Dear Friends,
Friday evening here, and I will not be long. But I want to say "thank you" to any and all who are praying for me and the four people (three seminarians and one nun) I am now guiding through their 30-day retreat. I have one other nun for 8 days and she finishes on Tuesday morning. There are times I am so, so moved by what is happening in these people and the stories they tell me of their own encounters with death, with struggles, with their thirst for God. I feel so, so close to God as I listen to their stories and how God has and is moving in them. I wish I could package such and show the world. This makes me think of the prophet Isaiah who describes in chapter 40 his going up to the top of the mountains and shouting to the world, "Here is your God!" while he tries to lead God's lambs and sheep to safety, to life.
One of the nuns is such a "tough" character, born the third of triplets, nearly dying as an infant, being carried in her first months in a little sack or small pouch on the belly of her mother wherever her mother went; then at the age of 18 she tells her mother she wants to become a nun, to which her mother picks up a stool or chair and throws it at her. For three days this future nun hid under a desk, slept there overnight to avoid the wrath of her mother. Only the word of her father, separated from her mother and living in another village, could spare her and manage to calm down the mother. Today, 25 years later, her mother is proud of her as a nun. (This is the same person who was part of a small group of nuns who 8 yeas ago went into a part of Ethiopia where only Muslims live. The Muslims burned down all their housing on Good Friday, would not sell food to them nor let them ride their buses, and they were saved from violence and harm thanks to a 4-5 year old Muslim boy who instinctively (providentially??) came to their protection one day when these nuns were walking in a dangerous, threatening area of the village and insisted on their being taken to his home and fed. The boy's father followed the wishes of his son and from that point on the town tolerated the nuns. The nuns are still there to this day and witness to Christ by their living among these Muslims and loving them as best they know how with the kindness and welcome of Christ. Tough heh!!?? Persistent, tough faith in Christ!! It makes one really proud to be Christian and challenged to live one's own faith in Christ's love without any shame or apology.)
Today is the first of nine days leading up to Pentecost, June 8. The significance of Pentecost has grown and grown on me through the years. It really is the climax of the church's life that we celebrate from the beginning of Advent, through Christmas and the Epiphany, through Lent and then Easter. Easter is Jesus' great day but Pentecost is our great day when the Spirit of Christ comes with such power and changes confused, fear-based people into daring apostles who go to the stretches of the known world, as far as India in the east and Spain in the west to plant the seeds of the Gospel and invite people into life in Christ. The same need is there in every generation. I see the need so strongly in our own USA where so many seem confused, don't know who they are, are spiritually comotose, some feeding on drugs or what amounts to quasi-spiritual junk food because they can't stand the emptiness of their lives and the surrounding culture and what it offers them for meaning and purpose. So many adopt pop culture, sports, and feel-good psychology in the place of the wonderfully good news of Christ and the challenge of His Gospel. They end up being spiritually anemic, even anorexic in some cases . . . like they forget to eat nutritious food and slowly waste away! And yet I have met so many really people in the Sates who are so alive, so full of hope and joy and have a clear sense of what life can be because they have experienced and live in fidelity to the love they have experienced from Christ for themselves. They really do believe and radiate His Presence. Pentecost has happened in their lives and they are wonderful to be around.
It is bedtime here. I pray for all you who read my postings. Let us, please, join in prayer Pope Francis this coming Pentecost Sunday, June 8, when he receives in Rome the president of Israel and the head of the Palestinian Authority where the three of them will pray for peace in the Holy Land. What a worthy cause!
Oh, last Monday at 5:45 AM there was a huge boom here at the retreat house. A hotwater tank exploded , rocketed into the air while landing 300' away,and tore a large hole in the roof of the retreat house's administration center, knocked down a number of walls inside as well as some of the outer walls, destroyed the kitchen and ovens, and cracked the walls and ceiling of the chief administrator's office. People outside our walls started the rumors that Al Shabaab had bombed us. Even local news stations began to report this and TV cameras came to our front gate in hopes of a sensational story. (They were ushered away quickly!!) So right now we are feeding 50 retreatants from emergency, cramped kitchen quarters while constructing an emergency food-preparation area to give our heroic cooking crew a little more room for their much appreciated work. In the meantime, 50 retreatants are in absolute silence and getting good meals on time, but it is really tough on the kitchen crew. They are our heroes and heroines right now!!
Bernie Owens
Friday, May 30, 2014
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Dear Friends,
Here I am Tuesday, just before lunch. I have come from some truly amazing conversations with the retreatants I am working with now. Their stories and sharings make God seem so close, so active, so real, as if much of what passes for daily living is by comparison rather unreal and matters much less than what is contained in these stories.
One fellow tells about how he spent a summer helping some missionary priest here in Kenya with service to really poor people in villages nearby, even building homes with him. He described this priest as given to the poor and the oppressed and pressing for their rights. Eventually he was martyred, murdered by someone who did not like what he was doing to "upset" the status quo. It was from knowing and working closely for those few months that this one retreatant experienced God inviting him to be a priest. I had a lump in my throat listening to this and imagining what it must be like to experience God's call coming through the example of a martyr.
Another retreatant shared the question about why he felt so struck by two scenes in two different movies: one at the end of the movie entitled the "Mission" where the Jesuit priest, head of the Paraguyan mission, while carrying the Eucharist in a monstrance, is shot dead by Spanish or Portugese explorers looking for gold; and the other scene was from the movie "Romero" (featuring Archbishop Romero of El Salvador) when at the end of the movie while saying mass and at the moment he lifts the bread and wine to offer it to God is shot to death by an assassin standing at the back of the chapel. This young seminarian, to be ordained a priest in about two years from now, said to me with great intent, "Why did God come to me so meaningfully in those two scenes, which bear significant similarity? What does this mean for my life?"
A third retreatant shared about how two years spent in a part of Africa with defenseless people with no medical help and living in great poverty he was touched in his spirit so deeply and this left him at the same time with great joy, great gratitude for all he had been allowed to know and experience. This mystery of how God speaks especially through the poor.
Then another retreatant telling about how her group went to a part of Ethiopia, which is largely Orthodox Christian, to a Muslim village, very primitive. They built some humble dwelling places there and then on Good Friday, while they were away, everything was burned down by these Muslims. These Muslims would not sell groceries to them, would not let them ride on their buses. (Sounds like the South of the USA in the 1940s-60s!!) But one day as these Christian missionaries were walking along a road not far from the village a boy 4-5 years old came forward to protect them, lead them back to his house, and gave them some food. Somehow, in that gesture the attitude of the village changed toward these nuns. As Isaiah says, "A little child shall lead them."
I am very blessed to hear these stories. I pass on to you the gist of them.
Yesterday morning we had a very dangerous thing happen here at the retreat center. A hot water tank exploded, rocketed in the air and landed some 200' away from the building on the back lawn, tore a big hole in the roof of the kitchen area, blew out glass and concrete walls. Fortunately the morning cook was a little late in getting to the kitchen and so was spared her life.
I have to go!
Bernie Owens
Here I am Tuesday, just before lunch. I have come from some truly amazing conversations with the retreatants I am working with now. Their stories and sharings make God seem so close, so active, so real, as if much of what passes for daily living is by comparison rather unreal and matters much less than what is contained in these stories.
One fellow tells about how he spent a summer helping some missionary priest here in Kenya with service to really poor people in villages nearby, even building homes with him. He described this priest as given to the poor and the oppressed and pressing for their rights. Eventually he was martyred, murdered by someone who did not like what he was doing to "upset" the status quo. It was from knowing and working closely for those few months that this one retreatant experienced God inviting him to be a priest. I had a lump in my throat listening to this and imagining what it must be like to experience God's call coming through the example of a martyr.
Another retreatant shared the question about why he felt so struck by two scenes in two different movies: one at the end of the movie entitled the "Mission" where the Jesuit priest, head of the Paraguyan mission, while carrying the Eucharist in a monstrance, is shot dead by Spanish or Portugese explorers looking for gold; and the other scene was from the movie "Romero" (featuring Archbishop Romero of El Salvador) when at the end of the movie while saying mass and at the moment he lifts the bread and wine to offer it to God is shot to death by an assassin standing at the back of the chapel. This young seminarian, to be ordained a priest in about two years from now, said to me with great intent, "Why did God come to me so meaningfully in those two scenes, which bear significant similarity? What does this mean for my life?"
A third retreatant shared about how two years spent in a part of Africa with defenseless people with no medical help and living in great poverty he was touched in his spirit so deeply and this left him at the same time with great joy, great gratitude for all he had been allowed to know and experience. This mystery of how God speaks especially through the poor.
Then another retreatant telling about how her group went to a part of Ethiopia, which is largely Orthodox Christian, to a Muslim village, very primitive. They built some humble dwelling places there and then on Good Friday, while they were away, everything was burned down by these Muslims. These Muslims would not sell groceries to them, would not let them ride on their buses. (Sounds like the South of the USA in the 1940s-60s!!) But one day as these Christian missionaries were walking along a road not far from the village a boy 4-5 years old came forward to protect them, lead them back to his house, and gave them some food. Somehow, in that gesture the attitude of the village changed toward these nuns. As Isaiah says, "A little child shall lead them."
I am very blessed to hear these stories. I pass on to you the gist of them.
Yesterday morning we had a very dangerous thing happen here at the retreat center. A hot water tank exploded, rocketed in the air and landed some 200' away from the building on the back lawn, tore a big hole in the roof of the kitchen area, blew out glass and concrete walls. Fortunately the morning cook was a little late in getting to the kitchen and so was spared her life.
I have to go!
Bernie Owens
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Good morning, friends,
Sunday, May 25, beautifully sunny here but a little nippy as we inch closer to the start of winter (summer for you!).
Today is the last day where I have the entire day to work on long-range projects. Tonight begins the introductions for many people coming here for retreats. Some will do only 8-day retreats while most will be starting a 30-day retreat (also called the complete Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola). Yes, 30 days. I will be leading four people through 30-day retreats: three African seminarians (each about 30 years old) and one nun of the Missionaries of Charity order, the one Mother Teresa of Calcutta (Kolkata) began. This nun is marking 50 years in their order. I see each retreatant daily for 45 minutes as they pray through the meditations and contemplations on Jesus' life. Awesome, life-changing things happen when people are that focused for this length of time on God, on the fact of sin and God's mercy, their sense of being called to walk closely with Jesus in their own life, and then to look deeply at the story of Jesus' ministry, His being rejected, His death and resurrection! This process engages the person at the level of their thinking, their feeling and values. It leads them to re-evaluate their life, their priorities, and what they will do with what is left of their life. It is a privilege to listen each day to what God's Spirit stirs up and inspires in them.
My usual experience of this remarkable process has been to lead people through this retreat but stretched out over nine months. In that form they would pray one hour a day on this same biblical material and come once a week for a debriefing of their prayer during the previous week and then get guidance from me for the coming week. It has been 25 years since I have led anyone through the 30-day version of these Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius period. For the first week of the 30 day period I will also being seeing a fifth person who will make an 8-day retreat. I would greatly appreciate your praying for these five people and also for me in the role of their guide. Thank you very much. Come, Holy Spirit!
As I came back from breakfast to my room on this beautiful morning, I was strongly "hit" by a sense of God's goodness. It just came to me and grabbed my attention! I felt so present to God and the quality of God's person, so utterly good and so deeply lovable. How do I help you relate to this?? Let me try this.
If you have ever been touched by the goodness of someone, of a person you have known and come to care about over the years and then get REALLY STRUCK in a certain moment by their deep beauty, goodness, integrity and trustworthiness such that it makes you sit down, drop what you are doing at that moment, and become quiet while in that awareness, and you allow yourself to be totally captured by what you are aware of--getting in a sense STUNNED by it all--then you can relate to what I am trying to say. Sometimes this awareness has happened to me through another human being. This time it was direct, straight from God. Wow!
At mass this morning the presider homilized about the friendship with God that the gift of the Holy Spirit makes possible for us, if we will allow such to happen, if we will take the time, as in any friendship, to get to know and eventually love this very special Person. We get taken by the goodness, the beauty of this Inner Friend, and we are more and more drawn in while we give our 'yes' to this gift. We are enriched beyond anything we previously expected. We can't imagine living any other way and wonder why we didn't say 'yes' to earlier invitations to such a relationship and life. (Nice background for having to listen to four people each day over the coming month!)
One of the 'carry-overs' of the workshop I led for the 30 teachers at St. Aloysius H.S last week is the desire of some of the teachers to make the Spiritual Exercises. So the president and I are discussing this afternoon plans for how to make that happen. When at Manresa I designed an 8-10 week program called "Learning How To Pray With the Bible." I could use the same program in this instance. People begin by praying each day for about 30 minutes from Bible passages I give them and they come once a week and in small groups share the fruit of their prayer during the past week and get guidance from me for the next week. After 8-10 weeks of that, I can readily tell who has taken to the daily discipline and who hasn't. Those who got into the process and whose prayer was noticeably blessed are obvious candidates to make the full Spiritual Exercises over a nine month period.
On Friday I marked nine months since I arrived here. It has been a full nine months. I have not felt idle or bored. I sense I am more active and have had to create new things since coming here that I would not have done if I had stayed in Michigan. I loved what happened to me and was able to do when there ( 19 years at Manresa!), but now in this new chapter in my life I am getting challenged anew and fortunately have the time and the resources to create new things in this very different part of the world. Give me meaningful work and I can live just about anywhere!
Last Thursday I learned that Immigration has approved my application for a visa. It will be another week or two before I actually have the document in hand, but now it is official: I have been given legal status in this nation. (What a wait! Five and a half months since I began the application!) And with that document I will be able to get a driver's license and also to say 'yes' to some retreat and workshop requests in Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia and South Sudan. I look forward to the opportunities to contribute to the church in some of these nearby nations.
While in a car last Thursday I was reading a recently purchased paperback, a collection of homilies on the Eucharist by Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa. Some passages were/are just wonderful. Let me mention two. He is commenting on the words of the hymn "Adoro Te Devote. ("Devoutly I adore You.") and comes to the line of "Everything fails in contemplating You." He elaborates to say that everything, people and things but also all thoughts, images and worries fail to express adequately this wondrous Mystery of His Presence in the Eucharist. It is too rich, it is beyond all possible expression of creatures, so beautiful, so good, so overwhelming is this One. He goes on to quote a philosopher of the late 13th century, Roger Bacon from England, to say, "If the divine majesty were to manifest itself to our senses, we would not be able to stand it and we would fail altogether in reverence, devotion and wonder. Experience demonstrates this truth. Those who exercise themselves in the faith and love of this sacrament do not succeed in enduring the devotion that is born from pure faith, without dissolving in tears and without their soul, coming out of itself, liquefying by the sweetness of the devotion, to the point of no longer knowing where they are or why." Yes, everything creaturely fails when trying to give a response worthy of God and so great a gift. I guess this paragraph brings me back to what I was sharing up above about what happened to me this morning in coming back from breakfast to my room.
Yesterday afternoon I took about 30-40 photos of the grounds here and of my room, of my office, of the chapels and of the main buildings and dormitories. I am hoping to be able to send them to as many of you as possible in the next day or two. Hopefully they will give you a sense of what an amazing place this is here. These pictures will be the next best thing to my buying you tickets and bringing you here to see for yourselves!
I need to move on. God bless. Enjoy your improving weather! This afternoon I will be getting in some outdoor swimming. The cool nights have made the water colder but once I get moving I am fine for a good invigorating 25 minute swim.
Bernie Owens
Sunday, May 25, beautifully sunny here but a little nippy as we inch closer to the start of winter (summer for you!).
Today is the last day where I have the entire day to work on long-range projects. Tonight begins the introductions for many people coming here for retreats. Some will do only 8-day retreats while most will be starting a 30-day retreat (also called the complete Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola). Yes, 30 days. I will be leading four people through 30-day retreats: three African seminarians (each about 30 years old) and one nun of the Missionaries of Charity order, the one Mother Teresa of Calcutta (Kolkata) began. This nun is marking 50 years in their order. I see each retreatant daily for 45 minutes as they pray through the meditations and contemplations on Jesus' life. Awesome, life-changing things happen when people are that focused for this length of time on God, on the fact of sin and God's mercy, their sense of being called to walk closely with Jesus in their own life, and then to look deeply at the story of Jesus' ministry, His being rejected, His death and resurrection! This process engages the person at the level of their thinking, their feeling and values. It leads them to re-evaluate their life, their priorities, and what they will do with what is left of their life. It is a privilege to listen each day to what God's Spirit stirs up and inspires in them.
My usual experience of this remarkable process has been to lead people through this retreat but stretched out over nine months. In that form they would pray one hour a day on this same biblical material and come once a week for a debriefing of their prayer during the previous week and then get guidance from me for the coming week. It has been 25 years since I have led anyone through the 30-day version of these Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius period. For the first week of the 30 day period I will also being seeing a fifth person who will make an 8-day retreat. I would greatly appreciate your praying for these five people and also for me in the role of their guide. Thank you very much. Come, Holy Spirit!
As I came back from breakfast to my room on this beautiful morning, I was strongly "hit" by a sense of God's goodness. It just came to me and grabbed my attention! I felt so present to God and the quality of God's person, so utterly good and so deeply lovable. How do I help you relate to this?? Let me try this.
If you have ever been touched by the goodness of someone, of a person you have known and come to care about over the years and then get REALLY STRUCK in a certain moment by their deep beauty, goodness, integrity and trustworthiness such that it makes you sit down, drop what you are doing at that moment, and become quiet while in that awareness, and you allow yourself to be totally captured by what you are aware of--getting in a sense STUNNED by it all--then you can relate to what I am trying to say. Sometimes this awareness has happened to me through another human being. This time it was direct, straight from God. Wow!
At mass this morning the presider homilized about the friendship with God that the gift of the Holy Spirit makes possible for us, if we will allow such to happen, if we will take the time, as in any friendship, to get to know and eventually love this very special Person. We get taken by the goodness, the beauty of this Inner Friend, and we are more and more drawn in while we give our 'yes' to this gift. We are enriched beyond anything we previously expected. We can't imagine living any other way and wonder why we didn't say 'yes' to earlier invitations to such a relationship and life. (Nice background for having to listen to four people each day over the coming month!)
One of the 'carry-overs' of the workshop I led for the 30 teachers at St. Aloysius H.S last week is the desire of some of the teachers to make the Spiritual Exercises. So the president and I are discussing this afternoon plans for how to make that happen. When at Manresa I designed an 8-10 week program called "Learning How To Pray With the Bible." I could use the same program in this instance. People begin by praying each day for about 30 minutes from Bible passages I give them and they come once a week and in small groups share the fruit of their prayer during the past week and get guidance from me for the next week. After 8-10 weeks of that, I can readily tell who has taken to the daily discipline and who hasn't. Those who got into the process and whose prayer was noticeably blessed are obvious candidates to make the full Spiritual Exercises over a nine month period.
On Friday I marked nine months since I arrived here. It has been a full nine months. I have not felt idle or bored. I sense I am more active and have had to create new things since coming here that I would not have done if I had stayed in Michigan. I loved what happened to me and was able to do when there ( 19 years at Manresa!), but now in this new chapter in my life I am getting challenged anew and fortunately have the time and the resources to create new things in this very different part of the world. Give me meaningful work and I can live just about anywhere!
Last Thursday I learned that Immigration has approved my application for a visa. It will be another week or two before I actually have the document in hand, but now it is official: I have been given legal status in this nation. (What a wait! Five and a half months since I began the application!) And with that document I will be able to get a driver's license and also to say 'yes' to some retreat and workshop requests in Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia and South Sudan. I look forward to the opportunities to contribute to the church in some of these nearby nations.
While in a car last Thursday I was reading a recently purchased paperback, a collection of homilies on the Eucharist by Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa. Some passages were/are just wonderful. Let me mention two. He is commenting on the words of the hymn "Adoro Te Devote. ("Devoutly I adore You.") and comes to the line of "Everything fails in contemplating You." He elaborates to say that everything, people and things but also all thoughts, images and worries fail to express adequately this wondrous Mystery of His Presence in the Eucharist. It is too rich, it is beyond all possible expression of creatures, so beautiful, so good, so overwhelming is this One. He goes on to quote a philosopher of the late 13th century, Roger Bacon from England, to say, "If the divine majesty were to manifest itself to our senses, we would not be able to stand it and we would fail altogether in reverence, devotion and wonder. Experience demonstrates this truth. Those who exercise themselves in the faith and love of this sacrament do not succeed in enduring the devotion that is born from pure faith, without dissolving in tears and without their soul, coming out of itself, liquefying by the sweetness of the devotion, to the point of no longer knowing where they are or why." Yes, everything creaturely fails when trying to give a response worthy of God and so great a gift. I guess this paragraph brings me back to what I was sharing up above about what happened to me this morning in coming back from breakfast to my room.
Yesterday afternoon I took about 30-40 photos of the grounds here and of my room, of my office, of the chapels and of the main buildings and dormitories. I am hoping to be able to send them to as many of you as possible in the next day or two. Hopefully they will give you a sense of what an amazing place this is here. These pictures will be the next best thing to my buying you tickets and bringing you here to see for yourselves!
I need to move on. God bless. Enjoy your improving weather! This afternoon I will be getting in some outdoor swimming. The cool nights have made the water colder but once I get moving I am fine for a good invigorating 25 minute swim.
Bernie Owens
Monday, May 19, 2014
Dear Friends,
I continue to have trouble getting into this site for blogging! I have spent the last 45 minutes fooling around with this and that before the bar with 'new posting' popped up and allowed me to have something to click on. Oh well, here I am.
I am writing at 4:45 PM, 30 minutes before Eucharist, for me and the 35 or so retreatants who are here at this time. I just finished showering following some heavy digging and swinging a pick-ax to loosen and dig out a lot of dirt in a section for the flowerbed/rosebed I am now taking care of. In the place I took out soil I put in composted cow manure. Wow! Rich stuff! I am getting the area ready for the transplanting of two large clusters of cana lilies which give fire red blossoms. I found them in an area that some years ago was excavated and these flowers were left to grow in a wild area, with no one caring for them. So I am going to rescue them and bring them to the flower bed and let them grace the corner of where the rose bed and another bed of many kinds of colorful, low-growing flowers I recently planted meet. (That was a long sentence! I hope you can make sense of it!) Two weeks ago I composted all the rose plants, probably 25 in number. Already I can see the difference in the leaves. They are shiny and look quite healthy. Now I hope it leads to some gorgeous blossoms in greater number than we have been getting up to now. Till I composted them, the bushes looked, I would call it, anemic. Also, I want to find something to kill the aphids that suck on the rose vines but not use an insecticide for doing that. Also, black rust on some of the leaves. I have to learn what that means--is a spray needed to kill a disease or is it a sign of a need for some kind of plant food?? I don't know yet.
About 10 days ago I found on the CNN news website a presentation of about 40 black and white photos of the planet Mars that NASA shared with the public. The pictures came from the lander that is on wheels, full of cameras and laboratory equipment for examining soil samples. It moves very slowly on the surface of Mars. I must say it fascinated me to no end. It was even a moment of wondering at God, that God "has waited" for human beings for millions of years to come and discover up close this piece of His creation. It is all the more fascinating to me because each night when there is a clear sky here, as I leave the dining room following dinner, I look up in the easterly sky and there I see Mars with its distinctive red color. . . 35-40 million miles away and wonder at what it is like there. Well, to some degree I know what it is like there. There is no life there, no water to speak of, as barren as the Egyptian desert at Mt. Sinai or some parts of southern Arizona that are so dry nothing grows, nothing! But still, there is a history of life that is written in the rock already analyzed by the lander. I can't help but think: what must God be like to have made something like this?? And it is only a little speck in the universe, as is the planet Earth. It is all an instance of great wonder for me.
A little more about the workshop I conducted last Thursday through Saturday noon. The workshop was to open these teachers to a holistic sense of teaching, engaging the student's imagination, affectivity and values, as well as communicating to them a certain amount of information about whatever the topic was to be addressed in the course of studies. An interactive dynamic is supposed to be used by the teacher, not a style where the teacher just lectures (gives out information) with the students passively writing down notes from the lecture. Rather, the art of good teaching is largely involved in knowing how to ask good questions that draw out the students during the class time, to get them active and interested in this new part of the their world. This process came from a document a worldwide committee of Jesuits put together in the 1980s and have tried to get implemented in Jesuit sponsored schools throughout the world. I took the document and broke it down into pieces that could be processed by these teachers with some depth over the 2.5 days. They all seemed to be quite happy with what happened. It was all worth celebrating with some Dewars and great tasting cheese when I got home.
Two weekends ago one of the men who serves as a guard at our entrance gate got married at a nearby Catholic church. He invited everyone that works here at the retreat centre. Many were able to go. This man and his wife, like so many here in Kenya, had lived a common law marriage for a number of years and finally wanted to have a church wedding and have their son confirmed as well. The ceremony included three other couples who were getting married that Saturday. I am told couples do it this way so that they can share the cost of the flowers and the food at the reception that follows. On this occasion the catechist who helps prepare the couples for the wedding was supposed to present a list of the names of the couples getting married. He or she failed to put the name of the guard and his wife on that list for the priest who was receiving the vows. So the priest motioned for the couple to stay away, that they did not belong with the other three couples, that their vows were not going to be received. I am told the tears that followed, the upset in the congregation that followed reflected what a disaster this turned out to be. How hurtful for this employee of ours and his wife and son. I am told the priest was eventually persuaded that the catechist had been derelict, failing to remember to put their names on the list handed to the priest, and that the couples' vows should be received. So he did that in a private ceremony after the mass was over. But . . . can you imagine having such a memory of your wedding day??!! You might not want to go back to that church ever again! A nun who works here and went to the wedding was livid. She did comment on how all those invited from here to the ceremony as guests were so caring of this couple. She said she could see how the employees here very much care for each other. That was the saving grace.
A striking cultural thing I have just awakened to recently is the prevalence of poligamy in this part of the world. The Kenyan parliament just passed a law legalizing it among Muslims and anyone else who wants to have more than one wife. (The bill says the man is not required to ask his wife whether this is acceptable. He can just bring her into the house and that's it. Some women accept it because it means an extra hand with the farming chores, the gardening and tending of the animals.) In the process of debating the bill, the female members of the parliament walked out in protest. So you can see that it is a contested part of this section of the world. I am told that there are instances of men who come to church, want their children prepared for the sacraments, but have taken more than one wife. They are not to receive communion. Yes, I am in a different part of the world. I guess in the First World some men keep their wife but carry on with an affair or two or three, as long as they can get away with such duplicity.)
The editors of those who intend to publish my book are now reading closely everything and laying out the way the text will be positioned on the pages. I have not heard anything from them in about three weeks. Eventually they will be contacting me about any last details and changes. I must say that many days go by and I never think a thought about my book. I am so into another world, like the amazing Tigers baseball team. How fun right now to be a Tigers fan. The team just keeps winning and winning!
The Nairobi bombings! Yes, they are ugly and vicious and make one think twice about going into town, to a mall or supermarket. Life has to go on and I think the government will have to do something more radical than they are presently doing.
On Sunday evening I meet with three young seminarians, about 30 years old, and one nun around in her 50s. They are all beginning at that time the full 30 day retreat of the Spiritual Exercises. I will be their guide for the coming month, till June 25. This is a huge event in their lives and a lot of work for me. Please keep them in your prayers, please, as well as me! Thanks so much.
I need to go to dinner. We just had a major rain storm here as I was wrapping up this letter. We needed it. A great gift for us, especially for the farmers. God bless!
Bernie Owens
I continue to have trouble getting into this site for blogging! I have spent the last 45 minutes fooling around with this and that before the bar with 'new posting' popped up and allowed me to have something to click on. Oh well, here I am.
I am writing at 4:45 PM, 30 minutes before Eucharist, for me and the 35 or so retreatants who are here at this time. I just finished showering following some heavy digging and swinging a pick-ax to loosen and dig out a lot of dirt in a section for the flowerbed/rosebed I am now taking care of. In the place I took out soil I put in composted cow manure. Wow! Rich stuff! I am getting the area ready for the transplanting of two large clusters of cana lilies which give fire red blossoms. I found them in an area that some years ago was excavated and these flowers were left to grow in a wild area, with no one caring for them. So I am going to rescue them and bring them to the flower bed and let them grace the corner of where the rose bed and another bed of many kinds of colorful, low-growing flowers I recently planted meet. (That was a long sentence! I hope you can make sense of it!) Two weeks ago I composted all the rose plants, probably 25 in number. Already I can see the difference in the leaves. They are shiny and look quite healthy. Now I hope it leads to some gorgeous blossoms in greater number than we have been getting up to now. Till I composted them, the bushes looked, I would call it, anemic. Also, I want to find something to kill the aphids that suck on the rose vines but not use an insecticide for doing that. Also, black rust on some of the leaves. I have to learn what that means--is a spray needed to kill a disease or is it a sign of a need for some kind of plant food?? I don't know yet.
About 10 days ago I found on the CNN news website a presentation of about 40 black and white photos of the planet Mars that NASA shared with the public. The pictures came from the lander that is on wheels, full of cameras and laboratory equipment for examining soil samples. It moves very slowly on the surface of Mars. I must say it fascinated me to no end. It was even a moment of wondering at God, that God "has waited" for human beings for millions of years to come and discover up close this piece of His creation. It is all the more fascinating to me because each night when there is a clear sky here, as I leave the dining room following dinner, I look up in the easterly sky and there I see Mars with its distinctive red color. . . 35-40 million miles away and wonder at what it is like there. Well, to some degree I know what it is like there. There is no life there, no water to speak of, as barren as the Egyptian desert at Mt. Sinai or some parts of southern Arizona that are so dry nothing grows, nothing! But still, there is a history of life that is written in the rock already analyzed by the lander. I can't help but think: what must God be like to have made something like this?? And it is only a little speck in the universe, as is the planet Earth. It is all an instance of great wonder for me.
A little more about the workshop I conducted last Thursday through Saturday noon. The workshop was to open these teachers to a holistic sense of teaching, engaging the student's imagination, affectivity and values, as well as communicating to them a certain amount of information about whatever the topic was to be addressed in the course of studies. An interactive dynamic is supposed to be used by the teacher, not a style where the teacher just lectures (gives out information) with the students passively writing down notes from the lecture. Rather, the art of good teaching is largely involved in knowing how to ask good questions that draw out the students during the class time, to get them active and interested in this new part of the their world. This process came from a document a worldwide committee of Jesuits put together in the 1980s and have tried to get implemented in Jesuit sponsored schools throughout the world. I took the document and broke it down into pieces that could be processed by these teachers with some depth over the 2.5 days. They all seemed to be quite happy with what happened. It was all worth celebrating with some Dewars and great tasting cheese when I got home.
Two weekends ago one of the men who serves as a guard at our entrance gate got married at a nearby Catholic church. He invited everyone that works here at the retreat centre. Many were able to go. This man and his wife, like so many here in Kenya, had lived a common law marriage for a number of years and finally wanted to have a church wedding and have their son confirmed as well. The ceremony included three other couples who were getting married that Saturday. I am told couples do it this way so that they can share the cost of the flowers and the food at the reception that follows. On this occasion the catechist who helps prepare the couples for the wedding was supposed to present a list of the names of the couples getting married. He or she failed to put the name of the guard and his wife on that list for the priest who was receiving the vows. So the priest motioned for the couple to stay away, that they did not belong with the other three couples, that their vows were not going to be received. I am told the tears that followed, the upset in the congregation that followed reflected what a disaster this turned out to be. How hurtful for this employee of ours and his wife and son. I am told the priest was eventually persuaded that the catechist had been derelict, failing to remember to put their names on the list handed to the priest, and that the couples' vows should be received. So he did that in a private ceremony after the mass was over. But . . . can you imagine having such a memory of your wedding day??!! You might not want to go back to that church ever again! A nun who works here and went to the wedding was livid. She did comment on how all those invited from here to the ceremony as guests were so caring of this couple. She said she could see how the employees here very much care for each other. That was the saving grace.
A striking cultural thing I have just awakened to recently is the prevalence of poligamy in this part of the world. The Kenyan parliament just passed a law legalizing it among Muslims and anyone else who wants to have more than one wife. (The bill says the man is not required to ask his wife whether this is acceptable. He can just bring her into the house and that's it. Some women accept it because it means an extra hand with the farming chores, the gardening and tending of the animals.) In the process of debating the bill, the female members of the parliament walked out in protest. So you can see that it is a contested part of this section of the world. I am told that there are instances of men who come to church, want their children prepared for the sacraments, but have taken more than one wife. They are not to receive communion. Yes, I am in a different part of the world. I guess in the First World some men keep their wife but carry on with an affair or two or three, as long as they can get away with such duplicity.)
The editors of those who intend to publish my book are now reading closely everything and laying out the way the text will be positioned on the pages. I have not heard anything from them in about three weeks. Eventually they will be contacting me about any last details and changes. I must say that many days go by and I never think a thought about my book. I am so into another world, like the amazing Tigers baseball team. How fun right now to be a Tigers fan. The team just keeps winning and winning!
The Nairobi bombings! Yes, they are ugly and vicious and make one think twice about going into town, to a mall or supermarket. Life has to go on and I think the government will have to do something more radical than they are presently doing.
On Sunday evening I meet with three young seminarians, about 30 years old, and one nun around in her 50s. They are all beginning at that time the full 30 day retreat of the Spiritual Exercises. I will be their guide for the coming month, till June 25. This is a huge event in their lives and a lot of work for me. Please keep them in your prayers, please, as well as me! Thanks so much.
I need to go to dinner. We just had a major rain storm here as I was wrapping up this letter. We needed it. A great gift for us, especially for the farmers. God bless!
Bernie Owens
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Dear Friends,
I am starting late in writing this (9:10 PM on Sunday). I have had some problems getting into my blogsite but finally was able to do it! How frustrating till now!
News about me here?? I just finished a very successful 2.5 days worksop for teachers and staff at our Jesuit-sponsored high school in Nairobi. It serves high school age teens, boys and girls, who are orphaned and live in the infamous slum called Kibera, a collection of at least a half million people whose homes are a single room hut, maybe 20' by 20'. I spent more than three hours there back in mid-March with two young men who live there and saw and smelled this unforgettable section of Nairobi. ( which has about 4 million people in all So maybe 1 in 7 or 8 citizens of Nairobi lives there). I did a lot of work to assemble a 41 page work-booklet for the workshop. 30 teachers and administrators participated. I feel I am more and more at home in this part of the world. Successful efforts like this one helps to that end. I am feeling really good about it. In the afternoon following the conclusion of the workshop, the Jesuit president of the school and I went swimming at the outdoor pool. The sun was hot and it was great to relax that way. After my swimming for about 25 minutes, I dried off and while walking the backyard with many thick trees sof obvious tropical growth, and while waiting for the president to finish his laps in the pool, two adult monkeys walked into the yard and past me about 60-70 feet away, looked at me, showed no fear, and kept walking through the yard to the front yard area. They both had light brown fur on the belly, back, and long tails but dark brown fur around their eyes. Really beautiful animals.
Today is the 67th anniversary of my receiving communion for the first time in my life. I can remember so vividly Fr. Charles Coughlin, the famous 'radio priest', giving me first communion in a packed church on that crisp spring Sunday morning. I still have the black and white group photograph of me with 112 other children who made their first communion that morning. During my 19 years at Manresa, I enjoyed very much stopping there at times in mid-afternoon for a short visit to the Blessed Sacrament. Of course, that church is one of the most impressive in the entire USA., but it also carries enormous personal meaning for me! In 1997 I led one of the Sunday masses there on that 50th anniversary weekend and chose to speak about what Eucharist meant to Jesus, not as much to me as to Jesus, but by implication also to me. Then with my mother in the congregation, sitting where she had sat with my father on the day 50 years earlier when I received for the first time, I gave her a dozen red roses just before the final blessing of the mass, and then put a dozen red roses at the memorial altar where the Little Flower, St. Therese of Lisieux, is imaged in marble standing next to the child Jesus who is seated in the lap of his mother. I will never forget that moment! The church is named in Therese's honor (called the Shrine of the Little Flower) and that year (1997) was the 100th anniversary of her death and her going to God. Six years later I led a group of pilgrims to France and had the chance to visit the very impressive basilica in Lisieux where Therese grew up before her entering the Carmelite convent at the age of 16. I was even able to walk through her house and backyard.
Aren't the Tigers something else?? They are really a good team, blessed with great starting pitchers! What a swap over the winter to send Prince Fielder to Texas and get in return the 2nd baseman, Ian Kinsler. So far we have gotten the better of that trade!! I get to see on mlb.com the video-clips of any game in the morning following the game of the previous evening. So I am able to stay close to the excitement in Detroit. Hurray for the Internet!!
I have been reading with increasing appreciation a book given to me 27 years ago but only now am reading: "The Depth of God." I had spoken about it some months ago, but now have made the time to read it. I find it to be just so beautiful. I think I am finally ready to absorb it, to be engaged and held by it.
Also, I am being stirred like never before with this sense of "seeing God," noting how Jesus emphasizes that to see Him is to see the Father, as He says in today's gospel reading. Some two months ago I described in a blog-posting how I had realized I was really "seeing" God in my daily contemplative prayer, not seeing in the sense of seeing images or visions but truly "seeing" with THE EYE OF MY HEART by way of an intuitive gazing that is unmistakable and truly engaging, even riveting at times. This has been a new gift to me recently, something that began last January 25 when at the beginning of the mass for that day which recalls the conversion of St. Paul, the priest says at the beginning of the mass, "I know the One in whom I have believed." It so struck me then that I really do know God, that it is not a relationship of just faith but I do know Him and I know Him as God, and at times am delightfully taken by being privileged to get so close to Him, to enjoy His peaceful, loving manner and just sit there in quiet with Him, saying no words but each of us being completely taken by the presence of the other. Can you imagine??!! It takes my breath away at times. I am sure this gift is available for anyone who believes and deeply cares about God as deepest friend and greatest treasure and then can get quiet enough to pay total, undivided attention to Him for some minutes.
I have more to talk about but I need to call it "a day." It is past 10 PM. Later this week I hope I can get back to the rest I want to tell you about. God bless. I hope you are enjoying the emergence of spring. Weather here is a little cooler at night but still quite sunny and even hot sometimes in the mid afternoon, as was yesterday. All in all, the weather here is almost always terrific, low humidity and so pleasant! (Because of all the flowers here, we have so much honey--65 pounds harvested recently--and I have a runny nose!)
Good nite!
Bernie Owens
I am starting late in writing this (9:10 PM on Sunday). I have had some problems getting into my blogsite but finally was able to do it! How frustrating till now!
News about me here?? I just finished a very successful 2.5 days worksop for teachers and staff at our Jesuit-sponsored high school in Nairobi. It serves high school age teens, boys and girls, who are orphaned and live in the infamous slum called Kibera, a collection of at least a half million people whose homes are a single room hut, maybe 20' by 20'. I spent more than three hours there back in mid-March with two young men who live there and saw and smelled this unforgettable section of Nairobi. ( which has about 4 million people in all So maybe 1 in 7 or 8 citizens of Nairobi lives there). I did a lot of work to assemble a 41 page work-booklet for the workshop. 30 teachers and administrators participated. I feel I am more and more at home in this part of the world. Successful efforts like this one helps to that end. I am feeling really good about it. In the afternoon following the conclusion of the workshop, the Jesuit president of the school and I went swimming at the outdoor pool. The sun was hot and it was great to relax that way. After my swimming for about 25 minutes, I dried off and while walking the backyard with many thick trees sof obvious tropical growth, and while waiting for the president to finish his laps in the pool, two adult monkeys walked into the yard and past me about 60-70 feet away, looked at me, showed no fear, and kept walking through the yard to the front yard area. They both had light brown fur on the belly, back, and long tails but dark brown fur around their eyes. Really beautiful animals.
Today is the 67th anniversary of my receiving communion for the first time in my life. I can remember so vividly Fr. Charles Coughlin, the famous 'radio priest', giving me first communion in a packed church on that crisp spring Sunday morning. I still have the black and white group photograph of me with 112 other children who made their first communion that morning. During my 19 years at Manresa, I enjoyed very much stopping there at times in mid-afternoon for a short visit to the Blessed Sacrament. Of course, that church is one of the most impressive in the entire USA., but it also carries enormous personal meaning for me! In 1997 I led one of the Sunday masses there on that 50th anniversary weekend and chose to speak about what Eucharist meant to Jesus, not as much to me as to Jesus, but by implication also to me. Then with my mother in the congregation, sitting where she had sat with my father on the day 50 years earlier when I received for the first time, I gave her a dozen red roses just before the final blessing of the mass, and then put a dozen red roses at the memorial altar where the Little Flower, St. Therese of Lisieux, is imaged in marble standing next to the child Jesus who is seated in the lap of his mother. I will never forget that moment! The church is named in Therese's honor (called the Shrine of the Little Flower) and that year (1997) was the 100th anniversary of her death and her going to God. Six years later I led a group of pilgrims to France and had the chance to visit the very impressive basilica in Lisieux where Therese grew up before her entering the Carmelite convent at the age of 16. I was even able to walk through her house and backyard.
Aren't the Tigers something else?? They are really a good team, blessed with great starting pitchers! What a swap over the winter to send Prince Fielder to Texas and get in return the 2nd baseman, Ian Kinsler. So far we have gotten the better of that trade!! I get to see on mlb.com the video-clips of any game in the morning following the game of the previous evening. So I am able to stay close to the excitement in Detroit. Hurray for the Internet!!
I have been reading with increasing appreciation a book given to me 27 years ago but only now am reading: "The Depth of God." I had spoken about it some months ago, but now have made the time to read it. I find it to be just so beautiful. I think I am finally ready to absorb it, to be engaged and held by it.
Also, I am being stirred like never before with this sense of "seeing God," noting how Jesus emphasizes that to see Him is to see the Father, as He says in today's gospel reading. Some two months ago I described in a blog-posting how I had realized I was really "seeing" God in my daily contemplative prayer, not seeing in the sense of seeing images or visions but truly "seeing" with THE EYE OF MY HEART by way of an intuitive gazing that is unmistakable and truly engaging, even riveting at times. This has been a new gift to me recently, something that began last January 25 when at the beginning of the mass for that day which recalls the conversion of St. Paul, the priest says at the beginning of the mass, "I know the One in whom I have believed." It so struck me then that I really do know God, that it is not a relationship of just faith but I do know Him and I know Him as God, and at times am delightfully taken by being privileged to get so close to Him, to enjoy His peaceful, loving manner and just sit there in quiet with Him, saying no words but each of us being completely taken by the presence of the other. Can you imagine??!! It takes my breath away at times. I am sure this gift is available for anyone who believes and deeply cares about God as deepest friend and greatest treasure and then can get quiet enough to pay total, undivided attention to Him for some minutes.
I have more to talk about but I need to call it "a day." It is past 10 PM. Later this week I hope I can get back to the rest I want to tell you about. God bless. I hope you are enjoying the emergence of spring. Weather here is a little cooler at night but still quite sunny and even hot sometimes in the mid afternoon, as was yesterday. All in all, the weather here is almost always terrific, low humidity and so pleasant! (Because of all the flowers here, we have so much honey--65 pounds harvested recently--and I have a runny nose!)
Good nite!
Bernie Owens
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Dear Friends,
Wednesday evening here, May 7, the 76th anniversary of my parents' wedding. The more I look back on them, now both with God, I am impressed by what it takes to live marriage well. Not that my parents always deserved a gold medal, but overall, I think it is fair to say that God was rather pleased with them, that God blessed them and made their relationship even holy in a number of ways. I think of them often, not just on a day like this, and because as Christians we are a people of the resurrection, I firmly believe that we have access to our loved ones in the next life anytime we wish to speak with them. Death ends a life but not the relationship. There are times I feel their presence quite strongly and I do ask them to pray for me and the work I am doing here. What a blessing to have that connection and make the most of it.
Today I am into the 4th day of a set of 8-day retreats. We finish on Sunday nite, the 11th. I have only three retreatants this round, usually I get four but sometimes I am given five. (45 minutes each day with each of them ends up being a lot of close listening!) One of the retreatants this round is a woman celebrating her Golden Jubilee year, 50 years as a woman religious. Her prayer at this time is enormously blessed. What a privilege it is for me to listen to her describe what is happening between her and God! She talks of God being "mad with love", overwhelming her, about how humble and unsparing God is in giving her gifts upon gifts. She said she woke up this morning and sat immobilized by love for God at the edge of her bed, only to realize that it was much more a case of God loving her intensely, not she so much loving God. At another time of the day she said she felt her soul was being opened up wide and wide to such a vast extent (she stretched her arms out from side to side as far as she could reach) and a very powerful river was roaring through her, so overwhelming was the love of God rushing through her, God for her and she for God. (She smiled and said, "I think I am becoming mad with love too, a love for God that is wild and boundless!") She spoke of being betrothed by God, married by this God who has thrown discretion to the wind in loving her. Again, I say, what a privilege it is for me to witness this, to be allowed to know such beautiful secrets of someone's soul. I commented to her that God was truly enjoying celebrating this "golden moment" in her life, a life she and God have lived together these 50 years. I said this was not just her celebration but also God's celebration and moment of joy and gratitude to her for all the times she said 'yes' to God's invitations. I suggested her reflecting on what it must be like for God at the moment anyone of us finally arrives face to face with God forever and what immeasurable delight and joy there must be for God, like a good parent, to see any one of us, His children, come to the fullness of our earthly journey and finally arrive at the completion He has destined for us all. "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard ... what God has prepared for those who love Him!"
At the same time as this beauty there is the horrible story in today's newspaper about some 70 or more people dying over the weekend in and around Nairobi from drinking some "homebrew" laced with God-awful stuff. Policemen are bribed to allow the sale of this deathly drink. One survivor is blind because of what he drank. Another person said the liquid had to be diluted. By itself it could be set on fire by a match. Can you imagine??!! One picture on the front page showed dozens of villagers standing around a large number of corpses of people they knew from their village.
Also, there is the sad news about bombs being set off and killing or maiming several people in the port city of Mombasa and a number of people on commuter buses on a main highway on the other side of Nairobi. Bombs were thrown at two large buses while traveling along at 45-50 miles an hour and blew a big hole in their sides. I have ridden in a van on that highway before, a beautifully built, modern multi-express lane highway. It is suspected that a very small number of Somali militants are behind all of this. Again because of the susceptibility to bribing, some border guards allow very bad characters to enter this country from Somalia. The government official in charge of security has been given two weeks to change matters to assure protection against the bribing of border guards and police and consequent bombing of citizens in public, or else he loses his job!
Then the situation in South Sudan, the newest nation in the world. It borders on the northwest part of the Kenyan border. The killings there are enough to turn your stomach. Tribal vengeance going on there, more so than a fight over oil fields. Revenge killings gone wild, a field day for the devil! Corpses lying in the streets of villages, unburied and rotting in the hot sun for 3-4 weeks while dogs and vultures roam about doing you know what! A scene from hell!
Go Tigers! It is fun to follow them on mlb.com. Also, being a Lions fan (oh, what suffering and bitter disappointment over the years!) I am quite interested in who they will draft this coming weekend. Hope springs eternal!
I have recently been giving generous amounts of compost to the rose bushes near the approach to the retreat center's front door. They can be more healthy and prolific in producing blossoms. So I decided to do something about that. Next, I need to figure out how to kill all the aphids that suck on the roses while at the same time not use an insecticide. Maybe a strong soap and water mix sprayed on?? (Maybe some of that "homebrew"?? Just kidding!)
Next May 15-17 I lead a two and half day workshop for the teaching faculty and staff of St. Aloysius High School of Nairobi --about 25 will participate. I am really looking forward to doing this. Prayers for its success, please! Thank you so much.
Plans for next year's pilgrimage to Rome, Assisi, Greccio, Florence, LaVerna, San Giovani Rotondo (Padre Pio's place) are progressing. June 1-15 of next year, leaving from Detroit. A brochure should be available by July 1. Anyone interested??
Goodnight!
Bernie Owens
Wednesday evening here, May 7, the 76th anniversary of my parents' wedding. The more I look back on them, now both with God, I am impressed by what it takes to live marriage well. Not that my parents always deserved a gold medal, but overall, I think it is fair to say that God was rather pleased with them, that God blessed them and made their relationship even holy in a number of ways. I think of them often, not just on a day like this, and because as Christians we are a people of the resurrection, I firmly believe that we have access to our loved ones in the next life anytime we wish to speak with them. Death ends a life but not the relationship. There are times I feel their presence quite strongly and I do ask them to pray for me and the work I am doing here. What a blessing to have that connection and make the most of it.
Today I am into the 4th day of a set of 8-day retreats. We finish on Sunday nite, the 11th. I have only three retreatants this round, usually I get four but sometimes I am given five. (45 minutes each day with each of them ends up being a lot of close listening!) One of the retreatants this round is a woman celebrating her Golden Jubilee year, 50 years as a woman religious. Her prayer at this time is enormously blessed. What a privilege it is for me to listen to her describe what is happening between her and God! She talks of God being "mad with love", overwhelming her, about how humble and unsparing God is in giving her gifts upon gifts. She said she woke up this morning and sat immobilized by love for God at the edge of her bed, only to realize that it was much more a case of God loving her intensely, not she so much loving God. At another time of the day she said she felt her soul was being opened up wide and wide to such a vast extent (she stretched her arms out from side to side as far as she could reach) and a very powerful river was roaring through her, so overwhelming was the love of God rushing through her, God for her and she for God. (She smiled and said, "I think I am becoming mad with love too, a love for God that is wild and boundless!") She spoke of being betrothed by God, married by this God who has thrown discretion to the wind in loving her. Again, I say, what a privilege it is for me to witness this, to be allowed to know such beautiful secrets of someone's soul. I commented to her that God was truly enjoying celebrating this "golden moment" in her life, a life she and God have lived together these 50 years. I said this was not just her celebration but also God's celebration and moment of joy and gratitude to her for all the times she said 'yes' to God's invitations. I suggested her reflecting on what it must be like for God at the moment anyone of us finally arrives face to face with God forever and what immeasurable delight and joy there must be for God, like a good parent, to see any one of us, His children, come to the fullness of our earthly journey and finally arrive at the completion He has destined for us all. "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard ... what God has prepared for those who love Him!"
At the same time as this beauty there is the horrible story in today's newspaper about some 70 or more people dying over the weekend in and around Nairobi from drinking some "homebrew" laced with God-awful stuff. Policemen are bribed to allow the sale of this deathly drink. One survivor is blind because of what he drank. Another person said the liquid had to be diluted. By itself it could be set on fire by a match. Can you imagine??!! One picture on the front page showed dozens of villagers standing around a large number of corpses of people they knew from their village.
Also, there is the sad news about bombs being set off and killing or maiming several people in the port city of Mombasa and a number of people on commuter buses on a main highway on the other side of Nairobi. Bombs were thrown at two large buses while traveling along at 45-50 miles an hour and blew a big hole in their sides. I have ridden in a van on that highway before, a beautifully built, modern multi-express lane highway. It is suspected that a very small number of Somali militants are behind all of this. Again because of the susceptibility to bribing, some border guards allow very bad characters to enter this country from Somalia. The government official in charge of security has been given two weeks to change matters to assure protection against the bribing of border guards and police and consequent bombing of citizens in public, or else he loses his job!
Then the situation in South Sudan, the newest nation in the world. It borders on the northwest part of the Kenyan border. The killings there are enough to turn your stomach. Tribal vengeance going on there, more so than a fight over oil fields. Revenge killings gone wild, a field day for the devil! Corpses lying in the streets of villages, unburied and rotting in the hot sun for 3-4 weeks while dogs and vultures roam about doing you know what! A scene from hell!
Go Tigers! It is fun to follow them on mlb.com. Also, being a Lions fan (oh, what suffering and bitter disappointment over the years!) I am quite interested in who they will draft this coming weekend. Hope springs eternal!
I have recently been giving generous amounts of compost to the rose bushes near the approach to the retreat center's front door. They can be more healthy and prolific in producing blossoms. So I decided to do something about that. Next, I need to figure out how to kill all the aphids that suck on the roses while at the same time not use an insecticide. Maybe a strong soap and water mix sprayed on?? (Maybe some of that "homebrew"?? Just kidding!)
Next May 15-17 I lead a two and half day workshop for the teaching faculty and staff of St. Aloysius High School of Nairobi --about 25 will participate. I am really looking forward to doing this. Prayers for its success, please! Thank you so much.
Plans for next year's pilgrimage to Rome, Assisi, Greccio, Florence, LaVerna, San Giovani Rotondo (Padre Pio's place) are progressing. June 1-15 of next year, leaving from Detroit. A brochure should be available by July 1. Anyone interested??
Goodnight!
Bernie Owens
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