. We shall see! I am sure God will let me know what I am to do, what He wants for us. Tomorrow Fr. Bart Murphy an American Jesuit from our community, and I will drive into the famous Nairobi Animal Park immediately south of the city and observe what animals we can see before the sun gets too high and chases all of them into the shade. The park is really large, about 20 miles or so from one end to the other. Yes, there are lions in it. You can be sure we will be staying in our car with the windows rolled up! God has been extraordinarily good to me during my daily contemplations. He continues to be the most real of the Real, and present as so truly good and worthy of being loved and honored, moreso than any words could describe. Just to sit for 45 minutes with that awareness, to be still and as attentive as possible to this is full of meaning. I hope some of you who read this can relate and find support in what I am sharing. It is the main reason I say anything about this in these letters, even though it is so personal. The election process going on now in the USA? I find it to be so ugly, so disappointing, an embarrassment for our country. It is mud-slinging at such a sordid level. I do not care for either candidate. I fear we will have weak leadership for the next four years, regardless of who is president. I will be so glad when the campaign is finally over, the election itself is done and over with, and we can get back to something else to talk about. I need to head off to bed. God bless, and please pray for the USA and its future. Bernie Owens

Good afternoon, Friends, It is Sunday, the 18th of September. I hope you are well and feeling blessed. Even if you don't feel such, I am sure you are blessed in special ways. Last Thursday morning we finished with all of our retreatants (till next Tuesday evening when a new group of 45-50 comes in for 8 days; I will get five of them to guide). I had five to guide, two for the eight days, and three were finishing up the 30-day retreat. Wow, how each of them was immensely blessed. I am so privileged to listen to their descriptions of what God had given them, inspired in them, moved them to aspire to, so much more in Him. I pinch myself at times with the awareness that I am allowed to see up close these intimate, profound moments between God and these remarkable people. The blessings that are offered to people who develop the habit of daily meditation or contemplation and take 8 days each year to be exclusively with Him, in the silence and with specific bible passages that open up their souls, is so rich for them and for me who gets to listen to them and guide them. Each of the three nuns who made the 30-day retreat came into the last week focused on the resurrection stories from the Gospel and spoke with much excitement about how they felt the same sense of what Mary Magdalene felt when by the risen Jesus she was missioned on Easter Sunday to go back into her daily life and proclaim that she had seen the risen Lord and was to announce that He is alive and in our midst. So too these three; in their daily lives and in action and in word they were to proclaim that He is alive and in our midst, alive and acting now in all who have faith and will look for Him in their daily experience--not just a marvelous memory from 2000 years ago but an amazing reality in the NOW. None of them had consulted or talked with the others; Each came to this on their own from their experience of Him in their prayer. This truly moved me. They spoke with such conviction and joy. Thank you to any and all of you who prayed for them and for me. Then I had a 51 year old Irish priest for 8 days. His work is in South Sudan, a hellhole if there ever was one! That new nation is being torn apart by tribal warfare, so vicious you would be horrified by the stories of hatred and actions of revenge coming from there. He was filled with a joy in the new freedom he was experiencing; a freedom from and a freedom for in his life. Toward the end of his retreat he experienced, as he said, how real God is. "This is the really real! He is so present, so amazing, so utterly real," he said. Yesterday we had a funeral here for a 90 year old Jesuit who had spent the last 24 years in Tanzania, the nation to our south. Ted Walters was his name, an American who had taught and administered at U of D, John Carroll in Cleveland, and at St.John's Jesuit High School in Toledo. At the age of 65 he came to East Africa and did his best, most productive work here; being very instrumental in getting St. Augustine's in Mwanza established as what is now the largest Catholic university in East Africa. He also authored a number of short books to help the faithful understand their Catholic faith much better and to appreciate that they have a vocation, that there is a direction of God going on in their souls, and that each of us is called to personal holiness of life and service of God with our life. He died on September 9, 25 years to the day and almost to the hour when his mother died in 1991. Three days before he died he said, "I am going home on Saturday. I am going to a church where there are many people waiting to celebrate with me." And lo and behold, Ted died 5 minutes before midnight, on Friday, the 9th. What a connection he enjoyed with God to be able to say what he said and to have it come true!" About 100 participated in the funeral yesterday. Many of Ted's former students came a long way to be at this funeral and express their deep gratitude to him. During the late evening of the day before, under the full moon, six of our workers dug by hand his grave. It went down 10-12 feet. After the mass we all processed slowly out to the cemetery. After the usual prayers many of us threw a fistful of loose dirt onto the coffin. Then a number of the younger men used shovels to fill in the grave site. This took some 20 minutes while songs were be sung, some in English, some in Kiswahili. When they finished numerous wreathes of roses were laid upon the mound of dirt. And many of us who were carrying a single long stem rose placed these on the mound of dirt. This morning, after leading the Sunday mass for 20 people in our small chapel and having my breakfast, I began my usual 45 minutes of meditation. I simply sit in silence for it, not reading anything, Bible or otherwise, not focusing on any image or thought but just being present to God in my depths. Something like the Irish priest I told you about up above, I experienced God as so, so real, so close, so immediately present. Just amazing! No images, no words, just an awareness, a very sweet awareness, like two friends simply enjoying being together while looking at and nodding to each other in quiet simplicity. I was just so taken by the fact that I really know Him, truly, truly know Him as so available, so, so present, so humble. But what also happened at the same time was a very strong longing or ache welling up in me to be in complete communion with this friend of all friends. I could not get over it (who would want something like this to end!). Yes, this is the really real. This is the core, the source of everything good, true and beautiful. And it is all gift there for the receiving. No one deserves this but it is offered to everyone until we can receive such. I have never experienced love for someone as I did in such a moment. I later recognized it as the same kind of experience I had when 5 years ago I was unforgettably moved when watching the movie, "Of Gods and Men," which is about 9 French Trappist monks in Algeria in 1996 who chose to stay rather than leave their monastery when threatened with death by some jihadists. All during that movie I was powerfully moved, wept through much of it, and in minutes after the movie experienced the call to leave the USA and come to East Africa. Yes, God is for real, very real, and much closer to each of us than we probably realize. I am left wanting to explore ways in which I can be more proactive, more responsive in making the most of these blessings from God. It is time for me to move on. God bless all you who read this. Thanks for your interest. Bernie Owens

Dear Friends, Here it is Thursday eve, the 8th, our first day of sun and clear sky in over a week, maybe 10 days. It felt so good today finally to feel the sun's warmth. We have been wearing sweaters and coats, hats sometimes too, to fend off the severe cold that has been on us for so long. the constant overcast wears down people's enthusiasm. What a factor to change people's attitude, to put smiles back on people's faces. We are experiencing, hopefully, the end of winter and the first approaches of spring time. I am aware that it isn't till September 21 that spring officially sets in for this part of the world, but it felt like spring today, easily in the mid 70s. The nights have been downright cold, temps in the 40s. With no heat in our rooms you want an extra wool blanket on the bed and a hat on your head throughout the night. Bare tile floors push you to wear socks too. My mornings have been spent listening to retreatants, each talking with me for 30-45 minutes. What moving things they share! There are 22 people here making that retreat; Three of these I am guiding. (I am guiding two others for just 8 days in length.) The 30-day retreatants began their retreat on August 15 and will finish on September 15. In the last few days they have been praying on the passion of Christ, from the last Supper till His death and burial. Today they were praying just on the execution and burial of Jesus. Tomorrow on the experience of Mary, the mother of Jesus, while witnessing the execution of her son and then overseeing his burial. Can you imagine what she went through!!! (This is what I spoke about during the homily of the mass I led for all of them this afternoon, 60 in all. It was the feast day of her birth. What were the spiritual strengths that were hers that enabled her to survive such a test and still trust God??!!)They spend four hours a day, an hour per period, on some aspect of this story . It so humbles them, astounds them at times, even scares some. I myself am very moved by what they say when they debrief. They inspire me, in turn, about things I consider bringing to my book now in the first stages of writing. Last Sunday afternoon it was my turn to lead the mass for the retreatants. It was also the day Mother Teresa of Calcutta was canonized a saint by Pope Francis in Rome. I did not see the TV coverage, even though we had it here, but was with retreatants during the mass going on in Rome. We are one hour ahead of Rome during their summer, two hours ahead when they go off Daylight Savings time. We never change our clocks. I took the three readings of Sunday and showed how Mother Teresa lived out the spirit of each one. Three of the 30-day retreatants are Missionaries of Charity sisters, and they did the readings and organized the music for the mass. I congratulated them and their religious community in public at the end of my homily on this very happy occasion and personally for their own vocations to such a remarkable religious order. I have hurt my lower back and went to a chiropractor last Friday to have it straightened. It did help for a few days. Today it has felt like I have hurt something again in that area. For the life of me, I cannot recall a particular moment when I did hurt myself in that area. Maybe poor posture while sitting in a chair listening to retreatants?? It is really bothersome. I plan to go back to the doctor late tomorrow afternoon. So often there is some reminder that this life is not our final life, this earth is not heaven! I have been reading a short book on the saint (St. Teresa Margaret Redi of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, died 1770) whose preserved body in Florence, Italy I visited last November. Her story continues to stir me deeply and make me long for something of her spirit and focus in relating to God. My prayer these last days has been so blessed! Something really good is going on! Too early to say much more than that. I look forward to November 29 when I can begin my own annual 8 day retreat, finishing on December 8. I need to move on, friends. I wish the best to each and all of you. Overall I am quite fine and really blessed with the work I have the opportunity to do. The book writing moves along in spurts or reading and then writing. 15 years come this Sunday since 9/11. Pray for our country in this coming election. I do not feel encouraged. I so pray we can stay out of any kind of war. There is still so much of it in parts of the Middle East and in spots of Africa. God bless. Bernie Owens

Dear Friends, I am writing to you on Sunday evening. The winter chill is still with us on some nights. I am ready for a warmer room and hopes of putting away my heavy wool blanket. What is most memorable from this last week is a conversation I had with one of my retreatants a few days ago. She is a tall, slender Kenyan from the northwestern parts of the nation, where life is typically given to tending goats and cattle, leading them to watering holes, protecting them from rustlers, and staying out of the hot sun. This is a woman in her mid 30s, very black skin with the hair over her entire head braided beautifully. She speaks softly and with a British accent. I have to strain to understand her. I am not successful all the time! She is soon to make her vows perpetual after being in her religious order for 12 years. The 30-day retreat she is in the middle of and I am guiding her through is to prepare her well for this most special moment in her life next February. Her work is teaching high school age boys and girls. I had given her the previous day a scripture passage (Genesis 22:1-18) to pray with, a text that tells the story of Abraham preparing to sacrifice his miracle child, Isaac, since he understood (mistakenly) that God had asked him to sacrifice his son. As you recall, God intervenes and prevents Abraham from doing such to his son and then praises Abraham to no end for trusting God, putting God first above everything. This young nun prayed on that passage among others but was moved to relate to me a major moment in her life when two members of her religious order had come to her village and to visit her mother to reassure her of her daughter's choice to join and stay with the religious order. In this part of the world where it is considered by so many that you are not whole unless you have become a mother or a father, she had made a radical choice, risking rejection by some and resentment or resistance at least from her mother. Her mother is a quiet, reflective woman and listened well to these two visitors while her daughter sat near them. When it came time for her mother to speak, this nun, her daughter said, "My mother trembled and said, 'Who am I to fight God? God gave her to me and now I give her back to God'." I was so taken by how this young nun told of this great moment in her life when as she said, "my mother really accepted me then and supports me in what I am doing with my life." The love and awe for her mother, and for God, that radiated from that nun's face was something to behold. I later found it very meaningful to know that while I am half way around the world from my homeland, I am listening to a young Christian woman who wants to give her life to God in this way, and comes from a world of goats and cows, thatched huts, and barren surroundings, yet the Holy Spirit moves in her heart in the same way that this same Spirit has moved in mine and in so many others I am privileged to listen to and guide in their walk with God. I had a new sense of the reality of God's Holy Spirit moving in the depths of EVERY human being, no matter what our background. I have had a good first week in writing the beginnings of my new book. I am finding growing enthusiasm inside me for doing this. Maybe it was providential that the course I was going to offer on Teresa of Avila got cancelled! I think my finished product will find many interested readers. At the same time, I suspect it will be a few years into the future before I finish it and have it in a form fit for publishing. There are some parts in this book that will come from the deepest parts of me. That will not be easy to put into words, and I will be willing to wait patiently on that till I am satisfied with what is the final version. I do not see a book coming from me after this one!! I need to go! Have a blessed week. Till next time . . . Bernie Owens

Dear Friends, It has been a long time since I posted anything on this blog site, since early June if I recall correctly. I am glad to be back and telling you what has been happening with me in the last three months. I returned to Nairobi a week ago and am now feeling largely readjusted to the 7 hour time difference between here and the Eastern time zone of the USA. It took me quite some time to feel normal and not wake up for long periods during the nighttime. I have had to sleep a lot to feel rested. Some of the reasons for that, I am supposing, is the kind of work I was doing in the USA during the spring and summertime. For three and a half months I was engaged in trying to raise funds for two buildings much needed here at our retreat centre. The work involved in setting up evening events in donor's homes, or at a restaurant, or at a country club and then getting a list of names and email addresses to ask people to come was a lot of work. It involved much detail and remembering and phoning or emailing. It was that kind of work, dealing with much detail, that made me mentally weary. I did the best I knew how, received some great help from a few people in hosting and setting up these events, and then had the experience of some potential donors giving nothing or much less than I had hoped for. I will not know how well my efforts produced many donations till January 1. The bigger donors wait until the end of the calendar year to decide what they will give. We are about 40% of the way to our goal. My fondest hope is that by this time next year we will be done and ready to build both buildings. One very pleasant part of my time back in the US was visiting my three siblings, meeting two newly adopted members of our family (a 10 year old girl and her 12 year old brother), visiting numerous friends, some of whom I had not seen in many years (one for 44 years!) and then giving two workshops on the book I wrote and published a year ago: one workshop in Modesto, California and the other in Birmingham, Michigan. By the way, my book is presently being translated into Spanish and should be ready for printing in a year from now. Also, a publishing company in India is printing and selling copies in English speaking Asia and Africa. I have said in previous months that I feel inspired to write a second book. That inspiration is still very much there inside me and I feel close to starting, just to get something out on paper. Usually writing generates the desire and inspiration for more writing. Right now I am trying in my mind many possible ways of beginning the book. I want to start with an anecdote, an "attention-getter". So far I have not settled on one. I had the disappointment this morning of being notified by the dean of the seminary that my course in Teresa of Avila's "The Interior Castle" i cancelled for this semester since too few students signed up for it. It is an elective and I am thinking many other electives were offered and I lost out. I will try again for the second semester beginning in January. I would like to think that this cancellation will give me more time for writing on a new book. Next Tuesday I mark 3 years since I arrived here to live and work. Those years have flown by. I have loved the opportunities I have had here. The cancellation of the course on Teresa, of teaching, is a great disappointment. If this keeps happening into the near future, then I will seriously rethink my staying here in East Africa. I am off to bed. tomorrow is Sunday, the 21st. God bless all of you who read this. Bernie

Dear Friends, Wow, it has been 5 weeks since I last posted anything here. And so, so much has happened for me in that time. It is mostly due to my being back in the USA (since April 22) and being busy with arranging fund-raising events in the Detroit area. While I am finding time to reconnect with friends and planning reunions with family members, most of my time so far has been spent in strategizing and organizing events at which as a voice for very poor people in East Africa I will make an appeal for donations. All of these events are in the future, June and especially in July. None has happened yet. I return to Nairobi on August 11. The results of these efforts will be best known com October and November. The weather here has finally turned wonderful--low 80s and no clouds. The first 3-4 weeks were cold or cool. A week ago Sunday, May 15, we had snowflakes falling in the afternoon. That is so unusual for this time of the year! Two evenings ago a friend and I went to the baseball game between the Tigers and Philadelphia Phillies. The home team won what turned out to be a thrilling game, 5-4, and the weather was ideal. During my time back I came across a quote from a 19th century Canadian woman, Marie-Rose Durocher, that has so struck me. It has stayed with me and deepened over the last three weeks since I first discovered it. This is what I would like to reflect on in this letter. The quote is as follows: "I invite you to come to the Heart of Jesus with me, for it is there that I wish to dwell and where, if you wish it, we will never be separated." As I said, this has so drawn my attention and wonder; it is so special, so beautiful and for me very powerful. It draws me into a speechless wonder at what God offers to each of us, the closeness and communion each of us is meant to experience someday with Him and with each other. What does it mean "to enter the heart" of anyone? I can say such has happened for me with some of the people I have met in East Africa. I hear their stories, I pay close attention to what they are saying and feel something of what they are relating: e.g., a major economic struggle for themselves or their families, or their effort to help oppressed people (e.g., young teenage girls pressured to be 'cut' to satisfy tribal customs of genital mutilation) and so I get a glimpse of something of the beauty and goodness in these people. I sense their soul and recognize such nobility and courage in them. So, yes, I "enter their heart," their world with its secrets and hopes, their wounds and victories. I have experienced much the same with Jesus. I do know Him, without a doubt. I have experienced Him. "I know the One in whom I have believed, as St. Paul himself exclaimed." I have been privileged, like everyone is welcomed to do, to "enter His Heart," His world and its joys and pains, its present challenges and find there an overwhelming strength in Him to be consistently a steady, caring, loving, understanding and encouraging Presence. Spending 45 minutes each day in silence with Him, sometimes through the use of a Scripture passage very meaningful to me, or in just being steadily present and aware of Him present to me here and now, has opened me over the years to this Mystery, deeper and deeper. Yes, I have "entered His Heart", His world, His life in doing this. Most amazing of all has been my "enter(ing) into" His way of thinking and choosing in which He gives everything He has and is. To experience such a choice being made for me, and for you, and even for each person that ever existed or will exist is something I struggle to take in. I can hardly take it in; in some respects I know I cannot take in much of this Mystery. It is so beyond me yet draws me irresistably. Never before have I met anyone who has made such a choice as Jesus did in the last hours of His life. It is often too much to stay present to such a choice in the face of the sufferings and death He experienced. It puts me back on myself to consider what it would be for me to make the same choice, to do for someone else what He has done for me. It would take a rare gift from God to give one's entire self that deeply, that completely. So to be "inside Him, in His world, in His Heart", to feel what He feels and to know what He knows, draws me powerfully, but this also leaves me feeling terribly inadequate, so limited in being able to receive such a gift. Yet, it is what God's Spirit attracts me to move "into." And, as the quote of Marie-Rose Durocher speaks to, I want to bring the very special people of my life (really, anyone I can find and is willing to respond with a 'yes') to this most beautiful and sacred of all Places and for them to know for themselves as much as possible something of this most awesome Presence and Loving Assurance. To have this kind of friendship with anyone who has such a focus and attraction is, I am sure, the closest glimpse of heaven any human being can have while here on earth. So while I have been working at setting up fund-raising evenings here in the Detroit area during this summer, this quote I share with you has "moved around" inside me at different times, in ways that capture my attention at times and draws me to an inner attentiveness and a felt need to spend time being still before this great Mystery and letting myself be taken down inside, down into wordless wonder and humbled gratitude. This must be something like what Moses experienced when He encountered God and had to take off his sandals because he knew he was on sacred ground, in a Presence so captivating, so indescribably beautiful and beyond all words. Today, May 25, is the first of nine days many people including myself prepare through some brief prayers for the great feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, (June 3 this year). It is a simple way for asking to be taken "into His Heart," into His world and care for this world to be more and more like He is; it is to be given His Heart and more of His Spirit so that we may become another Christ, another presence of Him in a world that so needs understanding, healing, mercy, truth, conversion, justice and peace. I know that eventually He will have His way with each of us and that we will, by His gifting us, have the quality of mind and Heart He does. But until that day it is "More Than You Could Ever Imagine." "Eye has not seen, ear has not heard what God has prepared for anyone who loves Him." Bernie Owens