Dear Friends, Today is Tuesday, October 25, a week since my last letter. I am finally back to my routine of meeting daily with five out of a total of the fifty retreatants here at Mwangaza during the next eight days. I have a Belgian layman, a woman from Singapore, of Chinese ancestry and lately has worked in the refugee camps in northern Kenya, then three Kenyan nuns. After a two-week layoff, much needed and much appreciated, I feel truly good to be back into conversations of significant depth, with people baring their souls and letting me "see" God working in their lives and their own thirsts for a deeper life with God. Such conversations are ever new, never boring! Last Wednesday Fr. Bart Murphy and I went into the Nairobi Animal Park immediately south of the city boundaries of Nairobi. It is unique in the world. I learned it is about 30 miles from the western end to the eastern end and close to 20 miles from the northern most point to the southern edge. We arrived there at 7 AM; the morning sun had been up about an hour. We did not finish until 1 PM. What we saw was well worth the trip. While we did not see any lions or rhinos, we did see up close lots and lots of impalas, gazelles, antelopes, wildebeasts, zebras, hindebeasts(spelling?), also a few water buffaloes, two hippos asleep in the morning sun and sticking their heads and nostrils just above the water level of a lake they live in, then about 15 ostriches (truly aggressive characters!), a family of baboons (with babies on the rump end of two mother baboons, one monkey only and a really small one at that, then about 8-10 giraffes, some warthogs too (really ugly characters!). One giraffe, a very tall male, was standing on the road nibbling at some thorny bush with lots of green shoots on it. We pulled up our car abut 5 feet short of hitting the animal. We could not go around him but only stay on the road. The giraffe did not want to move. Soon two vans driven by drivers who are employees of the park and hired by groups of 8-12, were approaching behind us. I wondered how long this impasse was going to last! We inched a little closer to the animal and still the animal would not pay any attention to us but kept eating. Finally, after we revved up the engine while in neutral, the giraffe began to move and lopped leisurely by the car, right by the driver's door, almost brushing it, and continued past the car's right tail light (on the right side, the side of the driver in Kenya) and never once intimated any threat or irritation with us. This gave us an amazing closeup view of this gorgeous animal covered with a beautifully spotted coat and showing an enormously long neck. What a beautiful creature of God! What a privilege to view it close enough to touch it and then in the wild, in its natural habitat. In my previous letter I spoke about how sometimes I feel 'confined' while living and working here, that I don't get out often enough but can get on this treadmill of listening to people making their retreats, listening to what over time is emotionally and psychologically exhausting. In the last few days I have pondered the possibility of God letting this happen to me, having clearly called me here to Kenya (and I am sure He still calls me here), but is challenging me to find ways of changing my routine, spend less time on the computer, take that extra one hour nap in the afternoon (which I fight!) if I feel I need it, and very consciously choose to surrender to Him in any moment when I feel empty or alone, to set aside my preference and accept His ways, sometimes shown in the limitations of my body and its slowly diminished energy-level. There is a Reality, a divine presence waiting to be noticed and loved underneath the feelings of sadness, limitation, loneliness, being unloved. I think I am more and more understanding the ways of these especially impressive Carmelite saints whose biographies I have been reading these last few years (right now a biography on a Chilean Carmelite nun, only 19 years and 9 months old when she died in 1920 thanks to typhoid. St.Teresa of the Andes is her name, Juanita Fernandez her family names. There are deep stirrings that happen in me when I read the lives of these people. The descriptions of their hungers and thirsts for God are often quite stirring for me, as is the case with this teenager who went to God so early in her life. What comes through strongly for me when reading these lives is that it is God who makes saints, not saints who decide to become saints and put all their energy into the relationship they have with God. Each of us is loved and favored by God, usually far more than we realize. Saints seem to be people who really appreciate this, who take time regularly and often to pay attention to this presence and the movements of God in their depths; they walk with humility, endless gratitude, and the joy of close friendship with God. They are often struck with wonder at the goodness and lovableness of God, and this increases their sense of being utterly unworthy of such gifts. Anyway, I am sensing a new chapter in my walk with God while in Kenya and a challenge to experience God, to trust in God in the present moment and not wait for some future day to "start living again!" I am going to move on, pray Vespers, and get ready for dinner. I got new glasses today for distance viewing, tinted also to filter out the ultraviolet rays. I have to wait two weeks to get my new reading glasses. They will be bifocals. It has been four years since I had new glasses. The old ones were becoming increasingly inadequate! Oh yes, I continue to wait for donations to come in from people who promised me donations. I keep working on recruiting interested Catholics for the pilgrimage to the Holy Land I am leading next June 6-19. Are any of you interested?? Bernie Owens

Hi, Friends, It has been a month to this day, September 18, since my last letter. It is not a sign that nothing has been going on! I came back from the US on August 12 and jumped into the work of listening to retreatants three days later. This continued non-stop for a month, and then after two days another 8 day stretch, and after that a week of teaching some classes. Pretty soon I felt exhausted, little or no gas in my tank. I begged for a break and finally got it a week ago last Sunday. Sleep and plenty of it was the first order; then a chance to swim at an outdoor pool and take a car and get out of here for some sight-seeing in downtown Nairobi and elsewhere. Mowing lawn and weeding, pruning and watering the rose beds and buying and planting some flowers to replace some that had died have also been part of the change of routine. I am feeling much more normal now, but also aware that while this place is beautiful and a great place for very meaningful work, I sometimes feel rather confined here and am living in a place that leaves me feeling psychologically cramped, sometimes. Part of the problem is that I really have no friends beyond the walls of this place. I don't get to visit homes or share a meal out somewhere. I have to work harder here than I did at Manresa to find balance and stay fresh in my spirit. I see myself here at least another three years, so I have to make this work. So far, my first three years have generally been very, very fruitful and meaningful. But I also feeling the aging process and that makes me think more than I have in the past of my future here. We shall see! I am sure God will let me know what I am to do, what He wants for us. Tomorrow Fr. Bart Murphy an American Jesuit from our community, and I will drive into the famous Nairobi Animal Park immediately south of the city and observe what animals we can see before the sun gets too high and chases all of them into the shade. The park is really large, about 20 miles or so from one end to the other. Yes, there are lions in it. You can be sure we will be staying in our car with the windows rolled up! God has been extraordinarily good to me during my daily contemplations. He continues to be the most real of the Real, and present as so truly good and worthy of being loved and honored, moreso than any words could describe. Just to sit for 45 minutes with that awareness, to be still and as attentive as possible to this is full of meaning. I hope some of you who read this can relate and find support in what I am sharing. It is the main reason I say anything about this in these letters, even though it is so personal. The election process going on now in the USA? I find it to be so ugly, so disappointing, an embarrassment for our country. It is mud-slinging at such a sordid level. I do not care for either candidate. I fear we will have weak leadership for the next four years, regardless of who is president. I will be so glad when the campaign is finally over, the election itself is done and over with, and we can get back to something else to talk about. I need to head off to bed. God bless, and please pray for the USA and its future. Bernie Owens