Dear Friends,

  Well, I am gathering things to pack and on Saturday evening I leave Kenya to come to Detroit and stay in the Detroit area till June 19.  (Someone, please melt that white stuff and raise the temperatures about 50 degrees!!  We are into hot summer here, 90 degrees each afternoon.  The direct sun is truly hot but, thank God, the humidity is low!!)) I come to get some anticipated surgery, probably in the third week of March, to take time to heal up, and then begin a serious search for financial help for our retreat center and its need for two new buildings.  In addition I will be promoting my book due out soon after Easter and also promote a pilgrimage to Italy starting in Venice and ending in Rome, November 7-21.  So, there are a number of things "on my plate!"

  I have been getting better sleep than before.  I also had two dear American friends visit me before they began a two-week safari in the Serengeti bush country of northern Tanzania, and then when they returned here  but before they returned to the States (Spokane, WA) another day and a half.  Wonderful conversations with them and the Jesuit community with the nuns who are staff members at this retreat center had the joy of celebrating with them their 27th wedding anniversary with a mass and special meal. What a beautiful event it all was.  And then the pictures they sent back of the animals they saw and natives (Masai herders/bush people) they met while on their safari were magnificent!  They witnessed first hand a large pride of lions and also a lion hunt of a wildebeest.  Guess what, the wildebeest lost the chase and became food for the pride, the left overs were left for the hyenas and vultures!!  Life and death are so close there in the bush country of this part of the world!!

  I will be staying at Manresa in Bloomfield Hills, my former home for 19 years, till June 19.  I continue to meet here people on retreat who are just amazing.  The world and the human race God is creating is far richer than what many of us realize.  There are truly striking similarities in us all, even though we seem so different and, sadly, often get stuck at the level of those differences.  I could talk at length about this, this deeper, more invisible world, but I simply don't have the time right now.  Lots of things from students yet to read, a class to teach on Wednesday morning, a big community meeting Thursday evening, and answer a lot of email before I actually pack and leave here.  It is all doable but I can't dawdle or I will have a mess on my hands and high blood pressure!!

  May your Lent continue to be rich in new life with God and lead to a wonderful Easter.  I suppose this will be my last post until I get to Detroit and have something there to write about.

God bless!

Bernie Owens