Dear Friends, A good Friday morning to you all. I write in between the end of one batch of retreatants and the arrival this evening of another group of folks who will be here for 8 days. Our weather continues to be gorgeous. We are into summer big time and are enjoying the beautiful temperatures while feeling the comfort of the cool weather during the nighttime. Once the sun goes down, you need a light sweater. A little excitement during the previous week: three lions got from the nearby city park into the city. One was actually a lioness with one or more cubs. We think they found a culvert in a construction zone, got curious, and followed it from the park out into the edge of the city areas. No one got hurt and the animals were successfully rounded up and brought back to the park. Anyone who visits here must find time to visit that park. It is unique in the world. All kinds of animals live there in the wild, in the open. You can drive through it in your car on a dirt road (with a full tank of gas and your cellphone with you in case your car breaks down!) It is not a zoo but a free zone for animals to live there as they did before the big city was built near them. The park is probably 40 miles from one end to the other and quite deep, maybe 25 miles. It has a big wall around it to separate city and animal park. I have spoken before about a family of baboons coming out across the road I take to get to the seminary where I teach. They do this when we go through a dry spell and they are forced to go looking for food outside the park. Some gardener suffers the ravaging of his hard work when these baboons wipe out his produce. In stop and go morning rush hour traffic I get to watch these animals up close as they gauge when it is safe to cross the highway and return to the park. Fascinating!! There is much talk here about the national elections coming up next year. The tribal factions make for scary conversation and threats of violence. We pray! The elections of 2007 are still talked about with stories of unspeakable violence, tribal war, machete deaths, beheadings, brutal torturing. This nation is so young and struggles to get on its feet. A number of people live so dishonestly, in ways that would easily put them in prison if the justice and penal system were reliable. There is so much cheating regarding public funds and people living like kings and queens as a result. It is so evil in view of the fact that the vast majority struggle just to survive. I am reminded of yesterday's Gospel reading about the rich man who lived in luxury, oblivious to Lazarus who lay just outside his gate, where the dogs licked his sores. Jesus makes it clear that it is not riches by itself that are to be condemned but those who live with much apathy or indifference about those near them who struggle for life and do not help them out of their plenty. The drug problems among the teens here are significant, so too the luring of these children and teens into witchcraft and sexually perverted ways of relating. The devil exists and in some places is thriving. Parents do not monitor their children sufficiently, too busy with their work careers and chasing the good life! This sounds like the same situation in some families of the USA. Today's mass had two compelling readings: one about the selling of Joseph by his brothers who were jealous of him and the love their father showed for him. They sell him for 20 pieces of silver to merchants on their way to Egypt. Joseph ends up being the right hand man of the pharoah and negotiates the salvation of the whole nation of Israelites who are struggling to survive under the Egyptian king as his workers. Such good being drawn out of evil!! Then the Gospel passage is the famous parable of the son of the vineyard owner being sent as the last gesture of the owner in an appeal to have a trusting, mutually beneficial relationship with the tenants he had hired. The tenants had beaten or killed the previous emissaries. The vineyard owner says, "surely they will respect my son." But no, they see that they will get the vineyard for themselves if they get rid of, that is kill, the one who is to inherit it all. The homilist, a retired Jesuit bishop who lives with us after he retired at the age of 75 from being bishop in Ethiopia, made the point that this selling of people, like what happened in both readings, goes on in our own day and is one of the most dramatic examples of how Jesus continues to be crucified in our own times. ("Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?!) He cited an internet piece of information he found some two or three weeks ago that states that from all of the refugees that have poured into Europe during these last two years, over 10,000 teens and children are unaccounted for, have disappeared, and are thought to be victims of human trafficking. He made the point that in some cases, these people "sell" their own selves to obtain money for their families, so poor and desperate are they. Of course, many female minors and adults, sell themselves in prostitution just to survive and have something for their children. What a desperate way to live!! No wonder it leads some to commit suicide. How ugly and evil this situation! I mentioned in earlier letters on this blogsite that since returning from Italy and the pilgrimage I led there last November, I have found myself gripped by the story and spirit of a young Carmelite nun (St. Teresa Margaret of the Sacred Heart of Jesus) who died at the age of 22 and whose body, since 1770, has been perfectly preserved and can been seen, as I was able to do, in a side chapel at the monastery in Florence. Her biography and its description of the life of her soul, her aspirations, her longings and deep relationship with God have stirred some profound thoughts and feelings in me. Perhaps the single greatest blessing that she was given was a very, very deep sense of how beautiful and true it is that God is LOVE, yes, LOVE. The Spirit of God overwhelmed her with a sense of this truth. As I was reading slowly her story, over a four week period after the pilgrimage, and took lots of notes, I was getting the sense that many passages were opening up for me new and spiritually richer ways of relating to God, to others, and to myself. One set of experiences that recur on and off for me is a very strong sense inside me of the goodness and lovableness of certain men and women friends I have gotten close to over the years. This awareness will happen oftentimes around 4 or 5 AM when I am beginning to wake up, and so I just lie there with this amazing new sense of a certain person, or two or three of them. I liken it to what happened to the apostles Peter, James, and John when on Mt. Tabor they suddenly saw Jesus in a way they had never seen Him before: radiating with a light that showed His depths, His pure goodness, and divine origins. In moments like these early morning "revelations" I feel so close to God, so overwhelmed by divine beauty and goodness in such people. It many times moves me to a lot of tears. I don't think they know that I have been allowed to see them this way, but I email them sometimes to say something of this awareness to them, maybe in retrained ways lest they think me nuts and that I have gone off the deep end. I have certain acquaintances, some I think in my family, who think this sorry state has happened to me already and they don't need this latest data to base their judgment on my alleged manic state. I do think when any of us are blessed to be brought to the edge of eternity and Divinity and that we are grasped in our depths by this Divine Presence, this Divine Friend and, yes, intense Lover, we are invited and urged to see ourselves as much, much more than we think we are, that what we are being prepared for is so far beyond our expectations and hopes. ("More Than You Could Ever Imagine: On Our Becoming Divine") We get to see, for just a brief moment, the glory of God, of God Himself and that glory each of us carries around inside ourselves. Our busyness and practical concerns so often distract or blind us from noticing this Reality, but then, in certain unexpected moments, the curtain is pulled back and we do see, we see as God sees and we begin to feel something of what God feels when He looks at anyone of us His precious children. This is why God suffers so much when He sees us hurt anyone of our neighbors, any of His children, any brother or sister. As Jesus said in the last hours of His life, "My commandment is this: I want you to love one another AS I HAVE LOVED YOU." And this implies He wants us to be willing to die for each other, to put ourselves on the line that much, to love life and the people in our lives that much. Love is not a feeling; it is a choice, and some of the times it hurts and even costs us everything. When we realize this, we no longer can cynically caricature such talk as romantic prattle or mushy talk. No, this Reality demands everything out of us and the willingness to lay down our lives for each other, stick out our necks for each other, protect each other's dignity and well-being, to be alert to the Lazarus type people outside our gate waiting to be listened to, cared about, helped in their struggles. I need to go. May your Lent continued to be blessed. I lift all of you up each day at the Eucharist, joining you and your life with its challenges and joys to the offering of our Brother and Savior, Jesus, who brings us all with Himself to the Father and with Whom we are each given more of their Spirit so that we can go back to our daily lives empowered by Divine Love in a world that largely does not see, is not aware of, this great truth and Good News. Bernie Owens

Dear Friends, It is with heavy heart that I tell you I have lost what I spent two hours typing for you this evening! Google is doing something to blogsites, something I do not understand. I cannot account for what I did or did not do to lose everything! How terribly frustrating. It makes a great difference to tell friends what is going on in my life here and to let you share in some of its blessings. Google says these changes are to make everything safer and easier. I really wonder!! Anyway, I will try again in one or two weeks to post ano. I was telling you in this letter I lost about the monkeys returning and the great outdoor swim I had this afternoon and the beauty and fun of the ordination liturgy a week ago at a cathedral for 1500 people! I don't have the time to type it out again! Sorry.

Dear Friends, Sunday dinner time, Valentine's Day, here in Nairobi. We have had a day of beautiful weather, 80 degrees, low humidity, wonderfully sunny, and I took advantage of it all and went for an outdoor swim at a pool surrounded by palm trees, 50 feet high yucca plants in bloom, cactus plants probably 40 feet high, and then the ever present bougen-via (spelling?) bushes in bloom, these with fucia colored petals gracing the area. I swam my laps for about 20-25 minutes and then sat at the edge of the pool so I could soak in the sun on my back. It is like July here, the middle of summer, and a great time to relax. I needed this after some really busy days this past week, fruitful in ministry, including this morning. I came home and could not stay awake, so after lunch I napped for 90 minutes and then went for the swim. What a way to relax on the Sabbath! And yes, the monkeys are back, two of them roaming our grounds, trying to get into our mango grove and anticipate the ripening of our bananas in the big grove of trees we have. They are good size monkeys, with a white fur ring around their faces along with an otherwise black or dark grey coat and long tails. They are cute, even beautiful to see . . . until they succeed in stealing some of our fruit!! They are so coy, keeping their distance, climbing trees to get away and waiting there for you to tire of chasing them and walk away. It is very important that we lock our windows and doors if we have food in our rooms. They will try to break into our dining areas, here at our Jesuit community and then too in that of the retreat center, if they smell bananas and/or bread from inside. They are fun until they succeed in getting inside and making a mess of the dining area, with banana peels here and bread wrappings there. Last Wednesday night and then during most of the day of Thursday we had rain storms and lightning here that were of major size and force. One lightning bolt struck a transformer on a pole on our property and set it on fire. We lost power twice during this 36 hours. I was walking our cloister corridor, a canopied walk of more than 100 yards long--just wonderful where I can walk even during the worst of weather. I do that when praying a rosary or the chaplet. Around 3 PM on Thursday, during a downpour of almost monsoon proportions the lightning bolt hit. There was no gap between the flash and the sound. I really jumped, got scared, and got back to my room as soon as possible. I thought it much too risky to keep walking at that time in the cloistered corridor. Last weekend I went to the ordination to the priesthood of a young man I had led through his 30-day retreat a year and a half ago. Lawrence Otieno is his name. Three other diocesan seminarians were ordained priests with him and one other diocesan seminarian was ordained a deacon. What a joyous moment it was: at this recently built cathedral that holds about 1,500 people in a pentagon-shaped building. The singing and the dancing were just superb. Even though 15 Jesuits, four of them former students of mine, were being ordained deacons at just about the same time at the seminary on Nairobi, I felt I really owed it to this man who I greatly admire to come and celebrate him. I am very glad I did. There was not one cloud in the sky most of the day. The cathedral was jammed, from wall to wall, with about 1,500 people and then some people even standing outside the church building. The girls and boys who led the dancing and singing were like young folk (10 years old or so) at a jazzer-size class for the really physically fit. I got "winded" just watching them dance in the aisles, and then all so coordinated. It was obvious that they had practiced for this special occasion. At the start of the three readings an adult male with a turban on his head and dressed in very colorful costume, came running up the center aisle while beating a small drum to call our attention to the coming of God's Word soon to be proclaimed. Then behind him came two men carrying, one in the front and one in the back, a canopied ark of the covenant, except instead of stone tablets it was the lectionary, the book of bible readings for the liturgy of the Word. What an elegant and creative way to honor the Word of God and to get the attention of the congregation toward that special moment or time during the whole ceremony. In the meantime I was one of about 80 priests gathered up in the sanctuary of the cathedral. Once the bishop lays his hands on the heads of these men being ordained and says the words of ordination, then every priest is invited to come in a line and lay his hands on the head of each of the newly ordained. It is all done in silence. Quite impressive but rather long for 80 priests to do this! The poor heads of these four men just ordained!!! During the liturgy there was a choir, probably 100 members, a majority of them women, leading us in our singing. The energy that they showed was something else. And the organ, an electric one, sounded fairly close to a pipe organ--pretty good! Much better than the usual keyboard one hears in most parishes here. What is so characteristic of the liturgies, especially of the music at masses, is how the participants, choir members and those in the pews, move their bodies with the rhythm of the music. They love a 1,2, 1,2 beat, and then to clap their hands to that beat, to sway their bodies and to have drums accompanying all the singing. You cannot sit nor stand still. You really stick out if you do stand motionless and not clap. How different from white cultures and their style of worship. While the music and dancing were remarkable, what was not pleasant was the introductions at the end of the mass of about half of the 80 priests in teh sanctuary. Why this has to be done, I do not know. but it went on and on for over a half hour. It made the entire ceremony, from beginning to end, last four (yes, 4!!) hours and fifteen minutes. That is unforgivable. I have learned not to drink much before these mara

Dear Friends, In three hours I have lost two letters I spent so much time typing for you. It is late here, I need to go to bed, and I will try in another week or two to write you another letter, hoping to God it does not suddenly disappear from the screen, which is what might happen to this before I finish!!!!! Bernie owens

Friends,' It is almost a month since I last wrote. As you probably surmise, I have been super busy. This evening ended a heavy teaching schedule in five different programs, three here at the retreat center and two at the seminary. Teaching in the areas of spirituality and theology gives me a lot of life, but at the same time it takes a "lot of gas in my tank," lots of preparation and xeroxing of handouts to provide a quality learning experience. So here I am wanting to visit with you on this Friday evening when all of this is finally behind me. I now have a ten-day open space on my calendar till the next set of retreatants comes here for their 8-day retreats (the evening of 2/16). I plan to use this very rare opening on our calendar to work on my fund-raising efforts, to set up events back in the Detroit area for May and June (I return to the USA on April 22) and to seek out foundations for possible grants to the project I have chosen to lead. (I have accomplished 27% of our goal to this date. Please God, help me/us to wrap up this effort in the next year or two. I want to start writing my next book and cannot get momentum in doing that until this more immediate need is met! Writing a book takes a terrible amount of time for isolation and extended hours day after day to make any progress and to be inspired as you go along in the writing! I am certainly not lacking the desire to accomplish this.) I intend to use some of this time to promote my book that is almost a y er old among Faith Formation leaders in certain parishes in the diocese of Detroit. If a diocese can adopt it as a main source for ongoing faith formation, then I think the sales of the book will really take off in the USA. The word will get out that it is a fine source to help people go deeper in their lives with God. Some of you have expressed concern for me about whether jihadist violence is nearby or on my/our mind that much. I would say definitely not. If bombings were to occur anywhere near here, it would be in the city where lots of people congregate, like in a mall. Our retreat center is at the far western end of the metro area of 4-5 million people, and we are at the end of a dirt, rocky road that would not appeal to saboteurs/jihadists. If anything, we are more prone to robberies, and that I sense is rather remote. Yes, I lock my door every night, the windows too. And I sleep quite well. There is a certain point when you simply surrender to God your situation and trust in His protection through His angels. Yes, I do believe in angels and pray every morning to Michael and all of God's angels to protect me and this place, to also guide me in my fund-raising efforts. Three weeks ago the Kenyan army camp, stationed inside neighboring Somalia, was attacked at 4 o'clock in the morning by Al Shabaab jihadists with enormous car bombs, three of them. The cars or jeeps rammed through the main gate of the compound, literally blew it up and open and were followed by suicide foot-soldiers firing at any soldier of the Kenyans. It was a disaster for the Kenyans. So many soldiers were killed. The Kenyan government has yet to admit in public how many of our soldiers were killed. It is suspected that it was about 200. The camp has since been abandoned and the Kenyans are setting up a new camp in a nearby area. There is talk that the jihadist rebels are gaining strength. American drones do take out some of their leaders, but drones by themselves are not enough to make the difference in a military campaign. The Kenyans need to be much better coordinated and equipped. This nation is only 53 years old; it is still so young and not yet developed that much. There is so much poverty here, unemployment, behavior that is criminal(family abuse, incest, prostitution, alcoholism that sometimes leads to blindness, robberies, illegal land purchasing, etc) reflecting hopelessness and economic lifelessness, (few markets outside Africa!) And yet some wonderful, courageous things are going on through great institutions of schools, orphanages, hospitals, medical dispensaries in villages and in "the bush". It is the leaders of these signs of hope that want to come here for their annual 8 days of retreat, of quiet, so that they can regain spiritual and bodily energy to go back to their commitments. Yes, we are their oasis, their place for getting re-energized. I continue to feel the power and depth of my three weeks in Italy last November, especially from the two weeks of it on pilgrimage. God strongly touched me while there, as I said in my previous letter, especially at the Carmelite monastery in Florence and then through the biography of the 22 year old nun whose body is preserved miraculously at that monastery. She (St. Teresa Margaret of the Sacred Heart of Jesus) died in 1770, six years before the American Declaration of Independence. I spent the month after coming home from Italy reading closely the passages in her biography that had so moved me in the previous reading from months ago. I have a strong sense at various times that God many times "touches through" the veil that covers our mode of existence and impresses on us closely His choicest gifts, especially His own personal love for us, a love that is so sweet to the soul. From "the other side of that veil" He guides us, leads us, blesses us, gives us hints--sometimes really strong--of the life that is awaiting us all once we pass over. If we pay attention His presence will significantly impact us, stirring those deeper desires and thirsts of the soul, and sometimes these thirsts become so active, so strong that you are in His grip, so to speak, and marked deeply in your soul with an unforgettable knowledge and understanding of this inner life of the Holy Spirit stirring inside us all. "Taste and see the goodness of the Lord," as the psalmist says. This life wells up from our depths and comes out in joy and in our tears at certain times. We sense we have been touched by Divinity, and our spirit cannot forget such encounters. We long for the fullness of it all. For this we have been made, and our life is a journey to this communion that will never end nor be taken away from us. Tomorrow morning I will go to the ordination to the priesthood of a young man I led through a 30 day retreat a year and a half ago. Lawrence Otieno is his name (Otieno means you were born in the morning hours.) He will make a fantastic priest. What a good soul he is! His first assignment will be to serve in Cameroon, in western Africa, about 2000 miles west of here, in some very poor, even primitive villages. He spent some time there before he did his theology studies in Nairobi and spoke glowingly of feeling so close to God through these people who live at the edge and throw all their hope on and put their trust in God. Lawrence's father died about two weeks ago. His father was so ill and weak, bed-ridden I think, that there was no hope of his coming to tomorrow's celebration. I said to Lawrence, "God has now made it possible for your father to come to your ordination and to rejoice with you at the beginning of your life as a priest. Your father is free now and will be there to pray with you and thank God for your calling and for sustaining you." Anytime I go to an ordination, I spend some time just looking at the parents of the ones being ordained. I can never get over what an honor it is, what a blessing it must be on the marriage of the parents to see one of their children be called to such a life and make it through the long training. I will never forget my own parents and their joy shared with me on the day, nearly 44 years ago, when I was ordained (6/10/72). My God, 44 years ago! I am an old man! But I don't feel old at all. I have never been as busy or engaged as I am now, at least as much as I was when I lived in the States. (You know, it does not matter where one lives once you have discovered this greatest of friendships, the closeness and richness of Christ and His Abba, who is our Abba. This is the pearl of great price worth selling everything in order to own. Once this happens to a person, so much of what one thought important before becomes as nothing, even a liability and distraction. I need to go to bed. It is 9:45 PM here now. Tomorrow I will wear my black clerical suit for this wonderful occasion, probably the fourth time in my nearly 2.5 years here in Kenya when I will have done so. Clerics among Jesuits here in Kenya are even more rare than they are among Jesuits in the USA. Some traditional Catholics don't know what to do with us! I will say that in some cases certain Jesuits don't know what to do with other Jesuits! We are a "different breed" in a number of ways! I love being one of them! Bernie Owens