Saturday, June 3, 2017

Dear Friends, I am soon to start leading a pilgrimage in the Holy Land with 30 others. It will be a much needed and welcomed break from the sometimes hectic pace here at the retreat center in Nairobi. Good work here but sometimes it leaves me feeling brain-dead. ..................................................................... ...................................... It is quite meaningful to me that this two week venture first in Jordan where Moses is buried and Jesus was baptized at the start of his public ministry and then our going into Israel comes right after the end of the Easter season and the feast of Pentecost. As the years go by I am increasingly moved by the meaning and promise in this feast of Pentecost. It puzzles me as to why the church's leaders do not make more of it and explain more fully its richness, of what it offers to the fullness and happiness of our lives. It seems the Sunday celebration of this feast ought to be as great as the celebration of Christmas and Easter. My retreats lately have put an emphasis on the gift of the Holy Spirit, on what the Spirit does in us and in the world; people who take in this explanation respond with enthusiasm when they realize what is there in the meaning of this feast, tomorrow's great celebration. It seems we ordinarily are blind or minimally aware o what is going on in our depths, what is being offered to us, how distracted and unresponsive so many people are to what is available in our depths......................................................................................................... I have been working on a new book and am feeling lots of frustration, lots of pain over what I have written so far and what I have had to delete because it just does not resonate well with what I am trying to say. This is becoming a painful "pregnancy," a process of not a little stress and even back, neck and skull pain over it. Once one tries to write something good enough for publication and the subject matter concerns something of the interior world of the human soul, you appreciate the difficulty there is in finding words, stories, and images adequate to the topic. I "swore" when writing my first book that I would never again go down that road; but I have to say there is something so strong welling up inside me that pushes me to write this second book. I truly sense God is pushing me on this and wants me to do this. The title of the book is: "Realizing Your Deepest Desires: Experiencing God As Never Before." I am using as the overall the structure of the book the structure used by Teresa of Avila, the 16th centuy Spanish saint, in her great book, "The Interior Castle" to discuss different capacities for meaning, life, happiness and love in our lives as human beings. In it I want to show why so many people stagnate at a rather early stage of the process of human, spiritual development but also show something of the incredibly rich developments that are possible and do happen when people let themselves be led by God beyond the blocks and attachments, blind spots, etc that leave them get stuck at the earlier, more elementary stages of life. It seems so very many people realize just a small, very small bit of what life is offering us. We prefer what leaves us comfortable and what we think we can control....................................................................................................... Two days after I return from the pilgrimage I will leave here to lead a retreat for a group of 18 nuns in Arusha, Tanzania, beautiful territory not far from Mount Kilimanjaro: June 22-29. This month of June, then, has me on the road. I am glad to have this chance, to change my routine and get what I hope is a good mental rest through being away from this computer and being with people. A week ago I finished a six-day retreat for 23 African seminarians at a retreat house that is at 7500 feet above sea level. Farms everywhere. (On the way home we drove past a large open area from which emerged a herd of zebras and a family of baboons.) The place where I was for a week has 53 acres with a very impressively managed farm to provide for lots of its needs in the kitchen. It is so well laid out and has lots of hired hands to milk cows, tend to hogs and goats and geese, chickens, etc, and manage the gardens. The whole operation is owned by the Catholic diocese. I loved doing this retreat and being with young people, all around 30 years of age from so many different countries of Africa: the Congo, Uganda, Togo, Chad, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Benin, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Kenya of course. This is a special time in my life to be with future leaders of this part of the world, where the church is so young and is tying to grow in the midst of a lot of economic struggle and greed, stealing, governmental corruption and violence. As I traveled to and from this retreat center I saw many people engaged in agriculture, with simple homes and bringing produce into villages to sell. The buildings and ambiance made me think that this part of the world is in its social structures and infrastructure similar to where the USA was 100-120 years ago, maybe around the turn of the 20th century........................................................................................................... I am going to conclude now. I ask that you pray for the 31 of us making the pilgrimage in Jordan and Israel, June 7-18. It will be my 5th time there, my 4th time to lead a pilgrimage there. All of us are American citizens except two from Rome, who are very close friends of mine. Thanks so much for joining us spiritually through your prayers. A highlight of our two weeks will be a stop at a very nice restaurant on Saturday evening, June the 10th. It overlooks a vast plain of Galilee and some mountains in the distance. We will have the full moon that night to view and watch it rise over those mountains. I will be marking that day the 45th anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood. The next morning we travel to a village 4-5 miles from Nazareth and join a parish of Catholic Palestinians to celebrate Trinity Sunday, 9:30 AM mass. I have been there (Al Reina) twice before and the readings and prayers are mostly in Arabic and some in English. The church will be jam-packed, the choir loft too with children and teenagers in it that Italian nuns will "police" during mass; It is so funny to see this, just like when I was a kid at a parochial grade school. These children attend the parish sponsored school that has 1100 students. After mass the parishioners invite us to their large hospitality hall and school grounds for coffee and some snacks. What is so impressive during the mass is how just before the reading of the Gospel and when the deacon brings up from the back of the church the book of the Gospels, the men who sit on one side of the church (the women and pre-school children children on the other side!! yes, Arabic segregation!) put their thumb and first two fingers to their lips and then touch with those three fingers the pages of the book of Gospels as the deacon slowly walks by. That gesture of reverence for the Word of God is so, so moving to me. I look forward to seeing again this display of love for Christ and His saving Word. I wish it were a custom in our American churches!.................................................................................................. God bless. A happy Pentecost to all of you who read this! Bernie Owens