Dear Friends,

   I am starting late in writing this (9:10 PM on Sunday).  I have had some problems getting into my blogsite but finally was able to do it!  How frustrating till now!

   News about me here??  I just finished a very successful 2.5 days worksop for teachers and staff at our Jesuit-sponsored high school in Nairobi.  It serves high school age teens, boys and girls, who are orphaned and live in the infamous slum called Kibera, a collection of at least a half million people whose homes are a single room hut, maybe 20' by 20'.  I spent more than three hours there back in mid-March with two young men who live there and saw and smelled this unforgettable section of Nairobi. ( which has about 4 million people in all  So maybe 1 in 7 or 8 citizens of Nairobi lives there).  I did a lot of work to assemble  a 41 page work-booklet for the workshop.  30 teachers and administrators participated.  I feel I am more and more at home in this part of the world.  Successful efforts like this one helps to that end. I am feeling really good about it.  In the afternoon following the conclusion of the workshop, the Jesuit president of the school and I went swimming at the outdoor pool.  The sun was hot and it was great to relax that way.  After my swimming for about 25 minutes, I dried off and while walking the backyard with many thick trees sof obvious tropical growth, and while waiting for the president to finish his laps in the pool, two adult monkeys walked into the yard and past me about 60-70 feet away, looked at me, showed no fear, and kept walking through the yard to the front yard area.  They both had light brown fur on the belly, back, and long tails but dark brown fur around their eyes.  Really beautiful animals.

   Today is the 67th anniversary of my receiving communion for the first time in my life.  I can remember so vividly Fr. Charles Coughlin, the famous 'radio priest', giving me first communion in a packed church on that crisp spring Sunday morning.  I still have the black and white group photograph of me with 112 other children who made their first communion that morning.  During my 19 years at Manresa, I  enjoyed very much stopping there at times in mid-afternoon for a short visit to the Blessed Sacrament.  Of course, that church is one of the most impressive in the entire USA., but it also carries enormous personal meaning for me!  In 1997 I led one of the Sunday masses there on that 50th anniversary weekend and chose to speak about what Eucharist meant to Jesus, not as much to me as to Jesus, but by implication  also to me.  Then with my mother in the congregation, sitting where she had sat with my father on the day 50 years earlier when I received for the first time, I gave her a dozen red roses just before the final blessing of the mass, and then put a dozen red roses at the memorial altar where the Little Flower, St. Therese of Lisieux, is imaged in marble standing next to the child Jesus who is seated in the lap of his mother.  I will never forget that moment!  The church is named in Therese's honor (called the Shrine of the Little Flower) and that year (1997) was the 100th anniversary of her death and her going to God.  Six years later I led a group of pilgrims to France and had the chance to visit the very impressive basilica in Lisieux where Therese grew up before her entering the Carmelite convent at the age of 16.  I was even able to walk through her house and backyard.

   Aren't the Tigers something else??  They are really a good team, blessed with great starting pitchers! What a swap over the winter to send Prince Fielder to Texas and get in return the 2nd baseman, Ian Kinsler.  So far we have gotten the better of that trade!!  I get to see on mlb.com the video-clips of any game in the morning following the game of the previous evening.  So I am able to stay close to the excitement in Detroit.  Hurray for the Internet!!

  I have been reading with increasing appreciation a book given to me 27 years ago but only now am reading:  "The Depth of God."  I had spoken about it some months ago, but now have made the time to read it.  I find it to be just so beautiful.  I think I am finally ready to absorb it, to be engaged and held by it.

  Also, I am being stirred like never before with this sense of "seeing God," noting how Jesus emphasizes that to see Him is to see the Father, as He says in today's gospel reading.  Some two months ago I described in a blog-posting how I had realized I was really "seeing" God in my daily contemplative prayer, not seeing in the sense of seeing images or visions but truly "seeing" with THE EYE OF MY HEART  by way of an intuitive gazing that is unmistakable and truly engaging, even riveting at times.  This has been a new gift to me recently, something that began last January 25 when at the beginning of the mass for that day which recalls the conversion of St. Paul, the priest says at the beginning of the mass, "I know the One in whom I have believed."  It so struck me then that I really do know God, that it is not a relationship of just faith but I do know Him and I know Him as God, and at times am delightfully taken by being privileged to get so close to Him, to enjoy His peaceful, loving manner and just sit there in quiet with Him, saying no words but each of us being completely taken by the presence of the other.  Can you imagine??!!  It takes my breath away at times.  I am sure this gift is available for anyone who believes  and deeply cares about God as deepest friend and greatest treasure and then can get quiet enough to pay total, undivided attention to Him for some minutes.

  I have more to talk about but I need to call it "a day."  It is past 10 PM.   Later this week I hope I can get back to the rest I want to tell you about.  God bless.  I hope you are enjoying the emergence of spring. Weather here is a little cooler at night but still quite sunny and even hot sometimes in the mid afternoon, as was yesterday.  All in all, the weather here is almost always terrific, low humidity and so pleasant!  (Because of all the flowers here, we have so much honey--65 pounds harvested recently--and I have a runny nose!)

  Good nite!

Bernie Owens