Dear Friends,

  Good afternoon on this Saturday, August 30.  It is 4 PM here, a time for a little slower pace and hazy, rain-threatening weather yet no rain!  In two hours we Jesuits here have our weekly social.  I enjoy the upbeat spirit we have among ourselves during that time. We have a spread with some wine, fruit juice or scotch to choose from;  Also some great cheese, including my favorite (Bre), and some thin ham with tasty multi-grain bread, chips, also roasted peanuts (which I have "overdosed" on at times and discovered I am allergic to--very itchy, big pimples break out here and there on me!).  I am feeling sleepy today, but some of this is probably because of the usual low metabolic period late in the afternoon.  Once I get food I pick up in my energy.

  Last Wednesday morning I met for the first time with the students I will have for the course I am leading on Teresa of Avila's classic, The Interior Castle. There are ten of them; all are seminarians in their late 20s or about 30 years old.  They will be ordained priests in the next year or two years or three years.  Four are from India,  (all of them are Carmelites), five Jesuits, and one Pallotine.  The Jesuits are from Uganda, Ghana, and Zambia.  The Pallotine is from Uganda.  We sit in a circle at tables of good size with plenty of room to spread out our books and notes.  The class consists of two 50 minute periods, with a 20 minute break between the two sessions: 9:30 AM to 11:30 AM.  Already I sense a high interest.  We had some excellent 'back and forth' at the first class; also students recruited one additional student who will be joining us for the rest of the classes.  the course is an elective, not a required course, so everyone who is there is there by choice.  That is a great attitude to have with a class of students.  There are 7 or 8 other electives students could have chosen.  Only one has more students than my section has, which is a class on Teilhard de Chardin's writings and through them a sketching out of a Global Spirituality.  So . . . I am delighted to finally, finally be teaching again.  It will be quite different than what I have been accustomed to.  At Manresa I would have 30-40 people come biweekly for a reading circle/seminar to discuss great books on spiritual themes, but there was no exam, no accountability about whether people read and studied or not.  This time grades are given; and an exam comes at the end of the program, plus I am requiring them to keep a journal of their thoughts and feelings on the readings and our discussions during the course.

  During afternoon before this class, I met with faculty members of Hekima college, the seminary, about the Ignatian spirituality that underlies their teaching.  We are to have monthly meetings.  I experienced great variations in interest.  Some Jesuits were not  interested in being there, but the president of the school and dean definitely wanted to be there.  Four of the participants are not Jesuits, so I am right now not clear on how I am going to lead this disparate gathering.  The president of the college is supposed to drive out here to talk with me this afternoon before our social and together we hopefully will find some resolution, some clearer focus.

  Last Thursday, the 28th, was the feast of St. Augustine, arguably the greatest theologian in the history of the Christian church.  Some Dominicans may claim St. Thomas Aquinas is the greatest.  Anyway, both are great and I think more would say Augustine is #1.  Anyway,  I had the 5:15 PM liturgy for the retreatants that day and chose to focus during the homily on one of the great themes in Augustine's writings about what happens when teaching goes on.  His contention is that in each of us is the inner teacher, this God-given light that illuminates our mind and shows all of us what is the truth in that moment, what is right.  It is more than conscience but an active, dynamic Presence which as time goes on and if we pay attention, we discover it is a Person, it is Christ within guiding, enlightening, leading us in the moment and for the whole journey of our life.  But we have to take the time to be quiet and look within, to seek and want to be open to being guided, to be shown what is true and good, what is beautiful if we are going to be taught and notice what is true and good and beautiful. It is a truly exciting theme and says something about how to listen and how lead others, especially in a time of teaching. What means so much to me is that there inner reality is more than just an instinct about what is right and wrong but is a Person, the inner Friend who is Truth and Goodness and will show us what is in harmony with Truth and Goodness and what is not.  The more we make time and a place in our life for this Presence, the better we get at noticing and understanding this Light's guidance of us.  Life becomes truly a dialogue with this inner Light and a sense that I am not alone, that I am most myself when I live in communion and seek the guidance of this inner Divine Friend.  I am not an isolated individual; rather, I am part of a "we" and am my best self when listening to and making choices after consulting within with this Light.

   Right now I am guiding each day five retreatants. Two are making the full 30-day retreat, three are making 8-day retreats. (One of those making an 8-day is a repeat from last year!)  All are nuns in their 30s; all are African.  I sometimes come away from our daily conversations (I see each one separately for usually 40-45 minutes each) just amazed at how real God is, how active God is and so I am deeply touched by how God gives to each exactly what she needs at a certain point in her walk in life.  I feel immensely blessed to witness such initiatives of God and sometimes want to say to all those I know:  Do you realize how close and real God is!  God's presence at times is so "thick", so strong!  One of those on retreat four days ago experienced a major flashback of a terribly painful, humiliating experience of some years ago, an experience she had repressed for many years.  Then, bang, the memory came in a flash and she trembled but was able to regain her balance and bring it to God in prayer.  She has felt since then an immense freedom and healing from what happened to her all those years ago.  I feel so privileged to be allowed to witness to what is clearly God's work and how God does this in people.  It seems all of us suffer to some degree with a low opinion of ourselves and doubt our lovableness.   A major part of these retreats, then, is providing people with the right Scripture passages and lots of time while in silence for them to process these Scripture passages that proclaim God's personal, profound love for them, and thus to be healed of the lie they often live by, that they have been "infected" by,  for so many years of their life.  This may sound rather rudimentary, but I have found that all of us suffer from this to some degree or other . . . some in major ways while we "go lookin' for love in all the wrong places!"  Lord, have mercy!!

  I need to go.  God bless each of you who reads this.  I wish you whatever blessing God wants you to have at this time in your journey.

Bernie Owens

My dear friends,

  As I write this to you, I look at my watch and notice it is 8:20 PM on Saturday, August 23, almost one year to the minute when I arrived here from the airport in Nairobi and began my new life at this special place.  I am just amazed.  I still pinch myself at times to impress upon myself that I am not in the USA anymore but am far away, on the other side of the world and south of the equator.  The birds and flowers, the view are rather different, but I must say when I listen to the souls of people who come here for retreats, I see the same issues, the same challenges and hungers.  It reminds me that we are all the same when it comes to this journey called life and that we are all, every one of us, on the same essential journey to God.  The color of our skin, the way we pronounce words, the customs we inherited may be different, yet the needs of our souls and the longings for God are all the same.  I am profoundly moved at times by all of this. And I am more and more impressed by houw our life with God, with ourself and with others is so influenced by our bodies, by their functions and trials, by our sexuality and health needs.  We are not just souls!!

    I feel I am at such a special time in my life.  I am now 75 years old--God, that sounds old!!  But it is a terrific time to see life from this many years and have a perspective I didn't have when I was 40 or 50 years old.  I love this time of my life, I love what I am being permitted to be involved in.  I am feeling so creative and alive with the varied opportunities I am being asked to lead, to guide, to teach, to mentor in one-on-one situations, and then, yes,  to tend to large numbers of roses, which before I had always thought were too complicated and delicate for me to give my time, too difficult to raise successfully.

  Next week is one of the biggest weeks yet to come along for me.  On Tuesday afternoon I meet with all of the teachersof the theology school, the Jesuit seminary (these are my new colleagues where I will be teaching) and I have been asked by the presidentof the school to lead a two and a half hour gathering to reflect on a holistic teaching method applied to their teaching situations, and then what are the values of St. Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises that inform theirteaching style and choice of content.  I am honored, just amazed that I have been asked to lead such a thing, with such highly educated Jesuit teachers.  I guess I have arrived!!

  Then the next day I teach for the first time in 15 months, this time a weekly course for two hours on Wednesday mornings for seminarians, future Jesuitpriests,and possibly Carmelite seminarians and a few lay students.  What I will be teaching is the spiritual classic by the Carmelite saint, Teresa of Avila who lived in thelate 1500s.  She wrote a book that is considered one of the greatest on prayer and stages of spiritual growth.  It is called The Interior Castle.  The castle is her image of the human soul; in it are many rooms, seven sets of rooms that represent various stages of spiritual development and growthfor the human person.  With it we will read and discuss a commentaryon Teresa's great book:  It is entitled, Distractions In Prayer,Blessing or Curse??  It is such a greatbook, so insightful.  Its fundamentalthesis is:  when you have recurrent distractions, receive them as a gift of God if you are serious about wanting to give everythingto God and cooperate with God's healing you of the various attachments and blind spots in your life, the ways in which you resist God.  Letting these come up is God's way of saying to you, "So you want to give everything to me??, Then look at this, give it to me, let go of your attachment and undue worry, your anxiety, your shame, etc and let me be your Friend and Lord even of  this situation of your worry, of your attachment.  Let me Lord of even this part of your soul."  These conversations should be exciting.  I look forward to them.

   I need to go now.  Our internet connection was off for three days, so I have a number of emails I still need to respond to.  I wish you well and God's peace.  I must say, in being here God is becoming so real to me, I guessbecause I am seeing God more and more in the people and nation round me.  I am more and more convincedwe usually walk around with our eyes veiled, even blinded to the divine reality that is just the other side of this veil thatseparates us from it for now.  If only more could see!  It is all a gift.

Bernie Owens

(there is something aboutmy omputer that is acting up; I cannot makes spaces between some words I haveto correct, so tha is why you are seeing some words being run together!)

Dear Friends,

  It is now the last hour of my birthday before I go to bed and call it a day.  I want to thank anyone and everyone of you who sent me a birthday greeting.  I truly appreciate it, and so many of you mentioned saying a prayer for me, which I greatly appreciate.  The times of celebrations have been truly good, so enjoyable.  the big gathering was last evening's dinner, preceded by a social with camembert (spelling?) cheese and Chivas Regal to sip on, even some sliced ham and multi-grain bread.  I loved it.  Today a friend cooked me a chocolate cake, my first one in a year, my first one since arriving in Kenya last year.  It tasted really great (no icing on it however!).

  I have been working diligently on preparing my classes for a weekly course at Hekima college, the Jesuit seminary in Nairobi, starting on august 27.  The course focuses on Teresa of Avila's classic writing:  The Interior Castle, her image for the soul of a human being.  she talks about the progressive growth of the human person through rooms that go deeper and deeper, closer and closer to the center of the soul, where Christ waits to receive us.  This book so fascinates me.  And I have found a commentary on it that is just outstanding--in fact two commentaries, one the students must read along with Teresa's book, the other for me to digest and incorporate into the classes as we go along.  I have't done any sustained teaching in over 14 months and really look forward to being back in the classroom with these future priests, all Africans.  I don't know yet how many I will get.  It is an elective, that is, not a required course.  So I might get five people, I might get 20 people.  We shall soon know.

  A stunning statistic I heard on a TV news program a few days ago: In 20 years from now 4 out of every ten babies born in this world will be born in Africa of African mothers.  This continent is going to be more and more prominent in the world's future.  I feel honored to be here at this time to do my little part, to plant seeds of God's workings and leave behind some people trained and ready to take this great work of God to its next level of development.  What stories we will tell in the next life when we look back on what God did with our lives, what God accomplished with our cooperation in the hearts and minds of the people of our times.

  I need to go to bed.  Please pray for the many unemployed of this nation.  Work is so hard to find for many; they scrape by for their families.  In some parts of this country where there has been long-term drought, people are dying from starvation.  It is so tough.  And South Sudan, just to the north and west of us, is so ripped up because of that endless war, so too Syria and now the peoples of Iraq, especially the Christians of Iraq.  The world is really cruel in some places.  It has no mercy at all for the weak, for those who are different from those who have power and want to force others to live in their way and for their privileges.

  Have a blessed weekend!


Bernie Owens

Dear Friends,

  It is Sunday evening, 8 PM here, 1 PM in Michigan.  I am back into giving retreats.  My vacation has come to an end.  Lots of the time was spent at my computer, yes, at my computer doing some creative work for projects I am responsible for during the coming months.  We had two days of sun and mild temps and then today a noticeably chilly day with a wind that made you want to duck out of the way or wear a thick jacket.  The days are getting longer--wonderful, and spring cannot be too far ahead.  I have been working outside on two rose beds.  I am determined to make the rose bushes in those two areas a grand success.  They are like my little kids.  Spading, lots of bone meal, pruning, more attentive watering.  Soon I wish to bring in some hay for mulch, for making the soil more loose, and then the magic: some cow manure that has aged some.  Not too much lest everything turns too green and leafy but with few blossoms.  Anyway, I am learning and enjoying this for my present hobby.  Working in the dirt and creating something beautiful from the earth always refreshes me.

  The retreatants I now am guiding are from the Congo, Kenya, Uganda, and two from Tanzania.  Two men, three women.  The stories I am hearing are something else.  We have 48 here during this week while each of them makes an 8-day individually guided retreat.

  This coming Thursday is a day of huge, huge importance for all Jesuits in the world, plus those impacted significantly by Ignatian spirituality in their lives and Christian service.  Thursday will mark 200 years to the day when the Jesuits were restored as a religious order in the Catholic church.  We had been legislated out of existence in 1773, three years before the Declaration of Independence of the American colonies and remained out of existence for 41 years, except in Russia.  Thanks to Catherine of Russia, we were not totally wiped out.  This is because the decree of abolition by the Vatican was not valid until the political authority of the nation  (e.g. Catherine in Russia) co-signed and made the decree effective in their territory.  Catherine had schools in Moscow and St. Petersburg which these Polish Jesuits staffed.  She liked very much what they were doing, so she refused to implement this decree and wanted the Jesuits to stay and the schools be kept running.

   The Polish Jesuits then served as a "beachhead" for the new Society of Jesus and our resurrection in 1814.  Please join me and many others in saying 'thank you' to the Lord for His mercy and sustaining power.  Otherwise, there would have been no Manresa, no internship, no revival of the Spiritual Exercises as we knew it in the 1960s and more recently.  I shudder to think what my life would have become if there had no Society of Jesus.  So, again, PLEASE PRAY, PLEASE SAY 'THANK YOU'  TO GOD WITH ALL 18,000 JESUITS IN THE WORLD FOR THIS VERY GREAT FAVOR IN JESUIT LIFE.  Thank you.

   What I am working on right now is a lecture for the opening class of a weekly course I am offering starting on August 27 at the local Jesuit seminary, called Hekima College.  The course is on the last and greatest book St. Teresa of Avila wrote, called "The Interior Castle."  It is one of the finest presentation on stages of spiritual growth and stages of prayer in the Christian repertoire of spiritual writings. So I want in the lecture to introduce the student to something of what was going on in Spain in the 16th century when Teresa lived, something about the Inquisition that the Dominicans conducted at the request of the Spanish monarchy ( to get rid of all heresy and religious crackpots in Spain!) and the efforts of the king and queen of Spain to mine the Americas for the riches of Spain, to "purify" Spain of all foreigners, Muslims and Jews, and prevent in Spain the religious disintegration that was going on at the time with the Protestant revolt in Germany, France, Bohemia, England and Switzerland.  In short, I want the student to have a beginner's feel for the times and political, ecclesial, social and religious climate of her times.   Besides Teresa's book, I will have the students read a small paperback that comments on the kind of prayer and distractions a person experiences in each of the seven stages Teresa talks about.  These two books, this topic should lend themselves to great discussions and should be a big eye-opener regarding the interior life for those who are committed to daily meditation/contemplation and a strong, conscious relationship with God.  I have waited a year to be in a position to teach again.  Now that I have myself rather well established here at the retreat center, I can venture out further with a one-course, once a week teaching commitment.

  We bought a cow last week.  It bleated/groaned loudly so much for its first two days here, lonely I suppose for its former environs.  It is producing 15 liters of milk a day (almost 4 gallons).  We are pleased.

   That is all for now that I can think of.  God bless.  Enjoy your summer while it lasts.

Bernie Owens