Good evening, everyone.  I write on  Sunday evening, the 23rd of August, right after a substantial dinner.  I want to write especially this evening since at 6 PM about an hour and a half ago, I marked two years exactly since I arrived in Nairobi, Kenya, East Africa.  This was to be where I would now live and work, with so much I could not guess would happen.  I look back today with unceasing wonderment at what led up to this transition, this calling,  and all that has happened since I came here.  I cannot get over what I am being shown about this part of the world through the stories of those coming here on retreat.

    I am being shown some amazing people who really fight for life, who struggle against great odds, who live all the time just trying to survive, they and their extended families.  This is the usual, not the exceptional situation in most of the villages of this part of the world.  I meet the reality of polygamy, of witchcraft, of governmental corruption (bribery,swindling and death threats), the utter inadequacy of the justice and policing systems.  I meet the reality of the HIV virus and AIDs infected adults and babies, so too a lot of unemployment and hopelessness.  I hear about murdered siblings and never-ending war nearby, raids and assassinations in the name of religion, starvation and severe malnutrition in the desert-like north of this country, alcoholism and domestic abuse on a big scale, sudden deaths thanks to so many car accidents on the terribly inadequate roads of this nation, fights between families over who rightly owns a plot of land and how the losers lose everything, burnt out usually, with now no place to live.

   I also hear stories of terrific parents going to great ends to keep their families together, stories of great tenderness between parents and children, healings, reconciliations, celebrations with great joy and love for family-togetherness, the generosity of a family member who gets a job and provides for the rest of the family who have no jobs, then too stories of heroic nuns--so many of them-- running schools and orphanages, hospitals and medical dispensaries also.  Any order and hope in this part of the world would collapse without the quality presence of these women.  They make Christianity truly credible, so impressive and attractive, the vision of Jesus come alive,  I am privileged to hear their stories and guide their annual 8-day or 30-day retreats.

  I love the opportunity I have to teach one course a semester at the nearby Jesuit seminary, only 9 miles from here yet more than an hour by car away during the morning commute.  This semester I will teach a course entitled "Prayer Beyond the Beginnings:  Moving from Meditation to Contemplation."  (I start this coming Wednesday.)  I get students, all of them future priests, from west Africa, southern Africa, and from this eastern part of Africa, Jesuits and non-Jesuits, also students from southern India.  I feel privileged to have a hand in the development of these men who are in their late 20s and will be major leaders in the church of Africa and India for the next 40-50 years.  I give them courses in spirituality, usually from a developmental perspective or with a system of stages of spiritual growth that help them understand how God leads us all and shapes our life if we allow such to God.  Next semester I will offer a course entitled "The Humility and Foolishness of God:  A Franciscan Perspective on God's overwhelming Love for Us".  Besides insights from Francis of Assisi, I will use some insights from Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit 20th century paleontologist.  I used some of these readings when at Manresa for the biweekly seminar and people "ate it up," so interesting were the readings and our discussions.

  As spring approaches I am back to digging in my rose beds and fertilizing them with rabbit compost and bone meal and, of course, lot of water.  The nights are not so cold as they were only two weeks ago, so things are beginning to grow.  At the same time there is lots and lots of pollen in the air.  This means a runny nose for me and lots of itching all over my body.  My God, do I itch sometimes!!  My back, my face, my ears, my arms, my neck, etc.  I took a benadryl pill a few days ago to alleviate the itching and it left me so limp for many hours!  All I could do is sleep!  I took only one pill!!  I think I will try taking half a pill the next time.  I was awakened at 2 AM one night by the itching and it was then I took that pill.  I have not taken another one because I have too much work to get done!  But I scratch sometimes, even dig hard into my skin or rub my back over and over again, hard too, against a door jam just to get some relief.  There are some parts of my back I cannot reach!!!  After awhile the itching stops.  In years past this would stop on its own when the pollen subsided after two or three weeks.  You might imagine all the flowers around here!  The bees are so active, and we eat a lot of honey here.

  I have mentioned before the inspiration I have had to write a second book.  That inspiration has gotten noticeably stronger and I have been taking lots of notes for it from what I have been reading.  I feel rather sure that the title of the book will be, as stated on the front cover:  "If Only You Knew the Gift of God and . . . (in the lower part of the book's front cover) the Way Through the Narrow Gate."  In it I want to talk about what leads up to the fundamental conversion moment for a person who truly wants relationship with God, who is willing to work at getting to know and love God, who can learn to let go and let God give this awesome gift and thereby take him or her through what Jesus calls the narrow gate, a way of significant discipline and sacrifice for the sake of that relationship.  And then an extensive description of what it is like on the other side of that gate, the riches of such a friendship and love that surpasses anything we could have hoped for, with a sweetness for the person's soul that makes every other joy pale in comparison.  I suppose it will take me two to three years to write this so that it is good enough to be published.  (I had to do dozens of re-writes on the text of the book I recently published!  Oh the painful memories about that!!)  I am counting on living at least that long!!

  I need to head off to bed.  Be well.  I have enjoyed typing this and telling you something of the latest from here.  I wish all of you could see this place.  I stared today out my window at a Poinsietta bush all in bloom with dozens of red blossoms, yes dozens.  This bush is probably 30-35  feet high and 15 feet wide!  It is stunning, and there are others bushes of them on our grounds.  In Africa so many things are gigantic.

  God bless!
Bernie Owens