Dear Friends, It has been so, so, SOOO long since I have written a blog letter. I cannot remember when, but I do know I was in Kenya when I last wrote. Now I am in Toledo, Ohio, in the USA. and settling in to my new house and working situation, that is, finishing a book for publication that I have almost finished the first draft of it. On June 29 I said "goodbye" to a beautiful place, a place and its people I had come to love and always will love. But it was clear I needed to move on. I was feeling a kind of mental burnout in the kind of work I was doing--listening closely to the souls of people day after day. I was with some 250 people over 5 years, seeing each of them 8 times over 8 days, 30-45 minutes each day. So that is at least 2000 hours of listening closely and then guiding these people on retreat. Some people I saw for 30 days, yes 30! I felt I needed to change the kind of work I was doing, so intense is its manner. I could not do this while staying in Kenya. Besides, I was having a lot of trouble with the way some of the foods were being cooked. So much fried food! I often got dysentary and frequently felt "off balance," weak. It seemed more and more that the good Lord was saying I needed to return to the USA. At the same time I never got malaria, and I was never robbed at gunpoint. All in all it was a very meaningful chapter in my life, a great gift to me from God. I am so very glad I said "yes" to His invitation to go with Him to East Africa and experience firsthand a young, vibrant church/nation. It certainly has sensitized me to certain things back here in the States. ..................................................................................................................Anyway, I want to say "hi" after a very long break from this blog and am hoping to get back soon to my book on how God draws us over our lifetime through desires that are increasingly more noble, more generous and trusting, more loving until there comes the day when our deepest desire is realized--wanting only God and with all we have and are, and then experiencing everything in creation being given back to us but this time we are free to relate to everything in complete spiritual freedom with no disordered self- centered love but are free like God to relate with no attachment but rather with profound selfless love. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, God bless for now! Bernie Owens

Dear Friends, Time is flying by and I have only 53 more days before I leave East Africa, my home for the last 5 years, with lots and lots to do before saying "goodbye" to some terrific people and a wonderfully rich chapter in my life. I have been trying to find the best way for shipping back my books, papers, clothes, and wall and desk items without being charged a horrible price. (I trust you know I will be locating in Toledo, Ohio, at least for one year. I am told it will be next winter, after January 2019, before I know whether my stay there will be longer or not.) I looked at DHL, a highly advertised company, and saw they are very expensive. After further searching I found a company (Bollore') that will wrap and pack and take to the airport my belongings and put them on the airlines I am taking out of here (Alitalia) and have them shipped in cargo under the category called "unaccompanied baggage." The price I was quoted was a fraction of what DHL wants to charge. Besides, I would have to do all the wrapping and packing if I went by DHL. So that is a worry off my mind..........................................................................................................Just before Easter our community of Jesuits was affected by a voltage surge of 340 volts coming from a short when weather prompted two power lines of our next-door neighbors to cross. The surge ruined my printer and knocked out all four of the sockets in my computer such that I cannot use a key board for typing (yes, I am now typing this by 'hunt & peck," very laborious ) nor a mouse to direct the cursor nor the "back-up". I am told that the cost of the labor involved in repairing this would be better spent on a new computer. So that is what I expect to do once I arrive back in the States: replace this Dell computer, Windows 7, with a 17" screen. It has served me well. I am sorry to lose it. .................................................................................................................................................................... I have been working hard on my next book. Today I finished the first draft of chapter 11. I am hoping the next chapter will be the concluding one and then an epilogue. Once I get back to the States and settle in, I will look for some friends to proofread and make suggestions for improvements. Writing and publishing a book of this kind is a long, long process. Some 2-3 weeks ago I learned that my first book has been printed in India and is being marketed in many Asian countries and will be sold also here in Africa. How very gratifying! I have the book translated into Spanish but have not yet been able to find a company willing to market it............................................................................................................................................................................................................ I have not taken time yet to ponder well what these last 5 years here in Nairobi have given me. I know one thing is to feel something of how depressing is the life of the really poor, who are so poor they cannot pay school tuition for their children and skimp on food money while living in huts that right now are cold at night and surrounded by mud and dirt thanks to the enormous amount of rain we have gotten here in the last 2 months. I have never been that vulnerable before. It makes me respect greatly the vast majority of these people wanting employment and many leaving here to go to England or other countries to find work. ................................................................................................................That's all for now. Bernie Owens

Dear Friends, Six weeks ago is the last time I wrote. I think that is the longest gap between letters on this blog-site. So, so much has been goign on and lots of people pulling at me to respond with this and help with that. So this is part of the long delay. ................................................................................................... My biggest news is that I am returning to the USA for good, yes, for good, on July 26. I have been sitting on this decision for the last 13 months and have had to go through numerous offical channels to inform them about my request to return home. Ineed to have a new kind of work, to make some friends I can relax with beyond the Jesuit community, and especially to get myself back to more stable health.............................................................................................. On August 30 I wrote to my provincial in Chicago a six-page letter requesting to return home and explaining why I was asking for the change. Within two to three days he responded and welcomed me back home whenever I could arrange such. Commitments here, the conclusion of my fund-raising efforts which included leading a plgriamge in Isarel last June, and a number of Amercian visitors coming in November, another group in March and, to my surprise, another group coming in late May/early June made it necessary to delay my departure till this summer. I am OK with that, but I do feel I have finished well doing what God called me here to do. It feels really good to know that ground will be borken to begin building the two buildings I did most of the fund-raising for. Some alte donations from one person in Ireland and another person, a priest from Sweden, has made it possible to finish what we needed and start both buildings. It will take until the following summer, 2019. to finish both buildings. So I feel closure on that task. ................................................................................................. I have had some ups and downs with my stomach and intestines. This started seriously a year ago last February. It prompted tests of stool and blood. Conclusion? I was manifesting lots of stress; no amoebas, no parasites, but lots of dysentary. There some foods here I refuse to eat, especially beef, goat, and pork. (Fish and chicken are OK; veggies and fruits, soups also are wonderful.) The meats I will not eat are very fat and greasy! This condition of dysentary flared up again in late February and after a doctor's visit I have managed only recently to return to normal. Not fun at all!! It so drains me of energy, of my electrolytes. My weight is about 10 pounds less than what I carried when back in the States. Not all that bad, but this means for losing that much weight is not good, NOT GOOD at all. ............................................................................................................. Then, I feel that the work I am doing, guiding retreatants, is getting rather repetitious. I am good at this work, but after five years I really need a change and I find my creative juices begging to express themselves; I would like to create something new and have a combination of ministries to do, not just one as is the case here most of the time. My being creative, initiating new programs like I was free to do when at Manresa, is not going to happen here, especially since I do not speak Swahili and am too old to learn it. So . . . I asked my provincial to send me to a high school in our vast midwest province, unless he had a bigger need to assign me to; to my delight he concurred with my inclination to work at a high school and design a biweekly, evening program for the parents of the students. He could assign me to any one of our schools: in Omaha, in Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Chicago, Cleveland, etc. I was shocked when he asked me to go to Toledo, Ohio and finish there the book I am well into now and eventually ease my way into the life and work of St. John's Jesuit High School in Toledo. So . . . that is where my new home will be starting in mid-August. I am quite pleased with this imminent change and have already started the process of packing and shipping, giving away certain books and other items, and consolidating notes, etc. ........................................................................................................ . I do feel much peace about my decision, lagely because I sense I have accomplished the work God had asked of me when I came here in 2013. It has been a very blessed time. I am among mostly young Jesuits, some of whom are very impressive and well-educated, most in their 40s and showing lots of promise for leadership................................................................................................... I have a growing need for better healthcare. Serious medical needs in Kenya would not be covered by insurance, while in the States much of it would be covered by insurance. ............................................................................................................. On my way back to the States I will spend 4 weeks with some dear friends at their summer home in southern Italy. Their house, I am told, is about 500 feet from the Mediterranean Sea. I expect to really rest when there, swim often, laugh a lot, get in some important reading, and eat some great Italian food. At the start of this four-week stop, I will spend the first day visiting the two major Jesuit churhes in Rome, one of which has the bones of St. John Berchamans, a Jesuit seminarian who died when only 23 years old. The school in Toledo is named after him (St. John's Jesuit H.S.) and I want to pray a mass next to his tomb and beg his prayers for all of us in this new venture in Toledo. ................................................................................................... I need to go. I wish all of you who read this letter a very blessed Easter that is touched a lot with the quiet joy and peace of the risen Christ (Right now it has been so rainy; we are full of mud around here. The farmers have been begging God for rain and they got it!! ) Bernie Owens

Dear Friends, For those of you in the USA this is Super Bowl Sunday, an excuse I guess to have friends over and party all afternoon prior to the game, with many falling asleep during the game, bored with a game they do not understand nor even care to understand. And loyal Lions fans can spend their time admiring Tom Brady leading his team to victory again while wondering whether the city's team will ever make it to the big dance. Oh, I have been down that road too many times. From far away Africa I wonder whether I will live long enough to see that long awaited championship team......................................................................................................... These last nine days have been unique and quite chaotic for this nation and somewhat chaotic for our Jesuit community. Let me explain a little............................................................................................. On Friday the 26th, we had in the afternoon an ice storm, yes, a storm of hail, little ice-balls fall on us, really DUMPED on us with much force . . . sheets and sheets of hail stones falling on a 45 degtree angle and covering up most of the grass. It went on for 20 minutes while the skies thundered and thundered for more than an hour. Heavy, much needed rains followed about an hour later. I had never imagined anything like this in this part of the world, but happen it did. It took almost an hour for the ice balls to melt. They were about as big as the nail of your index finger. The chaos then followed. Electrical power was knocked out, the internet connection was broken. Then on Sturday Kenya Electic tried to restore power. The resumption of power led to surges or jolts of power into our lines and this burned up, destroyed many pieces related to our laptop computers. I lost my transformer, a plug-in to the back of my computer. It is worth about $25, a fourth of the money I get to live on for a month. Some witnessed flashes of fire shooting out from wall sockets in their rooms. the surge also destroyed a key piece of electrical equipment in the pump from which we get our water. So for three days we were ailing water from the tank that catches run-off water from our roofs. Thank God we still were able to purchase clean drinking water. But no whowers during this time, no water out of the taps. Then bubbles in the water lines blocking the flow of water for the first day water was restored. So I went four days without a shower. Pee-UUUUUU!!! Ugh. My hair was oily beyond description! Ugh! I felt like a stinking rat. On the third day I went for a swim, outdoors here. Low 80s during the afternoons. Having the chlorine residue on my skin was preferable than to no shower at all!.......................................................................................................Then on Tuesday the loser in the last national election, Mr. Raila Odinga, had himself "inaugurated as the people's president" over against an election he said was rigged against him. It would be like Hillary declaring from exile that she is the People's president and that Trump stole the election from her--which some will say is exactly what happened. The government in power allowed the rally and inauguration to go forward, I think as a way to assuage the anger of many who voted for the opponent. A large crowd turned out. All went fairly quietly that day, last Tuesday, but someone in the government shut down the TV stations that were carrying the ceremony. I was sitting at my computer at that moment and all of a sudden all power went off. We all right away said the government did this, in dictatorial fashion. And sure enough, that is the explanation. Then in the last few days the government has been rounding up the member of that party who led this sediitous ceremony, imprisoned some and have revoked the passports of them all. Where Odinga is right now is not known. Rumors have him hiding in Tanzania, the nation to our south. Three of the TV stations are still not back on the air and are said to have to re-apply for their licensces to be permitted to resume broadcasting........................................................................................... Many say this has the feel of a dictatorship, that the elements of democracy are suffering because of the way the government is handling this turmoil. At the same time, what Odinga and his group did is an act of sedition, a crime against the state. Odinga is so frustrated in trying to get reforms, constitutional and economic, in this nation. And he has a point to some degree, but his methods have boomeranged on him this time, it seems. The interenational community urged him strong not to do this, that it would not support him as a preisdent outside the country nor as a people's president inside Kenya. ........................................................................................................ I wish I had the time to study in depth who and what are the power clusters in the government and millionaires in the business community that block real reform and the opening up of the job markets and the vast parts of land in this nation so desperately needed. Islamic jihadist efforts are closely tied to young men frustrated that they cannot get a job, so they are easily recruited with wads of money provided by sources in Saudia Arabia and Qatar to join Al Shabab in Somalia and conduct raids in Somalia and Kenya. American military with drones are stationed clandestinely in Somalia and Tanzania kill many of these young men. It is so tragic for these people who are trapped in what feels like a hopeless situation. The poverty in this part of the world is so striking, over against the relatively small number who have enormous wealth and are the real power behind government decisions. Not a lot different than in most first world nations, the USA included. ............................................................................................................ Yesterday I had a young nun tell me the very sad story of how her family and all in her village in western Kenya were burned out of their homes last Friday in a raid by neighboring tribal people, people who worship in the same church they do and buy food at the same market they do. Almost always this is about one tribal group getting angry over the alleged stealing of their cattle and goats by the other tribe. You have to image the setting: a rolling highlands area, rich in green growth from generous rainfall, full of herds of cattle and goats. The people live in wooden or mudbrick shacks with tarp paper to protect against rain. They usually form a circle of the houses for protection and have a large open space on the inside of the circle for their children to play, for meetings with their elders, and where at night they bring their animals for safety. This nun teaches in a school far away from her family, in eastern Kenya, and received a phone call that the huts of all of her family members were burned down, all possessions were lost, and some were wounded with bullets from Russian AK-47s provided by government leaders who make good money from selling war weapons. Sounds like the USA!! The only things left were the clothes on the backs of her family members. She is struggling so hard with the feelings of anger and hurt and the call of the Gospel to forgiveness and reconciliation. Life is terribly brutal at times........................................................................................ Then I have learned from one of my retreatants who is a nun some shocking info regarding her efforts to rescue children kidnapped by and for the local sex industry, one of the most evil, monstrous industries in the world. Surely there is a hell for these perpetrators!! She tells of a 12 minute video shown to some of her fellow workers dedicated to the rescue of these children in which a little 5 year old Philippina girl was kidnapped and would be drugged with a pill shoved in her mouth so that she would not be all that conscious when sordid customers came to satisfy their animal cravings at her expense. Again life can be very brutal. It is truly one of the worst manifestations of today's ongoing crucifixion of Christ in His Body, God's family. It and the world of pornography are the second biggest source of money in today's world, following what the arms merchants make. It is the cravings for money and a lavish lifestyle that pushes many of these people to do such criminal things. God will not be mocked. There will be a day when justice is done, as sure as the sun will come up tomorrow. What are these poeple going to do when they meet their Creator and asks them what did they do with the life He gave them??!! I know for a fact that this human trafficking, of adults and of children, goes on everywhere; in Detroit, in Flint, in Toledo. It cries to heaven for justice. Pope Francis has spoken out on it a number of times. I pray daily for its victims. Many commit suicide; many end up in prostitution or other crimes. Yes, the world needs a Savior........................................................................................................For me I continue to plow along on the second book I am writing. I have gotten the OK to have my first book published and marketed here in Africa. Very encouraging news! The book is translated now into Spanish and I am presently looking for a publishing company to make it available to the Spanish-speaking public. Mexico, USA?? Weather here is usually wonderful: cloudless skies, low 80s during the fternoons, great for an outdoors swim. I wish all who read this a spiritually rich Lent.......................................................................................... I will have two visitors coming on the 27th of this month and staying until March 8--one a very good male friend from Troy, MI and the other a male friend from Rome. I expect to have a fabulous time with them. They are both close friends of mine and know each other quite well. We will see some of the beauty in the surrounding area and sip some scotch or sambucca while my Roman friend plays the guitar; He has been good enough to play in restaurants in Rome, so this will be a treat. God bless to you all....................................................................................................... Bernie Owens

Dear Friends, It has been a long time since I have written and so, so much has happened, too much to capture in words here and some of it too personal to share in a forum this public. Anywy, I am quite well while in the midst of being continually amazed at so many things going on here in Kenya with its poverty and political turmoil, in the USA and its unabated turmoil, its public lack of respect and verbal violence, and what strikes me as its increasing spiritual poverty, yet not without some extraordinary citizens who still believe in and live well from God's love and mercy, people for whom Jesus and His way still make all the difference. .............................................................................................................. I had a blessed December. It was especially so with a very enjoyable celebration of Christmas, a dinner for 35 people (20 of these being guests) on Christmas afternoon (with lots of turkey, wonderfully prepared, and cranberries which I love!) Then starting on December 27 my own 8-day of retreat in silence, alone with the Lord and a few scriptures and two readings that touched me greatly. Day 6 of the retreat, on January 1, seemed to be the most blessed of all the days. In that afternoon I had a very strong sense of God's depths and the quality and utter beauty of God's goodness and love. I had never experienced such like this before. It was heavenly. What was entirely new in this experience was how there is simply no "bottom" to God's depths. There is no "end" or limit to Divine Love. I knew this before in my head, but this time I SENSED it with much power and unforgettable wonder. The deeper I went into God's depths, the more this awareness simply opened out into the infinite spaces of everything good and true; not unlike what an astronout might experience looking out from a spacelab window and peering into space. Astronomers tell us the universe is perpetually expanding and we have no idea where and whether there is any outer boundary to the cosmos. Try to get your mind around that idea; Really, it is impossible. All one can do is accept and adore............................................................................................................................................................................................. So, we cannot even imagine the breadth and depth of the Divine Heart because it has no boundaries, no "outer limits." It seems to me we are all largely unaware of and mostly blind to the Source we come from and are being drawn back to. We see vaguely, maybe, but "as thorough a glass darkly," as St. Paul says. It is so, so humbling yet consoling to "taste and see" this aspect of God, to understand better why some mystics like the 14th century woman, Juliana of Norwich said that because of what God is like, "all is well, all manner of things are well." We have no good reason to fear or worry even though we suffer from the lack of love in the world, and in ourselves. And so, despite the craziness of the world and that same craziness welling up inside our own selves at times, and despite how it seems that the voices of self-centered arrogance and pride, lust and greed appear to be prevailing, there is something far deeper and will have "the last say" when all is over and death has met everyone of us. (That Presence is with us even now; we need not wait till death to claim it and live in its Assurance.) It will not be the deeds of our lives but the mercy, justice and sheer goodness of God expressed in the open Heart of His Son given totally for each of us that will make the ultimate difference. This gracious Source of all that is will write the last chapter of the book of our lives. It is good to remind each other of this overriding Truth and Power to ground us and save us from hopelessness, anger and blaming but to really intercede for the world and all of our loved ones and so too for all those whose deeds make them very difficult to love in Christ.............................................................................................................................................................................To all of you who read this, I wish a happy, blessed 2018. I will be visiting Detroit in late July and early August and hope our paths cross. God bless. I will see all of you, known and unknown, at the daily Eucharist where we are all one in Him; in Him who says, "Fear not, for I have overcome the world." We have to believe and trust Him when He says this and look for His reassuring presence and friendship along the way we are going each day. Bernie Owens