Dear Friends,

  I continue to have trouble getting into this site for blogging!  I have spent the last 45 minutes fooling around with this and that before the bar with 'new posting' popped up and allowed me to have something to click on.  Oh well, here I am.

  I am writing at 4:45 PM, 30 minutes before Eucharist, for me and the 35 or so retreatants who are here at this time.  I just finished showering following some heavy digging and swinging a pick-ax to loosen and dig out a lot of dirt in a section for the flowerbed/rosebed I am now taking care of.  In the place I took out soil I put in composted cow manure.  Wow!  Rich stuff!  I am getting the area ready for the transplanting of two large clusters of cana lilies which give fire red blossoms.  I found them in an area that some years ago was excavated and these flowers were left to grow in a wild area, with no one caring for them.  So I am going to rescue them and bring them to the flower bed and let them grace the corner of where the rose bed and another bed of many kinds of colorful, low-growing flowers I recently planted meet.  (That was a long sentence!  I hope you can make sense of it!) Two weeks ago I composted all the rose plants, probably 25 in number.  Already I can see the difference in the leaves.  They are shiny and look quite healthy.  Now I hope it leads to some gorgeous blossoms in greater number than we have been getting up to now.  Till I composted them, the bushes looked, I would call it, anemic.  Also, I want to find something to kill the aphids that suck on the rose vines but not use an insecticide for doing that.  Also, black rust on some of the leaves.  I have to learn what that means--is a spray needed to kill a disease or is it a sign of a need for some kind of plant food??  I don't know yet.

  About 10 days ago I found on the CNN news website a presentation of about 40 black and white photos of the planet Mars that NASA shared with the public.  The pictures came from the lander that is on wheels, full of cameras and laboratory equipment for examining soil samples.  It  moves very slowly on the surface of Mars.  I must say it fascinated me to no end.  It was even a moment of wondering at God, that God "has waited" for human beings for millions of years to come and discover  up close this piece of His creation.  It is all the more fascinating to me because each night when there is a clear sky here, as I leave the dining room following dinner, I look up in the easterly sky and there I see Mars with its distinctive red color. . .  35-40 million miles away and wonder at what it is like there.  Well, to some degree I know what it is like there.  There is no life there, no water to speak of, as barren as the Egyptian desert at Mt. Sinai or some parts of southern Arizona that are so dry nothing grows, nothing!  But still, there is a history of life that is written in the rock already analyzed by the lander.  I can't help but think:  what must God be like to have made something like this??  And it is only a little speck in the universe, as is the planet Earth.  It is all an instance of great wonder for me.

   A little more about the workshop I conducted last Thursday through Saturday noon.  The workshop was to open these teachers to a holistic sense of teaching, engaging the student's imagination, affectivity and values, as well as communicating to them a certain amount of information about whatever the topic was to be addressed in the course of studies.  An interactive dynamic is supposed to be used by the teacher, not a style where the teacher just lectures (gives out information) with the students passively writing down notes from the lecture.  Rather, the art of good teaching is largely involved in knowing how to ask good questions that draw out the students during the class time, to get them active and interested in this new part of the their world.  This process came from a document a worldwide committee of Jesuits put together in the 1980s and have tried to get implemented in Jesuit sponsored schools throughout the world.  I took the document and broke it down into pieces that could be processed by these teachers with some depth over the 2.5 days.  They all seemed to be quite happy with what happened.  It was all worth celebrating with some Dewars and great tasting cheese when I got home.

   Two weekends ago one of the men who serves as a guard at our entrance gate got married at a nearby Catholic church.  He invited everyone that works here at the retreat centre.  Many were able to go.  This man and his wife, like so many here in Kenya, had lived a common law marriage for a number of years and finally wanted to have a church wedding and have their son confirmed as well.  The ceremony included three other couples who were getting married that Saturday.  I am told couples do it this way so that they can share the cost of the flowers and the food at the reception that follows.  On this occasion the catechist who helps prepare the couples for the wedding was supposed to present a list of the names of the couples getting married.  He or she failed to put the name of the guard and his wife on that list for the priest who was receiving the vows.  So the priest motioned for the couple to stay away, that they did not belong with the other three couples, that their vows were not going to be received.  I am told the tears that followed, the upset in the congregation that followed reflected what a disaster this turned out to be.  How hurtful for this employee of ours and his wife and son.  I am told the priest was eventually persuaded that the catechist had been derelict, failing to remember to put their names on the list handed to the priest, and that the couples' vows should be received.  So he did that in a private ceremony after the mass was over.  But . . . can you imagine having such a memory of your wedding day??!! You might not want to go back to that church ever again! A nun who works here and went to the wedding was livid.  She did comment on how all those invited from here to the ceremony as guests were so caring of this couple.  She said she could see how the employees here very much care for each other.  That was the saving grace.

  A striking cultural thing I have just awakened to recently is the prevalence of poligamy in this part of the world.  The Kenyan parliament just passed a law legalizing it among Muslims and anyone else who wants to have more than one wife. (The bill says the man is not required to ask his wife whether this is acceptable.  He can just bring her into the house and that's it.  Some women accept it because it means an extra hand with the farming chores, the gardening and tending of the animals.) In the process of debating the bill, the female members of the parliament walked out in protest.  So you can see that it is a contested part of this section of the world.  I am told that there are instances of men who come to church, want their children prepared for the sacraments, but have taken more than one wife.  They are not to receive communion.  Yes, I am in a different part of the world.  I guess in the First World some men keep their wife but carry on with an affair or two or three, as long as they can get away with such duplicity.)

   The editors of those who intend to publish my book are now reading closely everything and laying out the way the text will be positioned on the pages.  I have not heard anything from them in about three weeks.  Eventually they will be contacting me about any last details and changes.  I must say that many days go by and I never think a thought about my book.  I am so into another world, like the amazing Tigers baseball team.  How fun right now to be a Tigers fan.  The team just keeps winning and winning!

  The Nairobi bombings!  Yes, they are ugly and vicious and make one think twice about going into town, to a mall or supermarket.  Life has to go on and I think the government will have to do something more radical than they are presently doing.

   On Sunday evening I meet with three young seminarians, about 30 years old, and one nun around in her 50s.  They are all beginning at that time the full 30 day retreat of the Spiritual Exercises.  I will be their guide for the coming month, till June 25.  This is a huge event in their lives and a lot of work for me.  Please keep them in your prayers, please, as well as me!  Thanks so much.

   I need to go to dinner.  We just had a major rain storm here as I was wrapping up this letter.  We needed it.  A great gift for us, especially for the farmers. God bless!

Bernie Owens