Good afternoon, friends,

  I write on March 7, first Friday of the month and the 3rd anniversary of my mother's death.  As you might expect, she has been very much on my mind today.  I share with you her final words to me 11 days before she went to God.  While sitting up in bed with the help of many pillows and in full mind, she took both of my hands into her hands and said, "I know we will be seeing one another again some day."  What a privileged moment that was for me, actually for the both of us.  She was in a nursing care facility near my sister's home north of Traverse City and I had to drive that afternoon back to my residence in Detroit.  So I had a lot of time alone in the car, some 4.5 hours, to be with that experience and wonder at the meaning of life, of her life, and the blessing she was to me and my three siblings.  The day we celebrated her life and buried her ashes was absolutely clear in the sky.  The sun was brilliant.  It was a chilly wintery March 19, and the moon that evening was full and the closest to the earth it can ever get. It was haunting to see the moon that evening, a prominent symbol of the resurrection in so many religions of the world.  I interpreted it as an unforgettable, strong statement of God of how love has the last say in all life, that nothing is stronger, not even close, to the power of divine love and compassion; it was a statement of irrepressible love and the promise of eternal life for all who believe and wish to serve/love God as they know God.  It seemed some 300 people came that day to the funeral mass.  !8 fellow priests, 16 of them Jesuits joined me for that mass.  What support by so many!!

   Last Sunday morning, as I was beginning to finish a retreat on contemplative prayer for 13 people that I had begun on Friday evening, I found myself terribly sick and weak, so weak I could not finish the retreat.  I could hardly stand up, so wobbly and weak was I.  One of the retreatants drove me in her car from the retreat house back to my residence where I collapsed in bed and went to sleep immediately.  Fortunately the nun and a priest who were on the retreat filled in pretty well from what I heard.  In the meantime I began to suffer the consequences and climax of what a doctor later diagnosed as "acute bacteria infection" in the intestines.  My temperature went up to 104 F, with lots of sweating followed by chills and shivering...diarrhea and vomiting.  At first it was thought to be malaria, but no, it turned out to be food poisoning and its violent impact.  Oh my!   Only by Wednesday evening did I have an appetite.  Some baked fish tasted terrific!  I had six pieces of  fish that eveing with mashed potatoes and some cooked beans and carrots.  Nothing raw!!!  Lots of fresh mango juice and water to get rehydrated.  Bananas, scrambled eggs, hot millet for cereal, hot tea and toast--everything bland.  The care I received was wonderful.  What an ordeal.

   This has to be the sweetest way for getting revenge with someone (what an evil thought for Lent!!)  So I am on the mend and not guiding any retreatants during this round of 8-day retreats.  My focus is to get back my balance, my strength.  I am still not 100%.  I have a wonderful friend from Troy, MI coming to visit me for 9 days starting Monday evening.  I want to be ready to enjoy the special time we hope to have together.

   Other items:  The night sky here is spectacular.  So little light pollution.  The stars and planets, also the moon right now almost half-moon are so beautiful to gaze at.

   There is a bird that comes around a lot in morning and late afternoon.  It is incessant, neurotic in the three-note chirp it sounds.  The second chirp of the triplet is a half tone lower than the first and the third is a half tone lower than the second.  It keeps it up until it makes you want to cover your ears or go get a gun.  I am wondering whether this is the infamous mocking bird,  whether this feathered pest is what is referred to in the title "To Kill a Mockingbird."

   Last, the police here and sometimes crowds are ruthless with robbers they catch.  In the last 10 days or so there have been three young men riding around on motorcycles and stopping to rob people.  Even three of our Jesuit novices here to learn English (one from Egypt, one from Lebanon and one from Syria) while out for a walk got robbed by these idiots.  The thieves specialized in hitting people in well-to-do areas early in the morning while people are leaving their homes to go to work.  They point a gun and make the people go back into their home and surrender their laptops and other valuables.  The police were alert to them and some of the police as plain clothes men cornered them, demanding that they surrender.  One or more shot back at the police and one or more of the plainclothes men shot all three dead.  Their motorcycles made them somewhat easy to notice.  The shooting took place at an intersection in a neighborhood not far from the Jesuit Loyola House and provincial offices in Nairobi.  High drama.

   Then two days ago students at one of the city's university caught up with two men who had been robbing many of the students.  A group of students caught up with them, poured gasoline on them and burned them to death.  Swift justice.

   One of my retreatants, an elderly nun, told me of a group of women becoming fed up with some construction worker who was raping some of them, even hitting on young girls in their early teens.  One day a gang of the women in that village went after this man, chased him to a pit, threw him in and proceeded to stone him to death.  The police look the other way on some of this stuff!  Swift justice!  They have gone after some of these riot-producing imams down in the port city of Mombasa.  A few of these imams get into radical jihadist thinking, take unemployed teenagers and young men in their 20s, fill them with anti-Christian hate, and have them riot. So the police in the last two years have taken matters into their hands, denying that they did so, and killed two imams. The protest was loud and fierce.  The Kenyan government is blamed for being permissive but looks the other way. The Somali problems and bombing of the Westgate mall here in the city last September have made the Kenyan government  to be very tough on the Al Shabaab anarchists.  Hundreds of them in Somalia have been killed by Kenyan jets and troops that have gone after these cockroaches.  US Navy Seals tried unsuccessfully last fall to get the Al Shabaab leader during a night raid.  He was too well defended and the Seals had to withdraw in their boat.  I suspect a drone-kill is being planned for one of these days.  It can be so vicious, so bloody.   Kenya is a young nation of 44 million, largely Christian and followers of traditional African religion.  Militant Islam is being funded from outside.  It wants to establish Islam as dominant throughout eastern Africa, just as in Nigeria and the Central African Republic now  There is lots of American, British and Israeli undercover presence in this area, especially since the bombing of the mall.

   Enough for now, friends.  Please pray for the people of this part of the world.  So many good and simple people, very poor, some living at the edge.  It is a privilege for me to be invited here and share in a little of their present and future.  All of you in the Manresa family, know that I offer Eucharist every Wednesday for you.  Have a blessed Lent!

Bernie Owens