Thursday, October 17, 2013

Dear Friends,

   I type this for you on a Thursday afternoon that is quite sunny and rather warm in the sun but with a gentle, mountain breeze to make you want to open your door and windows to feel quite comfortable in the shade.
   Lots has happened since my last posting on this blog.  First, I mentioned having to led a retreat last weekend for a number of young Jesuit priests, all from Kenya, Tanzania or Ethiopia.  There were 14 in all who showed up.  All of these men are between 35 and 45 years of age.  They were ordained within the last five years, one of them just a few months ago.  They are doing work like leading a big co-ed boarding school or running parishes or dealing immediately with Somalian refugees, working at the recruitment of future Jesuits, or being available to students at the University of Nairobi in a campus ministry, counseling capacity.  How refreshing to be with such young men full of life and vision and obviously enjoying their seeing each other again after seminary days when they were together all the time.  Their sense of brotherhood is so evident.  I had the responsibility for choosing the themes for their prayer and discussion, also for setting up the schedule and its pacing.  The weekend for them and for me was full of blessings, with some deep moments of sharing, some great laughter and beautiful times of prayer.  On Saturday evening, after dinner, we relaxed around the movie Shawshank Redemption (with Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman).  On Sunday evening, after the retreat was over we all went to an Ethiopian restaurant.  I wish you could have seen it with its music in the background: a large round tent whose roof  moved upward till it formed a peak at the center.  The table surfaces were made from the slices of a large wooden tree trunk, with jagged edges, and then varnished.  The one Ethiopian Jesuit with us could speak his dialect with our waitress and eat with his fingers, as is their custom.  I just loved it.  No, I and the rest  ate with forks and knives.  The food was really good.  Some of the beef was moderately spicy.  Yummy!  I drank a beer, native to Kenya.  It is called Tusker; it is 4.5 in alcohol with the color and body of maybe a Sam Adams type beer.  It tasted so, so good!
Toward the end of the retreat I had them read, pray privately, and then discuss among ourselves a copy of the letter that the head of the Trappist community in Algeria wrote to his parents and siblings at the time he and his 8 fellow monks were threatened with death by jihadists.  The movie "Of Gods and Men" is based on event.  All but two of the monks eventually were kidnapped and beheaded.  The letter reflects total love for the Muslim villagers these monks lived with and had gotten to know and care about; and forgiveness for whoever would be his assassin.  It is the closest thing I have ever witnessed to Jesus' forgiveness from the cross for those who crucified him.  What this article generated among the Jesuit priests is a very interesting sharing about the situation some of them are surrounded by, especially for those working in Tanzania, the nation to our south.   Some of them openly talked about significant tensions there between Muslims and Christians and the talk of threats by Muslim extremists against parishes and schools.  One of our schools, St. Peter Claver in Dodoma, that nation's capital, has a co-ed school and dormitories.  One night the principal, James Agawa, received a phone call from a parent saying she had heard that someone was going to attack the school.  It didn't happen, thank God, but James told me he wants to build a wall around the school property (1250 acres!!); he told me, "then I will be able to sleep!!"  Those staffing parishes, as in Mwanza, say there are some tensions but not like in the heavily Muslim populations down near the Indian Ocean, like Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar Island, or Mombasa in Kenya..  What really stirs up Muslims are American evangelicals who openly and aggressively want to convert Muslims.  We Jesuits don't do such at all, nor other Catholic parishes and groups.  Our approach is to live with and offer education.  If students and parents want to become Christian, then there are ways for their doing that; but our way is not a direct effort to proselytize. Unfortunately, Muslims who are angry with this effort of  direct evangelizing do not distinguish between evangelicals and other Christians.   Anyway, it was fascinating to see these young Jesuits hint at the prospect of their being bloodshed someday and possibly their being involved in it all.  I am sure the Trappist monks in Algeria wondered the same as they discerned their call to stay in Algeria despite the danger to themselves, rather than return to France or go elsewhere.  It was a profound moment for me to be in that room with all of them and hear them say this among themselves.  I am so impressed with what they are doing and with their trusting God in their vow of obedience to the provincial who missioned them to these schools and parishes.  By the way, the provincial was in on all of our sessions, so he knows what he is asking of these men, in the Name of Christ Jesus.  Wow, talk about being at the heart of what matters most!  I am privileged to be in on all of this!
And then those who are working with the refugees up in northern Kenya:  some of them have risked being shot by Al Shabaab Somalis, the same type who murdered so many at the Westgate Mall four weekends ago here in Nairobi.  Their usual story is of dealing with those who have lost everything and live in tents, not having a sense of home and going through what sometimes is the hell of nighttime in refugee camps with the violence and thievery that happens there among desperate, frightened people.  The good news of their efforts is that they help in running a school in the camp so that refugees can get a school diploma and be more employable when they finally can go home or find a permanent place in this nation.
   So...to all of you who remembered us in prayer on that weekend retreat I say a deep "thank you."  God blessed us very much and you were a very important part of it all.  Please keep us and their wonderful ministries in your prayers.  Thanks much!
  The other big piece of news is that I have broken a bone at the edge of my left foot.  We all have a bony knob at the edge of the foot, about half way between the little toe and the heel.  I began to feel some minor pain there in the last two or three weeks I was in the States.  When I got here, as I walked more on hard surfaces and unpaved roadways, the pain increased.  And when I started shoveling in my garden plot, trying to press through the hard African clay, I one day snapped something toward the top of the little toe of the left foot and stretching back on the foot parallel to the left edge.  I thought it was a tendon or torn tissue pulled away from the bone.  I went to a doctor the day after the retreat and he ordered an x-ray.  It showed a break in the bone at that knob; it also showed a break I had had some time ago near the joint leading to the second toe of the same foot.  So the doctor ordered a bone density test, wondering whether I had a condition that makes breaks easy.  The test proved negative but it made me think that  sometimes I press too hard with my left foot  when trying to make the blade of the shovel cut into the soil.  In the future I will have to use the African pick I described in an earlier blog-letter when I deal with really hard clay. 
   This situation, then, has made me have to wear a big boot on my left foot and walk with a support cane in my right hand.  I will be this way till maybe December 1, during a six week healing process.  In the meantime I have had to give over charge of my garden plot to one of the fulltime workmen.  Isaac is his name and he was most understanding and reassuring that he would, in the meantime, care for my little seedlings that have sprouted and are for the most part growing quite well. 
   One amazing incident happened yesterday on the way back from the Westgate Mall area where I went for the bone density test.  I was sitting in the co-pilot seat of a car and a nun from our health-care center was in the back-seat.  She was dressed in full nun's regalia, all white with a small red cross on her chest area.   Eric, a full time employee of this place, a native Kenyan and father of a new baby boy, was driving.  As he was making a right hand turn (equivalent to a left-hand turn on US roads) he was motioned over to the side of this busy intersection in Nairobi by two soldiers with semi-automatic rifles over their shoulders.  They wanted Eric's ID and mine.  They were checking anyone who might look questionable, suspicious.  After seeing our ID and learning that I was a priest, one of the soldiers, with a deadpan face through this whole conversation, said to me, "Fine, Father.  Have a good day." As we drove away, the nun started laughing and laughing at the thought of these soldiers taking us for possible terrorists.  So in the drive all the way back to this retreat centre we talked about how suspicious we look.  I said to the nun, "Wouldn't we make a great team--you a nun, I a priest.  We could pull off many jobs and the police would never suspect."  She laughed and laughed some more, Eric too.
  Two last items for today's blog:  there is a tree in this part of the world that is stunning in its beauty.  It is called the jacaranda tree.  The first syllable is sounded as though it is jack.  Anyway, these trees are all over Nairobi and one is on our grounds here.  These trees get as high as about 60 feet up, with light rust colored trunks.  What is so attractive about them are the clusters of light colored purple-bluish tinted-bells all over the tree.  They are in blossom now until Christmas time.  I can't get over their beauty--again, not a deep purple but a purple with a slight blue tint in the flower.  And when the blossoms fall to the ground you have like a purple carpet all over the place.  It is out of this world.  And when you plant a pink blossoming bogen-via bush next to it, the color combination is even more beautiful.  I wish all of you could see the lush growth of this area of the world.  Lots of eucalyptus.  Even its pine trees are remarkable; its needles about twice as long as the needles on the pine trees of North America.
  Lastly, I have gotten accustomed to  sleeping with mosquito netting over my bed.  I like to leave the door of my bedroom open during the day with the windows on the opposite side of the room open as well.  This is great for cross ventilation.  In the meantime mosquitoes will wander in, especially as dusk approaches.  They like to nestle in my closet, clinging to folded up clothing or on the towels in the bathroom.  Then after lights are out they come looking for me, only to bump up against the netting and I can sleep in peace and not be bothered with them. 
  All for how.  Go Tigers, go Lions.  I can follow them rather closely on the internet. I feel close to the city this way and with the many of you who enjoy Detroit area sports. And I hope all of you enjoy the autumn colors! 

Fr. Bernie Owens

Sunday, October 6, 2013

Dear Friends,

  I typed a long letter on this day, October 6 but am afraid I lost it all.
  So quickly, I have great news to share:  Liturgical Publishing Company in Collegeville wants to publish my book but after I pare it down from 257 pages to about 180.  That is a lot of cutting but I will do it.  I so want this book to be born!!  I have worked on it for three years.  When will it be born?  I suspect next summer or fall; it will take me till next March or so to find time to make the needed changes.  Its title is:  More Than You Could Ever Imagine: Ignatian and Carmelite Insights on Our Becoming Divine.   It tells the process of how God leads those willing in love and trust to take on the fullness of divine life, what we will be like individually in the next life and what will be the nature of our life as a whole human race in the next life.  Kind of lofty??  Certainly, but as the Christian scriptures promise:  "Eye has not seen, ear has not heard nor has it so much as entered into the minds of humanity what God has prepared for those who love Him."  It is more than one could ever imagine.
  Then I have a weekend retreat to lead for 17 young African Jesuit priests next weekend (October 11-13).   I would greatly appreciate your praying for all of us.  It is a very important event for them and for me.  Thanks again. 
  Kenya is still numb from the tragedy of the massacre two weekends ago.  Pray for this country and its future, please.  So much promise here and at the same time so much poverty and unemployment.  This stands in contrast to the beauty of nature here.
  God bless.  I need to go.

Bernie Owens