Friday, October 31, 2014

Dear Friends,

  It is Friday evening here and I am in the mood to write a new letter.

  First, a bit of news on our Jesuit community.  Today one of our members died.  He was 76 years old, 11 months older than me.  That makes me think twice!  Yes, some of my contemporaries are done with their time on this earth!  I feel I have so much more to do, things I need to finish before my time to leave comes!  God might see things differently!!!!!  May His will be done, always may His will be done.  It is always wiser, and the best.  He knows better than any plans we might make!  I truly believe that, even though it is proper and natural for each of us to make our plans for the future. What is important is not to hold on to them too tightly, to allow God to alter them and not be unduly upset by such a surprising reversal.

  Anyway, the one who died was an Indian Jesuit, someone who had served in Eastern Africa for over 30 years.  He was terribly overweight, had to get around with an electric cart and sometimes with metal arm crutches.  A little over a week ago He had gone to the food counter for something toward the end of our  dinner time and failed to negotiate the use of one of his crutches.  He fell backward and hit the back of his head hard on the tile floor in our dining room.  He was taken to the Nairobi hospital where a brain scan showed he had incurred a severe concussion and that a blood mass had collected over his right eye, in the front of his brain.  After two or three days of weighing options, doctors concluded surgery was unavoidable.  He underwent surgery about three days ago, became conscious for a while, spoke some jumbled words, but had a high fever.  This morning he died.  We will bury him in our small cemetery Sunday afternoon.

  This evening I was visiting with an 89 year old Indian member of our Jesuit community (sharing some brandy and potato chips also!!  Yum-yum) and he was showing me the letter of a woman friend of his who died very recently of cancer in Chicago.  In the letter she spoke of the very good care she was receiving and then thanked him for the times back in the 1970s and 80s when he visited her and her family while he was fund-raising in the USA.  She said so simply and so beautifully 'thank you' for the gift of his friendship and prayers over the years.  It meant everything to her.  I was quite moved by that simple saying and thought to myself how blessed we are when we can give such a gift to each other and also receive this gift of friendship in our own lives.  There are very few things that are better or more meaningful!   It made me think of so many of you who read this and have blessed me with your friendship and shared over the years faith in God's love for us.  It was the main reason I wanted to write a blog posting this evening, to thank you for being a very important and meaningful part of my life!

   When someone dies, it makes me think about my own life and how extraordinary is this journey, how gifted we are to be, just to be (the miracle of our existence!), and then to have the opportunity to share in the lives of so many wonderful human beings.  This journey we are making together is beyond wonder, it is so, so awesome.  What we are being readied for is beyond description.  (Of course, that is what my book coming in March is about!)

   I wish to pass on to you some reflections from something I read recently, something that is just remarkable and worth pondering.  It goes like this.  A person is enlighten and lifted up when someone really looks at them.  This originally happened when chaos was enlightened by God looking at it (See the book of Genesis, chapter 1, verse 1.)  The 'Bridegroom' casts His gaze across the face of the abyss and sprays life across it.  This is what happened when God created:  the universe, each element in it, each event in it and web of those events held together--all thought, all friendship, all history--are given being by the eyes of the divine Other, eyes 'communicating' being to the world. Such a creation is flamboyant in its beauty, as the Word of God, glancing kindly but wildly, 'scattering a thousand graces' and flooding the cosmos with traces of who He is.

   There is a marvelous sense here of God's creative act being not just a primeval beginning, but a present event.  The event is as gentle, in a sense as precarious, but also as loving as the gaze of one who cares.

   There is a marvelous sense too that the universe has a character to it.  When God the Father gazes, He gazes through His Son.  The Son is His face, smiling upon the world.  "God saw that they were good," which was to make them good by 'seeing them' in His Son.  Creation has a Son-like color, a Son-like shape which the Son alone could fill.

   So the Son does undertake to fill us.  His eyes not only hold us in being; they hold us in friendship, a friendship made possible when He meets us with human eyes.  Humanity is enlightened when the Son becomes flesh, looks at us, draws us out of ourselves, and raises us up to Himself.  In this the whole cosmos is renewed.

  This He did when He became human, lifting us up into the beauty of God, and so lifting up all creatures in Him . . .  In this raising up in the Son's incarnation and in the glory of His resurrection according to the flesh, the Father gave us creatures not just as partial beauty; we can say that He entirely clothed all creation in beauty and dignity.

   God's gaze, then, clothes the world in beauty and joy; that is what happened in the event of Christ, born and risen, confirming the universe in what it is meant to be.  From this perspective we wake up to who we really are!   When we get in touch with how deep and personal that love is for us, then we know who we are and we have a sense of purpose in our life like never before.  We want to live, we are delighted to be alive, and we want to be part of all that is.  We want to do something lasting with our life.  In other words, love has to give itself away.  If we realize we are loved, we want to love back.  And if we note that we have been and are being loved by a love that is cosmic or infinite, then we have to--in fact, we want to-- love back with an infinite, limitless love.  We gaze upon the Beloved like we were first gazed upon and we look at our loved ones like we were first seen with love.  This is what the best of friendships open us up to.  This is what death cannot destroy.  This is what is forever.  It is a taste of eternal life.  I hope you are able to relate to what I am talking about. Friendships in God are forever.  Death ends our life here on earth but real friendship lasts forever.
I find this so meaningful and uplifting, giving hope.

   I need to go to bed.  Goodnite!

Bernie Owens

 

Monday, October 20, 2014

Dear Friends,

    Today here has been a national holiday called Heroes Day.  No work.  Schools, businesses, banks are closed.  No mail.  It honors the military personnel who died in serving and defending this young nation of 51 years.  Even the national anthem was sung at the end of today's mass!  I must say, the American national anthem is much more melodic and memorable.

   Last Friday night-Saturday early morning it rained big time non stop for about 8 hours.  It just POURED all night long till dawn! The ground is still muddy.  Since then we have had various millipedes coming under our bedroom doors, hairless, ugly slugs, huge in size crawling along sidewalks and even on the sides of walls, also land snails of huge, huge size showing themselves from under their shells.  A few of the flying termites too.  Ha,ha.  Welcome to Africa where so much is big and bigger!

  During the last few days a monkey from the nearby primate park has been visiting us and wanting to steal bread crumbs put out for the birds, also looking to pilfer some papayas from our trees.  This afternoon the monkey got into our Jesuit dining room and stole a banana.  No real damage but it emphasizes now that we have to close the door to our dining room.  I saw the critter climb a tree late this morning and jump from one tree to the next and to the next.  When I first saw him I thought he was a bobcat running like a steak.  But I soon spotted it climbing a nearby tree and then I could easily see it was a monkey.  It has an interesting beard on its face!  He is cute and wily. I am glad I am no longer into trying to raise vegetables and then having to defend what I am growing from this hairy thief!  Raising roses and other flowers is much less problematical!

   In these last few days I have felt so much better, more rested and energy restored.  It is so important for me to get vigorous physical exercises every so often, the type of exercise that gets my heart rate up, makes my breathing deep, and gets me sweating.  I have done this faithfully for a number of days in a row along with extra sleep and it has paid off big time.  How this changes my attitude!! Just extra sleep is not enough.  Also, the chiropractor has given me some back exercises to do and that is helping significantly.  The masseuse told me to get my billfold out of my back pocket since it upsets the balance of my pelvis; so I put it in a front pocket.  I can already feel the difference.  Duhhhh!!!

   I am sorry to see that the Tigers exited the playoffs so quickly,without winning one game.  Really, though, I am not surprised at their early demise.  I expected such, given all their problems--especially their relief pitching core-- and it happened.  ( I am expecting the Giants to win the series in five game, six at most.) The Lions' win last Sunday was a steal, a great surprise.  I went to bed with them trailing 10-3 at the half and after breakfast turned on my computer expecting to hear about their losing.  But, I was delighted to see that they had won it is great style in the final four minutes of the game.  Exciting football!  I was sorry to see Notre Dame lose over the weekend by such a bare margin and to the #1 nationally ranked team.  A questionable referee's call at the end left all ND fans upset.

  I want to take some pictures of the spring like flowering going on now with trees and plants.  There are some stunningly beautiful flowers around here, and then the jacaranda trees.  I cannot get over their beauty.

  There has been significant excitement here among us Jesuits about the two-week synod that just finished in Rome.  Its process was a first of its kind in Catholic church circles.  And the position paper they came up with, to be debated and reflected on for the next 12 months before next year's follow-up synod, should be something to read.  I have not seen it yet.

  I need to go.  I am supposed to receive this week or next week the final edited form of the text of my book.  I want to get this project over!  I am already receiving a number of inspirations for a second book, something I vowed I would never do!  But, the taste is now there in my gut and good ideas and insights are percolating.  I jot them down and am preparing all kinds of things to say about the depths of God and the depths of the human person, one the mirror of the other.

  God bless!

Bernie owens

Sunday, October 12, 2014

Dear Friends,

  Here it is Sunday evening again.  The week has gone quickly and I have used it to get a lot of rest.  I have been sleeping on an average of 10 hours a day and feel largely recovered from all the heavy, relentless work of the previous two and three weeks.  But I still have low, low energy in the mornings.  Too much sleep?  I don't know.  I am a little confused about my body needs right now.  What is clear is that I am much better off than I was even a week ago, much more rested in my nerves.  When I have to get up and lead a class, like yesterday, for three hours, I do well.  I am my old self and love the interaction with the students.  So, as I said, I don't know how to read my body right now.

  For three weeks I have had a bone in my lumbar area out of place and it makes me limp some.  I went to a local chiropracter and had two terrific, deep muscle massages to loosen up the back and then one attempt at an adjustment of the bones in my lumbar area but it did not take.  I need to go back during this week.  This pinch or dislocation leaves me with some mild sciatica down the right leg.  It is a bummer.

  My work with the flowers continues to give me delight.  Wow, I look at the roses I am caring for and see more and more beauty in them.  It is very satisfying to spend time on this, just to cultivate something so beautiful as these plants and see them  come alive with healthy leaves and abundant blossoms and pour out beauty upon beauty upon beauty.  This is in both the front of the main building of the retreat center and also in the back.  In the front I planted two dozen marigold plants to complete a long border in the front of the retreat house.  The border is now full of great color from low growing flowers of much variety and then very pleasant on the eyes as you enter the main building.

  Our afternoons are getting hot.  Clear skies and the African sun with its very direct rays beating down can really warm you up.  Thank God for low humidity!.  I cover up a lot (wide-brim hat and long sleeve shirt) when I work out in the area of the flowers in the front and the back of the retreat house main building; I use sun screen also on my ears, face, and on the back of my neck.

  Some of you have emailed me about the ebola scare and expressed worry for me.  I must say I almost never think of it.  It is so far away from here, like San Francisco would be from Detroit.  I do pray each morning that the angels of God protects us all here from both disease and any violence.

  I am finishing up this week with my course on Teresa of Avila's "The Interior Castle."  Two Wednesdays from this coming Wednesday is the final exam.  Leading the 11 seminarians through that classic and a very good commentary on it has left me with a renewed sense of awe at what God is leading us all to, in this life and finishing up in the next life.  It is not easy to get people to learn to be quiet with God in sustained, regular ways and to allow God to initiate new possibilities, new way of living and praying in their lives.  Most people don't seem to "get it", are not disciplined enough to let God in to themselves that much.  Many have no teacher to show them the way and to cheer them on.  But even with these limits, to read a book of this greatness gives you the reader a hint of the greatness, the awesome depths that are there in us waiting to be uncovered and claimed by us. We are much, much more than we seem! The busyness of daily life and its mundane, often very superficial happenings hide all of this from us, almost all of the time but not in every moment.  Sometimes we do get hints, little flashes of this glory we are made for and, like the woman at the well, thirst for.

   This morning at prayer something of this hit me strongly.  The wounds of the risen Christ are beyond description in terms of the love and beauty and goodness of God contained therein.  Is this what the doubting Thomas encountered when he put his finger into the open side of the risen Christ?? I have heard it said that we will all be saved by beauty.  (this is said in a novel by Dostoevsky and Pope Benedict liked to cite it a number of times.)  I mus say that there is an indescribable beauty in the wounds of Christ for any of us to see and be held by if we look there with love and gratitude.  There is no greater beauty than the gift of someone totally, totally given to another.  In this encounter one has the opportunity to see and be taken into a love that is more complete and more poured out in selfless care in this place of His Heart, with its open side, than in any other gesture of love ever.  I have never before encountered anything so beautiful, so moving as this gift.  Nothing comes close to its beauty and goodness. Nothing is so totally given, so noble, so worthy of response and love.  Just to be there with no sense of time going by, just looking and being held by it all--no words can describe this!!  How do you respond, especially when you open to the fact that this is all given for you, for me?  It is so personal and so very powerful.

   I need to get off to bed.  I am up early tomorrow to go to St. Aloysius High School to process the prayer of this last week of six members of the school's faculty. They are preparing to begin the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius next January.

  May your week be blessed.  Enjoy the autumn color.  I miss it, although there is so much beauty in nature here.  Again, the jacaranda trees are in their purple glory right now, full of blossoms all over their branches.  Next to the crimson bougenvilla (spelling??) blossoms, they light up the surroundings here!

Bernie Owens

Monday, October 6, 2014

Dear Friends,

  It is Monday evening here, October 6.  We have a very impressive full moon in the sky and a big ring around it, which usually means rain is imminent.  We will take it!

  I spent the morning on the computer, reading about the Tigers and Lions in their major failures, and then after feeling I had had enough of that, I wandered the grounds of our retreat center on what was a beautiful morning to admire the jakaranda trees in bloom while they are dropping their little purple bell-shaped blossoms on the ground and often forming a carpet of purple that is just so lovely, so really delicate in its beauty.  This afternoon I donned my farmer clothes and worked nearly three hours on my roses.  They are turning out to be something quite impressive.  I just love to do this because when working in the dirt I get a complete mental break from my usual work.  My mind is completely on weeding, digging, applying the food for the roots, trimming with my clippers, etc.  I sweat and enjoy the creativity of it all, while working with the elements (bone meal and composted cow manure) to put them around the roots of the roses and then add lots of water.  I loosen the soil, pull out weeds or grass that has grown in close and compete with the rose for its nutrition.  The variety of colors in the blossoms I am getting makes it a delight to observe.  Almost every day I make sure to walk by this plot just to enjoy and admire.  The vines I planted some weeks ago are climbing relentlessly up a wooden pole and will someday put out yellow and orange flowers, little ones, and form like a lit-up torch.

   Up to about 5 day ago I was feeling so exhausted and not sleeping well nor enough. I have been working on a very packed schedule for the last 2-3 weeks with not enough space between the end of one task and the start of the next one.  I have asked not to guide retreatants for our next round (October 7-16) and so I will be operating at a much reduced work load for almost the next two weeks.  In the meantime I have been getting caught up on my sleep, napping sometimes--which I almost never do--and then doing what I did this afternoon: work in the dirt with the roses or sometimes I work out on a treadmill and a stationery bike.  I should sleep well tonight!!

  Last week I finally secured my driver's license.  At the same time I finally got my entry visa card, a permanent card that makes me officially legal in this nation.  I can now leave Kenya and be sure I can get back in without any trouble.

   I get a haircut at a local shop for about $3.50.  The local barbers are so used to cutting wiry hair for black Kenyans.  So when a white man comes in with  straight hair, they have to really shift in their methods.  What do you expect for $3.50??  Whatever is done, it can always grow out; nature can correct mistakes!  I usually tip the barber another 85 cents (100 shillings).  I have yet to be hacked or chopped.  So far I have not been made into an embarrassment in public!!

  I am following closely and praying a lot for the synod of bishops meeting in Rome for the next two weeks. It has huge, huge implications for the way church leaders conduct a synod or council (dialogic, collegial, and empowered to make decisions) as well as on its central theme:  marriage and the family.   This year's two week meeting will prepare for another two week followup meeting a year from now.

  I am starting to fade away, even though it is only 8:30 PM.  I have to get up at 6 AM tomorrow to go to a nearby high school where I am guiding six faculty members in how to pray with certain passages of the bible I have given them.  They are all doing well, which makes my travel time and energy given to guiding them worth it.

   Take care.

Bernie Owens