Dear Friends,

  I write to you at about 8 PM on Sunday, the 25th, three weeks to the day since my last letter.  I feel sometimes like I have lived a full year and maybe more between these letters!  I am too busy to write more often.

  Anyway, I am happy to say we are finally receiving some substantial rains, and the grass and flowers already look much better.  We have been warned about El Nino and its expected damage, but so far we have not had anything like that.  I love being under the covers and hearing the rain hit our roof, whether when going to sleep or when waking up before the alarm goes off.

  I am finally seeing many of the roses I fertilized some six weeks ago bear abundant blossoms.  My God, they are out of this world in color, and their aroma too is intoxicating if you get close.  At the end of one of my lengthy bed of roses is an amarylis in full bloom, with brilliant red trumpet-like blossoms.  Just this morning it opened up fully, and so we will get to enjoy its beauty for another 10 days or so.  What takes the prize, however, are the jacaranda trees filled with clusters of lightly shaded purple bells. We have a number of them on our grounds. These blossoms last for some days and then they drop one by one on the ground under the tree and form a carpet of purple.  The trees are a good 50-60 feet high and when viewed from a distance fill the skyline with their stunning  beauty.  How lovely, how divine!  Their blossoms will be with us for another month or so.  In our backyard, standing over all other trees and flowers is a tree more than a hundred years old, probably closer to two hundred years old.  It is about 120 feet up, and its roots are enormous, at least the part of the roots that is above the soil line.  It is something else to walk on our concrete pathway that passes under the far-reaching limbs of this tree.  It is part of the whole landscape that is abut two and a half football fields in length, end to end.  All this grass and open field makes for a perfect place for retreatants to walk, to sit on benches and just be quiet while staring at the range of Appalachian-like mountains some 25 miles in the distance.  We have quite a place here, a veritable Garden of Eden.

   For the last three weeks I have followed very closely the synod of bishops which concluded today in Rome.  I have followed it with great interest and with much prayer because I know well how this meeting will prove to be a major turning point in the way the Catholic church relates to its married members and those raising children, also to those members whose earlier marriage ended in divorce. It is rather clear to me that some leaders are compassionate and some are not; some have listened to  the stories and sensed the pain of many members while some are caught up in a legal ideal that shows little or no appreciation for the place of compassion and mercy as the number 1 teaching of Jesus, more important than every other teaching He gave.   I suspect history will show that while what was taught at this three-week gathering is important, what is more important and has farther reaching consequences on the life of the church is the WAY that teaching is applied.  In other words, their is an attitudinal shift taking place toward certain very challenging pastoral situations.  Some get it, some don't--just like in the public square.  Some are people-sensitive and listen to what life is like for those different from them and so grow in understanding, patience and compassion.  And then there are those who for a lot of emotional reasons cannot get into the experiential world of people different from them and will apply their law as the only response they know how to give.

    Tomorrow's gospel reading of the woman bent over for 18 years and cured by Jesus on the sabbath is a good example of what I am talking about.  Jesus cures her, feeling her pain and caring enough to take the initiative to go out to her and heal her.  The synagogue official, however, harshly criticizes Jesus and says there is a law against doing what He did on the sabbath, that He should wait and come back another day to do what He did.  Jesus, shaking His head with much dismay, appeals to any innate sense of compassion in this official. He speaks up for this woman, a daughter of Abraham He calls her, and asks the official to think again and put people before laws. The pope did the same today.  During his homily in the mass that closed the synod he strongly challenged certain bishops who "bury their heads in the sand of doctrine", rigidly applied, and thereby close the doors of Christ's church to many hurting people, failing thereby to show mercy and sensitivity to the situations of many hurting members who hold on with a shred of hope that maybe God will help them find forgiveness and peace as well as a sense of being loved, of being wanted and cared about.  Pope Francis is leading the way to a church much more Christian, much more faithful to what Jesus taught, yes with truths to be lived but also with a mercy to be shown toward each and all.  Trouble comes when people divide reality into the good people and the bad people, the pure and the impure.  Trouble comes when the self-declared pure ones see themselves as worthy and eligible for God's gifts and others not worthy; yet they are blind to their own sinfulness and need for forgiveness and mercy like everyone else.  Everyone of us is the lost 100th sheep that in various ways wanders away.  No one is really among the 99 sheep.  Everyone of us needs to be found by God's never-ending love and lifted onto the shoulders of the Good Shepherd and brought back home.  This is what Pope Francis is emphasizing because it is what Jesus emphasized.  And like what was done to Jesus, some are terribly threatened by Pope Francis and tried just this last week to undermine his credibility by starting a silly, later disproven, rumor that he has a brain tumor--implying that he is mentally 'off' and is an incompetent leader.  One bishop at the synod even implied that Pope Francis has allowed the stench of Satan to enter the hallways of the synod; this is so like the Pharisees accusing Jesus of being a son of Beelzubub, a name for Satan in Jesus' times.

  Last Monday I took a copy of my book ("More Than You Could Ever Imagine:  On Our Becoming Divine"), autographed in Spanish, to the bishop's residence here in Nairobi and asked the bishop to give it to Pope Francis when he comes to Kenya next month (November 25-27).  I left my 'business card' in the book just in case.  The bishop and I talked for 5-7 minutes.  He was quite cordial and said he looks forward to reading it himself before he gives it to the pope and promised  he would not spill coffee on it.

  A week from this evening I leave for Rome, Italy.  I will be starting a pilgrimage in Italy on November 8-21 for about 35 Americans, most of them from the Detroit area.  We begin in Venice and end in Rome.  Between November 2 and 7 I will stay with some very close friends who live on the north side of Rome.  The husband, Giorgio Abate, is the licensed guide for the pilgrimage, while I am the chaplain. This will be the fourth pilgrimage he and I have teamed together in the last ten years.  He is very, very good at it, and such a cheerful, upbeat man who keeps the pilgrims loose and happy.  His English is excellent, so too his singing voice.  Eight years ago this coming November 3 he and his wife (Maria Pia) lost their only child, a son 19 years old.  Simon Peter is his name.  Simon was playing goalie in a soccer game and one of his own teammates went back to defend with his head against the incoming ball  and accidentally hit with the back of his head their son in the chest bone.  The son dropped to the ground, sat up momentarily to say he could not get his breath, and then lay down and died from cardiac arrest.  Every 3rd of the month, Giorgio and Maria Pia have had a memorial mass for their son. On this, the 8th anniversary of his death. there will be a special memorial mass at their parish, St. George, and they have asked me to come early, prior to the start of the pilgrimage, to join them in that memorial mass. Of course I will be there for this unique moment. Every December through mid-February since this tragedy, Giorgio and Maria Pia have visited an orphanage in Agra, India (where the Taj Mahal is)  to be with little children and disabled teens, to love them, play with them, care for them and set up a play area with slides, teeter-totter, sandboxes, etc.  Last December they went with two of their parish priests to Albania to help build a house for an extremely poor family with two small boys.  So their tragedy and loss has moved them to extraordinary trust and love of the Lord in these most unfortunate children.  What a perfect match:  a couple now with no children, and orphans now with no parents!   I am quite blessed to know them and share in their lives to the degree I can.

   I must go to bed now.  I am in the midst of guiding each day five people here for 8 days to process with me their prayer and their life journeys with God.  45 minutes each day with each of the five.  It is  a lot of listening and sometimes gets to be emotionally exhausting.  Some of what I am hearing from them is truly heart-wrenching, so much evil yet the almost unbelievable power of God's healing mercy, even for the perpetrators of such evil.  I am haunted at times by the saying of Jesus, said of His murderers while He hung on the cross:  "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing."  Again, I am overwhelmed at times by the power of mercy.  It has happened in the personal life of Pope Francis and I am sure it is God, after humbling him so, has inspired Francis to emphasize this radical, sometimes scandalizing and upsetting message of Jesus.  Only because of this can we have any realistic hope for our world that is violent, cruel, and full of hate, yet with so many amazingly good people who love and sacrifice for its future.

   Pray for me, please, and for Giorgio and all of us on this pilgrimage in Italy, November 8-21.  Thanks very much.   I should have some great stories to tell you about this trip once I return.

Bernie Owens