Dear Friends,

  Here I am Tuesday, just before lunch.  I have come from some truly amazing conversations with the retreatants I am working with now.  Their stories and sharings make God seem so close, so active, so real, as if much of what passes for daily living is by comparison rather unreal and matters much less than what is contained in these stories.

   One fellow tells about how he spent a summer helping some missionary priest here in Kenya with service to really poor people in villages nearby, even building homes with him.  He described this priest as given to the poor and the oppressed and pressing for their rights.  Eventually he was martyred, murdered by someone who did not like what he was doing to "upset" the status quo. It was from knowing and working closely for those few months that this one retreatant experienced God inviting him to be a priest.  I had a lump in my throat listening to this and imagining what it must be like to experience God's call coming through the example of a martyr.

   Another retreatant shared the question about why he felt so struck by two scenes in two different movies:  one at the end of the movie entitled the "Mission" where the Jesuit priest,  head of  the Paraguyan mission, while carrying the Eucharist in a monstrance, is shot dead  by Spanish or Portugese explorers looking for gold; and the other scene was from the movie "Romero" (featuring Archbishop Romero of El Salvador) when at the end of the movie while saying mass and at the moment he lifts the bread and wine to offer it to God is shot to death by an assassin standing at the back of the chapel.  This young seminarian, to be ordained a priest in about two years from now, said to me with great intent, "Why did God come to me so meaningfully in those two scenes, which bear significant similarity?  What does this mean for my life?"

   A third retreatant shared about how two years spent in a part of Africa with defenseless people with no medical help and living in great poverty he was touched in his spirit so deeply and this left him at the same time with great joy, great gratitude for all he had been allowed to know and experience.  This mystery of how God speaks especially through the poor.

   Then another retreatant telling about how her group went to a part of Ethiopia, which is largely Orthodox Christian, to a Muslim village, very primitive.  They built some humble dwelling places there and then on Good Friday, while they were away, everything was burned down by these Muslims.  These Muslims would not sell groceries to them, would not let them ride on their buses.  (Sounds like the South of the USA in the 1940s-60s!!)  But one day as these Christian missionaries were walking along a road not far from the village a boy 4-5 years old came forward to protect them, lead them back to his house, and gave them some food.  Somehow, in that gesture the attitude of the village changed toward these nuns.  As Isaiah says, "A little child shall lead them."

  I am very blessed to hear these stories.  I pass on to you the gist of them.

  Yesterday morning we had a very dangerous thing happen here at the retreat center.  A hot water tank exploded, rocketed  in the air and landed some 200' away from the building on the back lawn, tore a big hole in the roof of the kitchen area, blew out glass and concrete walls.  Fortunately the morning cook was a little late in getting to the kitchen and so was spared her life.

  I have to go!

Bernie Owens