Powerful article

Obviously, Channing Walker was deeply inspired by a 97-year-old Iranian woman who survived eight days and nights after an earthquake trapped her in the rubble of her home. Her amazing story moved him to write a beautifully thoughtful and poetic piece [" 'God kept me alive' "] in the January 26 issue.

After musing on his life compared to hers and the inner resources that sustained her, he concludes his article, "Thank you, Shahr-Banou Mazandarani, for saying and for proving for one more moment, 'God kept me alive.' " Thank you, Mr. Walker, for each powerful word of your article.

Lorelei De La Reza
Houston, Texas

'Holding hands around the world'

I certainly have a grateful heart for the January 26 issue on hearts healed. How inspiring to read how God's love meets the need of every human heart throughout the world.

"The power of knowing your own heart" by Annette Kreutziger-Herr and the companion article by her husband, Klaus-Hendrik Herr, titled "The view from beside her," showed me the absolute power of spiritual prayer to heal any situation no matter how long it has persisted.

When praying for another's spiritual healing, we are naturally included in the power of this prayer. In fact it can affect all mankind for the better.

Thanks for the Sentinels that come every week. Each one gives me the feeling that all of God's children are holding hands around the world, demonstrating love and goodwill everywhere.

Nancy A. Hughart
Elsah, Illinois

Overflowing love

I have subscribed to the Sentinel and gifted subscriptions for others for many years. Each time as I finish the current issue, I think that I must write to thank the authors and publishers for the many helpful, healing, thought-provoking articles that you have gifted me with over these years. They helped me as a student of Christian Science; as a member of a branch Church of Christ, Scientist; and as a Reader. The issue that finally pushed me to actually write to you is the January 26 issue, "Hearts healed."

Sometimes we think we are doing all we can do. Then we read of what others have done, and are still doing, and we realize just how much more we need to do. Praying for all God's children, as well as for ourselves, is one of our duties. My heart overflows with love for you all.

Barbara Locher
Frankfort, Kentucky

Power of Poetry

Thank you for Bettie Gray's review [February 9] of the book George Washington Carver: a life in poems. My favorite poets, including the Psalmist in the Bible, are my heroes. I love their grit and the power of their voices. They can lift a soul from the sod and propel it into the air so it can soar on the energy they have uncovered through their covered through their passion, their fitness for living, and their courage to explore the outer limits of emotion, illuminating precious, shared, and rejuvenating "secret places" of the heart.

The African American community from Carver's time through today has given me so much real love to draw from in terms of understanding the nature of good and evil in contemporary American society. There is often remarkable power and spiritual presence in these writers' works, whether poetry, prose, or song.

Thank you for all the Sentinel blessings. I've turned its pages from cover to cover since I was first able to read, and my love for the magazine hasn't once dimmed over the years. It is a wonderful documentary of spirituality in action in the daily lives of ordinary people, much as the Bible is and ever was.

Testimonies of healing. What else are we here for?

Lisa Wormwood
Medford, Massachusetts

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