Hello to everyone on this sunny, beautiful day in Nairobi.  It is a welcomed weather scene after some recent really cold mornings and nights.  Yes, we are in winter, and at 6,000 feet above sea level it gets down into the 40s at nights.  With no heat in our rooms the floors are so cold and lots of blankets and thick PJs are the order of the night!  Thank God we have plenty of hot water for shaving and showering! One benefit of this winter weather:  no mosquitos, or very few of them.  They move rather slowly, thanks to the cold, and so are easy to kill.  One evening it rained a lot around dinner time and out of their holes came dozens and dozens of flying termites.  They are attracted by the lights and so come under our door into the dining area.  So one night we had so many of these termites with their long wings fluttering around us looking for a mate, some being caught by geckos who made a qiuck meal of them, the others finding a mate, doing their thing, and then dying.  What a mess to clean up.  Their bodies are three times the size of an ant, their wings from one end to the other are as long as your index finger.  I am told they are high in protein.  The birds have a feast when eating them, and some people of this area like to eat them too, fried.  Ugh!

   It has been three weeks since I posted a letter here on this blog.  The long gap has been due to the preparations I had to make for a preached, conference-style retreat I led on July 10-17.  It took much more time to prepare the talks than I had anticipated.  So once I got into the preparation, there was no time for writing on this site.  The theme of the retreat was on the Holy Spirit, how this Spirit is immediately available in our daily experience, and then what this Spirit does for us, to us, and in society.  So we got into discernment and how to do it daily, the Kingdom  of God theme, the beatitudes of Jesus, the Our Father prayer, themes of reconciliation and healing, kinds and stages of prayer as we mature, and the Sacred Heart devotion: its biblical origins, its development over the centuries, and its practical applications in our daily lives, especially in terms of giving our hearts to Him through a commitment to live more intentionally a non-violent way of life.  I asked for an evaluation and suggestions for improvement.  Everyone seemed to get a lot out of the retreat.  Some said they did not want to stop.  They did not want to go home.  Two made helpful suggestions:  they wanted more time on the theme of self-acceptance and how to grow in that attitude; another person said there is need for an entire 8-day retreat on the theme of peace and reconciliation among tribes and clans in this nation, since there is much conflict and sometimes violence as well.  It is clear to me that these two suggestions are greatly connected with each other since peace and reconciliation begin with peace with and mercy toward your own self.  I had four come to me for personal one-on-one conferences to talk about conflict in their own religious communities and the harshness of some leaders, how difficult it is for some to forgive and move on.  17 started the retreat, one had to leave after the 6th day due to the death of a friend.  Of the 16 in all who made it: most were Kenyans, one from the Congo, one from Rwanda (she lost many family members during the genocide in 1994!), two from India, one from Mexico, one from Poland.

   Toward the end of this retreat I was inspired to start organizing another 8-day preached retreat around the theme of the Eucharist and to use the structure of the mass for organizing the talks and interconnecting them.  This interests me a lot!

   I now have two weeks away from giving any retreats.  I want to use some of the time for hiking, seeing some of the beautiful surroundings, then too to prepare my one-class-a-week course (starting on Sept. 3, going through mid-December) on Teresa of Avila's The Interior Castle for the seminarians at the Jesuit college called Hekima College.

   Starting on Sept 8 I will go for eight straight Mondays to lead two groups, three in each, in how to do Ignatian style meditation in preparation for their making the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius beginning in January. (Someone else will guide them through that.  I won't have the time for doing that!)  I have also been asked to lead a monthly two hour discussion on articles regarding teaching as a mission of Christ for the teachers (15 or so) of the Jesuit seminary, also on the methods of Jesuit teaching. This is what I did for the teachers of St. Aloysius High School back in mid-May.  For them, however, it was all packed into two and a half days.  In short, I am being asked to lead many things here, and I really enjoy this.  It brings much new energy forward in me.  I feel I am truly contributing, more than I was able to do at Manresa in my latter, years there.  I did not think of coming to Africa or leaving Manresa for anywhere.  I always expected my prodctive years to end there and thought that if my life ended there, I would be happy and be so grateful for many happy, fruitful years.  But now it is like I have been given a second life with the chance for so much creativity.  God saw possibilities I did not see and so invited me to this place.  I continue to be amazed at how this transition came about.  As I have said many times to myself and to others, "this was not my idea, but it has turned out so far to be a great, great idea."  I truly feel God is leading in my life much more than I am leading, and that is wonderful.  Of course, many my age have retired and have gone to live at our Jesuit retirement/nursing care center, Colombiere, in Clarkston, MI.  Not me.  I will be 75 in three weeks and feel very alive, thanks to the great genetic package I inherited from my mother who lived till 95.

   In the last month or so you have read, I trust, about many killings here in Kenya.  It has been largely a fight among people who have grievances over land ownership and resent people who moved by the government from other parts of Kenya to these places.  Those who lost land or access to land for grazing animals want compensation, have gone to court about it, and have resented a lack of justice.  These disputes have poured over into horrible slaughters.  And the Islamist group Al Shabaab in nearby Somalia has capitalized on this. They murdered just men by gunshot or throat-slitting, after subjecting their victims to a "sermon" about the superiority of Islam. Finally, the nation's army has intervened and arrested some 40-60 people on charges of murder because they engineered this revenge movement and encouraged the Somali Al Shabaab types to do their ugly stuff.  High drama!

   Then too we have had a recent bout of dramatic deaths thanks to the drinking of some home brew, cheap alcoholic drink many times laced with methane.  This time the liquor was imported from Uganda, the nation to our west.  The attraction is always cheap cost and gathering with others to socialize while getting "loose".  Those who survive often go blind, or have major liver failure for the rest of their lives.  It is really terrible and can wipe out many from a village.

   I have been reading on my computer the extensive reporting from CNN International about the tragic crash of the Malaysian airliner over Ukraine.  What I find so heartbreaking are the pictures of some of the 80 children who were on that flight.  What a crime!!  When will we, the world, get sick enough of war and renounce it??  When will we refrain from pointing fingers at the guilty and look at ourselves and recognize inside ourselves, personally and as a nation, the roots of war.  At various times we have all been involved in this unGodly way of relating.  The roots of this are as old as the human race.  It is a great day when people wake up to this and in God's name renounce violence in their hearts and speech and beg God's pardon and protection from violent, dominant ways of relating, and refuse to be part of "patriotic talk" that sympathizes with such ways of relating.  The hardest thing to do is to forgive, yet it is what Jesus insisted on and made the most distinctive trait of His followers.  I pray that I may more and more grow into this kind of freedom and courage of His.

   May your summer be wonderful and give you many good memories before the leaves fall and the white stuff starts collecting on the ground again!

Bernie Owens