Dear Friends,

   Here I am on Thursday evening, the 27th, on the eve of a weekend retreat I am leading.  This will be the first of its kind in Nairobi and I suspect in all of East Africa if not in all of Africa.  It is the kind of retreat I would offer once a year at Manresa when I was in the States.  It is a contemplative retreat, that is, one that offers the kind of prayer where all making the retreat sit together in absolute silence, with eyes closed, and without moving our bodies for 30 minutes.  The focus is solely on God present to you in the silence and stillness.  Significant faith is required to be able to stay with this kind of prayer.  So . . . no deliberate thinking nor dwelling on or seeking feelings but just being quiet with God and relaxing in each other's presence.  Some people would go crazy with this kind of prayer, not being ready for it; others thrive on and prefer this kind of prayer.  I liken it to spending time with God while both of you watch a sunset together.  The essence of the prayer is that the both of you enjoy being with each other and neither of you needs to talk to the other but you simply like being with each other and in a spirit of loving quiet.  It can be called "wasting time with each other."  It is not the prayer of doing but the prayer of being, of being together and just relaxing with the other.  Type A personalities or those with an agenda and "having to get things done" don't get this way of praying.  Of course, they don't know how to be present to people either!  And don't know how to listen to another person.  So it really slows you down and makes you let go of your list of things to get done, so just to be and enjoy the Divine Other and allow God to enjoy being with you.  You tune out from all that is outside your body and settle into or  rest in a world filled with His presence.  Are their distractions?  Of course, theye are almost always there.  Wisdom says to let them swirl around you but not  pay attention to them, to just let them go their own way. We are not our distractions.  We are something beautiful and much deeper.  It is the connection between the core self and the Divine Friend within that is the source, the spark of divinity inside us.  That connection is our most precious reality, a self not alone but made up of our self and this inner, deepest of all friends.  It is our true self as opposed to our false self, disconnected and acting as if we are alone and having to carry the burden of the present moment or tomorrow all by ourselves.

   Anyway, I am getting carried away here with what I will be talking about with the retreatants starting tomorrow evening.  Enough of that.

   Last Sunday I marked 6 months since I came to Kenya.  It has been a very full time for me.  I counted yesterday 50 people I have guided individually on retreats since I came.  46 of them for eight days, four for three days, and one for six days.  Then I have given some conference type retreats to groups of Jesuits or future Jesuits.  I have not been idle.

   Last Sunday was the hardest day for me since I arrived in Kenya . . .  a time of high blood pressure and worry.   Two days before I finally received the contract with the company who is to publish my book.  In the contract it said the manuscript I am to submit to the publishers is to be approximately 45,000 words maximum.  I had been told by them last October that I was to cut my manuscript from 257 pages to something under 180 pages.  I accepted the challenge after first gulping and then went to work on it , especially over the Christmas holidays.  I succeeded in getting the whole thing down to 177 pages.  When I came to count the word total, I counted 56,200.  I felt doomed and very tense.  I thought this will force me to drop 12,000 more words, maybe up to two chapters, or to go to another publishing company.  I dreaded the thought of having to start all over again with the process of hunting for a company interested in what I had written.  To cut 12,000 words/two chapters out of the book would gut the book, cut severely into its substance.  I said to myself, "I cannot let that happen ."  So I wrote a frank email to the company and said I felt  like they had moved the goal posts of the field far back on me from where they had put them before.  I really felt miffed but more so worried, really worried.  I said I had met their goal and wanted to know whether there was any room for negotiations on this point.  So I sent that email and went to bed.  I tried to sleep and found it really hard.  I was so tense, so tight in the chest, feeling like I had been beaten up. I had to keep saying, God, it is in your hands.  All I can do is wait on their response and what happens happens.
Late the next day, when the sun had come up on their part of the world (Minnesota, nine hours behind us) I got an email saying, "don't worry about the number.  We are looking forward to your manuscript.  You have worked hard to cut it down and you did that."  ( I felt a little foolish and began to wonder, "then why do you have in the contract explicit wording about 45,000 words being the outer limit for how long the book can be?  A contract is a contract, isn't it?  I understand contracts are solemn agreements.  Once I sign and you sign, we are both bound to the terms of the contract, right??!!.)  So what I did was say I am still bothered a lot by leaving in the contract the phrase "45,000 words" for the maximum number.  So in response they said "write in the number you want, initial what you write, and we will initial it as well, and that will settle the matter for us."  I was stunned by their response and felt again awkward about this exchange, still wondering how solemn is this contract and its terms.  If this is their attitude on this one point, what about any other point in the five page long contract??  Anyway, I signed the contract and sent it to them two days ago.  I think I will be just fine and the book will happen as the editors and I do a final "toothcomb" type reading of it and making any last changes to make it good enough for publishing  These final editing changes will happen between them and myself probably in April and May, maybe June too. The book is scheduled to be published and out for marketing in December or January.  It is scheduled to be sold in January at two national book fairs, one in Los Angeles and another one in the mid-Atlantic area.  I will be very happy when this whole process is finally done but also wearied by the many steps in the process; it began in September of 2010, three and a half years ago.  Writing a book of substance is a long, long involved process . . .  so it seems.  If it were a book on baseball or on how to garden, I could have written a book much more quickly!

   Enough of that!!  One wonderful detail on the grounds here is a plant now blooming abundant, brilliant red flowers.  It is of the cactus family whose stems are shaped is long somewhat rectangular pieces maybe two and three feet long like a ruler and narrow like a ruler,  The thorns of the cactus are quite short and would not prick you deeply.  One very interesting detail is that they like to grow in the crotch of a large tree that has multiple trunks or major shoots going out from its roots.  All of these shoots together allow a cavity to evolve at  the base of the tree, maybe three feet above ground.  The cactus lives there and thrives.  Right now there is one tree in our front yard full of about three dozen of these red blossoms, each one shaped like a bell and maybe 4" across.  Their center is filled with thin, white long stamens that carry all the pollen.  The bottom area of this tree, then, is filled with these red blossoms all around the tree.  It would be a photographer's delight.

   Another interesting detail here is a shallow reflection pool on the inner court of the building where our offices are.  The offices surround the pool area.  The pool is 15 feet by feet 15 feet square and stocked with some gold fish and lilies pads.  The lily pads keep giving out lotus blossoms, mostly yellow ones but also a few lavender ones. What a charm they are--perfectly shaped and brilliant in their beauty especially in the mornings when I see my retreatants and walk by this area on my way to my office and can observe their perfect shape and beauty. The lilies open during the full sun and close once the sun is off them.  Above the pond is a screen supported by the roof of our offices surrounding the court.  The screen is there supposedly to prevent  birds from getting inside the courtyard and near the pool.  Yet, the screen's mesh is too wide for some birds. There has been a bird sneaking through the screen and eating the little minnows that innocently swim near the surface.  High drama, right??!!

  You should see how large are the crows that are here.  They are about twice the size of the crows in Michigan.  They also have some white plummage where their wings connect to their body;  the rest are black feathers.  They are loud, as crows usually are, and like to come in the morning to bully the smaller birds for the crumbs we put out for the birds to feed on.  many of the birds that come are a little smaller than robins but beautifully feathered with brilliant yellow and black.

  A monkey was seen swinging from tree to tree early this morning out our large dining room window, as if it were casing our place for any chance to snitch food.  No luck for the furry rascal.

  I am going to close here.  For those of you who read this in the next 24 hours or during the weekend, please remember to pray for me and the retreatants during the time we are together.  We finish at 5 AM, Sunday morning Michigan time, late Sunday evening in Shanghai (1 PM here in Kenya).  Thanks so much.

  A blessed Lent to you and a blessings-filled Easter season as well.

Bernie Owens