Jan. 21, 2015.
    Holy Moses, but time has flown. It is already almost three weeks since the last blog and lots of water over (or under ) the dam. Well, here goes...During that first week of Jan. I went down to Mthatha to celebrate the final  vows of Sr. Pauline Makoro whose first assignment is to be the "farm manager" of the convent of Glen Avent. Usually most youngsters don't want to get their hands dirty but his young woman has earth blood in her veins and will happily take the place of Sr. Ignatia (she was still driving the tractor at 83 yrs. of age) who felt that she could now die, which she did, because Pauline was there to take her place.
     I stayed with Fr. Guy and the boys at Sabelani while I moved around Lansend and Bedford to see how things are going there. Because of your generosity, I was able to help Nothemba at landsend with help for tuition for two of her kids. I also was able to help Sinovuyo with his sewing project. He is determined to make a living for himself and help others to learn as well through his sewing and designing of carrier bags, Afro-shirts, and just about anything else you want to order. He deserves support. Also I was able to help Nomonde with some funds for servicing her car and helping to pay off some other debts. She is overloaded with problems. Hopefully she can retire in two or three years and go back to running her preschool. She is a fantastic teacher. Siyamthanda is doing well in her studies and that was the big concern for Nomonde. She is still trying to swallow the tragic death of her son Lita.
     The Bedford project which was meant to generate income for our province is going along but needs more input from the Mthatha community, I think. Fr. Guy and his guys helped once more by cutting the grass so that people are happy to live in what is like a nice park with mown lawns and lots of nice trees.
     A friend and board member of Sabelani Home invited Guy and I to lunch one day as we all were, happily, together before heading off in our different directions again. But he had a trick up his sleeve. After the lunch, which included a few mutual friends and Fr. Malinga, our canon lawyer, who came up to join us for a day or two, Mr. Rod Allen, representing the Rotary International presented to Guy and me a kind of citation that recognizes the work that we have done in the Mthatha community in trying to uplift and improve the life of the Mthatha community. Fr. Guy is the one who deserves it much more than me. Guy would never have come if he had known that Rod had this trick up his sleeve. It is also interesting to note that the
Church never recognized the contribution that Guy made through Sabelani home and its activities for the community, nor did Mariannhill, the religious community that we both belong to , recognize his work with the community. It had to take a civic organization, with its eyes open to what Guy was doing there at Sabelani home and in the neighborhood, and to encourage its continuation by paying this tribute to Guy, e.g. the Rotary International. Some achievement. So much for our church and religious communities.
     After the return to MD (Mater Dolorosa--the retirement home here at Mariannhill), I managed to terminate my contract with Mweb since it was costing me R299 a month for unlimited access to the internet, which was beautiful, but which had the hitch that the MTN signal here is so poor that it couldn't be used. I filled in the form that was given to me earlier but when I took it back to that office they said it was no longer done that way but had to be done on the internet. Ha! More fun and games. After an hour on the phone to try to get things moving in that direction, I was told to enter my password. Have you ever had that experience. Hell's teeth. It is two years since I opened that contract and I don't even remember having a password. After jumping through a few more hoops, we finally got that done. Now i have to make sure by phoning them that they really and actually termnate the contact and stop relieving my account of the R299 a month. They will continue unless you follow up and stop them
     I also stopped to visit a few families along the way on my way back from Mthatha and renewed old friendships that go as far back as 1966. I think that is my feminine side coming out. I really appreciate and treasure relationships. 
     I was also involved in a beautiful house blessing (the parish priest whom I help by taking his outstation several times a month did the job with me accompanying him with a pail full of holy water and a big brush used when laying blocks for a sprinkler, you would have laughed). We blessed, I am sure, at least 6 bedrooms, each with en suite bathrooms, toiilets and showers, and lots of other rooms. It was the biggest house I have ever been in in Africa. The woman whom I have known since she was a kid, who is now the wife of the owner, came from the typical 4 room township house together with her 7 siblings and parents. So this is really an achievement for her. I am sure that with the customary extended family, many of those rooms will soon be put to good use.
    I also managed , with several hitches, to get a new contract for R69 a month (instead of R299 a
month) for 1 GB a month, which, I think, will be sufficient for me. I had to go back three times to have some corrections and adjustments made to the modem but it is finally working now. How can we live today without access to email, Google, etc.???
    Yesterday I went back to the eye doctor who took the pressure in my eyes and found that it has come down dramaticallly and she (they  and me) is happy with the low, low pressure, thanks to the drops I put in each night. But, another cataract in the left eye is starting to grow and it won't be long before I will need that done as well. We shall wait and see.
     I saw the most horrible photo, gruesome, that I have ever seen in my life yesterday while I was looking for information about the saint of the day. I don't know how I got onto this but there was an article about ISIS and how it is trying to frighten the Christians in its path into becoming Muslims. There as a photo taken of a group of these ISIS people, holding a woman down while they were cutting her throat and catching the blood running out of her neck into a bowl on the floor. Ugly, gruesome. Hard to believe. I can't get that picture out of my mind. Another picture, almost as bad shows a father lifting up his 8 yr. old child, with a beautiful dress, but without a head. It had been cut off. Oh my God! We are told, over and over again, that we abhor violence and that violence begets violence, but can one just stand by and let this happen? Holy Moses!
    The Pope is making headlines these days with his nuancing of contraception and encouraging, so it seems, peolple to use their heads when it comes to planning an economically viable family (we are not, he said, expected to breed like rabbits, or something like that). We will have to see where this goes. I was also touched to see how he was moved to hug the little girl who asked him how God could allow such terrible things to happen to little children who were innocent, like her, who had to eat out of garbage cans and sleep on  a piece of cardboard while fighting off pimps who want to exploit her or get he onto drugs. Her life, she said, was a nightmare. The Pope tried to explain about suffering, but what can you say to a hurting and suffering child to take the hurt away. An attempt at explaining, philosiphically or theologically, the deeper meaning of suffering is going to do what???
We know that God hates the suffering ten million times more than we but how do you help to hearl this poor child.
     Hey, I have been asked to go to the hospital to anoint several people who may be taking the last few steps of their journey here on earth. What a privilege to accompany them like this and to remind them that the need not be afraid. A loving father, a forgiving father, a compassionate father, is waiting for them with open arms. Have a great 2015. Cas.

Blog-Jan. 2, 2015

Hey, but I want to swear. I was updating my blog and got to the end of November 2014 when I punched the wrong key, whatever it was, and it just wiped out everything that I had put in for the past half hour. Damn! Excuse the expletive. I am tempted to just leave it but I am already so far behind, that won’t help. So here goes.

   I am using MS Word because I know how to get something back in case I do something like that. With Google, email, etc. no such luck. It just goes forever. I will just paste this when I am finished.

    November was grass cutting month. Lots of rain so lots of grass growth. I usually start at 5am and go till 6:30 and then again, after the morning dishes, from 9am to 10:30. It’s best then because it isn’t that hot then. Once or twice I continued in the afternoon but that was pushing it. It meant about 4 ½ hrs. of cutting a day. I get tired but it is good for me. Keeps my back in shape. I taught one of the novices, Palabre, a Mozambican, to use the Weed eater, as Stihl, great machine. I did so reluctantly but was pushed because there is lots to cut and I have other things to do as well. But I take my beloved machine like my wife, and no one sleeps with her but me. I have had experience of loaning it to someone who claims to know about machines and wound up paying more than R1000 each time. However, he seems to be doing OK. However, the novices get shifted around so one never knows when he is going to come again. I think that he was here maybe 5 times since we started. Not enough.

     I also have 4 steady customers for hair cutting. No one has run away yet or has died or been humiliated. One of them is my African Brother, Brother Lloyd. His is the easiest. All off. Clean as a cue ball. He is a satisfied customer.

     I had some funny stuff going on on my right arm and went to our family doctor. He gave me a prescription for some salve but after a week or so it got worse instead of better so I had to find a dermatologist. Dr. Naidu. At first he thought that it was just the result of too much sun, but I told him that my left arm was out in the same sun but was quite OK. At first he was going to have me put on some stuff for his first assessment but then, he had a re-think, and took me into another office and scraped a bit of skin off my arm and the back of my neck, put it on a slide and took a look at it through a miscroscope (just like the old days) and told me it was ringworm. It is not a worm but a fungus that can be picked up anywhere. He gave me a prescription for some salve and some really ugly bitter tasting pills. It did the trick and  within 10 days, that fungus was killed dead.

     I also had my annual prostate checkup and came out clean as a whistle. No cancer. Good steady stream.

     I gave a short workshop on Stress the last Saturday of November. Ha. I asked how do you spell stress. It was from 9am to about 12:30. About 15 people. The liked it and thought that I am some kind of fundi but really they were the ones who explained how they cope with stress and what causes it. I just co-ordinated the responses. I did show them one way of meditating (when we drew up a list of how people deal with stress, they all came up with the first two, e.g. prayer and meditation). It is called the prayer of quiet. Usually a half hour,at least, or more if you can and have the time. I will explain it another time. but it is one of the best stress relievers I know, even though I don’t think much about stress.

     I had helped Mike Pillay to get his car running again after some major work on it and it is now running smoothly and well. But it is an old old thing and it is just a matter of time before something else happens. Mike is the leader of our Zulu community at Savannah Park and uses it to take old people to the hospital and other places and to visit the sick etc. I wish I had the money to get his some decent transport.

     I also manage to fetch the material that I had ordered for the sisters at Mthatha. The senior citizens, pensioners, are trying to make school uniforms and they need material. Estie Naidoo is a first class sower and knows all the places. We managed to order 120 metres of Navy Blue and 80 metres of sky blue. After several weeks, I phoned and he said it is ready come and fetch it. Now my Hyundai is about the size of a large wheelbarrow, but, when I put the seats down, We managed to get it all in. I took it to the convent here at Mariannhill so that when some of the sisters from Mthatha come, they can take it along.

    The last day of November, the 30^th, we had a home mass at Estie Naidoo’s house for the Gabriel family and their spouses. November it the month when we remember all our deceased loved ones. After the service, I asked the guys to get my car out from the front of the queue (there  were at least 4 behind it in the driveway.) Someone noticed that I was trying to leave and they came and told me that I had to wait to cut the cake. What cake and for what? Ha! They had heard that my birthday was on the 28^th and had a surprise party after the mass. I had no trouble blowing out the candles (I quit smoking  when I was in jail), but, lo and behold, the candles kept relighting. Ha! A dirty trick for an old man. We had a good laugh.

   So that was November, more or less. Lots of visits to hospitals in between. (I am going to stop now and will pick this up after supper.)

Ha! After supper. It is now Jan. 6^th and I am in Mthatha to attend the final vows of Sr. Pauline who is a dyed-in-the-wool farm girl. She did agriculture and is one of the few young people who want to work with the soil. I am staying with Fr. Guy who is winding down Sabelani before he returns to Canada in March to see what he will do in the future.

So, here is Deccember 2014, in a nutshell

Dec. 3-4, Fr. Guy and Fr. Winfried visit me from Mthatha and I take them around Durban to do some shopping etc. Very nice. Also some visits to the sick at home in the afternoon

Dec. 5-confessions for retreatants at Retreat house. I am here in the monaster

y complex so when those who organize retreats need someone to help with confessions, I am  a logical person as I am here already.

Dec. 7, Mass and recollection at St. Mary’s hospital

Dec. 8, special mass and confessions at a nearby all Indian parish called Villankani, Our Lady of Health. I am helping out because the pastor is not well and his assistant is gone. A spare wheel comes in handy now and then.

Eye doctor, grass cutting, hair cuts and hospital visits in between.

Dec. 12, my brother’s birthday. I also took a box of cookies (Christmas gift)  to the laundry ladies who slave away in terrible heat and no one remembers their work for us.

Dec. 13. Baptism of Chisanga, the granddaughter of Theresa Chisanga who is head of the English Dept. at the University in Mthatha. This is the happiest, smiliest child I have ever seen. She delighted us all.

Dec. 17, Wedding of Nonhlanla Mabaso and Methenjwa Ngwenya. I have known Nonhlanhla and her family for donkeys years and it was a real celebration of joy. An all Zulu affair except for myself and the parish priest and his secretary, but no one thought about that because we were too immersed in the joy and happiness of the occasion. The parish priest asked me to preach in  Zulu as he knows Zulu but doesn’t feel comfortable preaching. Ha, I march in where angels fear to tread. I was moved by the Holy Spirit and sang them a song—Love one another, as I have loved you! They were happy and surprised and so was I . I had no intention of doing that. It just came.

Dec. 18, the court case of the murder of one of our priests, Fr. Ernst Ploechl. It was to be the sentencing of the 4 accused but turned out to be the final plea for leniency from the defenant’s lawyers and a plea for the full weight of the law from the Prosecutor. The final verdict came the next day when I was unable to be there because of other commitments. They have already been in jail, awaiting sentencing, for 5 yrs. so the sentences were, I thought, light. 10 yrs. for three and 7 yrs. for the one who planned the crime (stealing lots of money), but wasn’t there when the priest was murdered.

Dec. 20^th, another baptism, some people who were having a family gathering from all over the place including Uruguay, Vienna, Australia, etc.  How do I get roped into these things???

Dec. 21. After Mass at Savannah Park, on the way home, my engine is overheating and I have to stop at least three times to let it cool off before I can limp home. It puts a crimp in my plans. I am afraid to drive the vehicle and put in several bottles of water. I ask a friend about what to do. I happens that I intend to visit someone who needs a visit in Durban and I am hoping that I can make it if I just keep stopping along the way. He asks where I am going and then says that his workshop is just down the road from there to bring the vehicle to him and he will see what he can do. Drama. To cut things short, he winds up taking the thermostat out and I have to limp home, on the expressway, stopping several times along the way but make it home OK. But now it is Christmas eve and all places are closed. I get picked up for the Christmas Eve mass as I don’t trust the car especially worried about getting stuck at night on the road.

Dec. 25, After mass at the hospital at 11am I visit two families and join in the festivities, including jumping in a swimming pool. The temperature was 43C, e.g. about 110 F. Holy Moses, it was hot.

But at the second family visit, another friend has a look at the troubling radiator and advises me to turn on the heater when I notice that the temp is going up and it will suck the heat away from the engine and help me to get where I want to go without having to stop. It works and I get home. But he says that I should bring the car to him the  next day and he will clean out the radiator and engine, and he does, and after that it is much improve.

    In between all this, I have visitors and mange to drive them around without any major difficulties.

Dec. 28, Sunday. Two Masses. One in the late morning at Savannah Park, mostly Zulu and the other at 5pm in Pinetown, all English ( a kind of relief because I can tell jokes that people will understand).

Dec. 29, I take the car to Silverton Radiators who test it and find that there Is nothing wrong with the radiator (it has been thoroughly cleaned with a pressure hose, as well as the engine), so they fit a new radiator cap and put in some coolant, and since then it runs like a champion.

    I am too wordy, but you get the picture. Never a dull moment. I had a Mass at Savannah Park at 6pm on New year’s eve. Unusual, but a good start to somehow counteract all the nonsense that will be going on that night.

   More hospitals visits and the old year ends.

I come to Mthatha to celebrate with the sister who will be taking her final vows today, Sr. Pauline. She will be taking the place of Sr. Ignatia who was still driving a tractor at 83yrs of age. Pauline will take her place in providing the convent with all the veg etc. that they need.

    And that is enough for now, even too. Much. We have started the new year. I took some bags of old clothes out to Landsend Mission for Nothemba to distributed and visited Sinovuyo and his family. He is the one who is the tailor and is now looking for markets for his goods, which includes designer bags, Afro-shirts, etc. I will try to help him in that way. 

Nov. 11, 2014

Well, it is now Tuesday the 11^th of Nov. and here is what has been happening. Not much earth-shaking, just ordinary stuff.

     I made an appointment with my urologist for Nov. 27^th, it is the once a year prostate checkup. That means I have to get a PSA, e.g. a blood test to see if there are any cancer cells in my blood (I think). That also means I have to go to a lab to have them poke my finger and suck out a vial of my precious blood (I don’t have that much to spare), which I did, at the insistence of Sr. Amanda, CPS, who ran the clinic at St. Mary’s Hospital for about 40 or more years before she retired. So she got a nurse to give me a poke, and then went to the lad downstairs to fill out the form that I got from the doctor (you have to be referred by a doctor). But it was the wrong form. My doctor uses a different lab for his stuff than the hospital here, so I had to go to Crompton hospital in Pinetown where his lab is and get them to send it to the lab, after which the results will be sent to him at his office. Complicated. I have to go to collect the bill now, and I am scared!

     I finally phoned the mechanic whom I asked to give a quote how much it would cost to redo Mike Pillay’s engine (he is our leader at Savannah Park for our Sunday services and he usually used his old beat up junk to ferry old people to the hospital or to bring them communion or whatever, until he blew a gasket and his junk just died.

     He got a back yard mechanic to help him and he only made things worse. (more smoke comes out of his tail pipe that incence at a benediction). We managed to get it to a mechanic whom I know and trust and I got the quote from him  R14,000.00 Ouch, but it will be worth it. So I used some of my scio-pastoral money (R10,000) to get things started and promised that I would find the other R4000 somewhere (maybe some Christmas gifts will come in.)

     I have been getting up early in the morning to cut the grass. I usually start by 5am and go till about 6:30 when I clean up a bit, say my morning prayers and have breakfast. If I am more or less free, I continue again after breakfast from abut 9 to 10:30 after which we usually have Mass (11:45) Then lunch, and, if it isn’t raining I go at it again from abut 2 to 3:30, after which I take a shower with my head covered in a genuined Pick N’Pay plastic shopping bag since I am not supposed to get water in my new eye.

     As I mentioned before, I have to keep remembering to put in 2 different drops in my right eye 4 times a day and that can get tricky since I can’t always keep the same time if I am out and about.

      On Thursday, the 6^th, I wanted to get my driver’s licence renewed, and I wanted to do it early but I realized that I needed a few things first. 1) a photocopy of my ID—I went to the repository about 8am and they kept turning out dark black copies until they finally found out how to tone it down so that it was readable. 2) Then go the Fr. Henry who has the authority to stamp it and make it official 3) then to the provincial to take a letter for him which led to a long conversation  4) then finally to the traffic bureau (only 7 minutes away by car). But by this time it was already after 9am and by the time I got there there was a queue from Chicago to Denver. I grabbed a form and forgot , in my rush, to bring a pen, and someone was kind enough to loan me his pen. But, when I had almost finished (many people had in the meantime skipped in front of me) I realized that I would probably be there till about 5pm and just left to plan better another day.

    On Friday, after the morning grass cutting, I got Bishop Lobinger to make me a color copy of the material I was asked to get for the sisters in Mthatha.  They are running short of money to keep the convent going so they have the old timers making school uniforms to earn some money to keep the place going. There are two colors. One is navy blue—sister cut me off a sample, and the other, she had no sample, so , being a clever guy, I took  a photo with my cell phone. But then I needed a color printer which, happily,Bishop Lobinger supplied.

     I took this to my friend Estie (who makes delicious curry) who had already found a shop that would supply the navy blue, but only now could I bring the color copy of the other sample (kind of robin’s egg blue). Then, of course, I was forced to test some of her delicious curry. I happily survived. I let the sisters know that we would be going this week on Thursday to bring the other sample and to get a quote as to how much it would cost to have 400 meters of navy blue and 200 meters of robin’s egg blue. At R35 a meter it is going to be quite expensive and I doubt if the store owner will spend so much money ordering so much material unless it is sitting nicely in his bank account. So we will have to work on that next.

    I cut some more grass (weed eater) in the afternoon  and again most of Saturday morning, but this time with a mower. It is actually harder to push that mower around than to swing the weed eater.

    Saturday evening I was invited out for a supper by my friend from Germany (he works for Pfizer), Reinhard Maier, and another friend, Silungile Mokoena, who is a fashion designer. (her work room and office are about the size of a medium sized closet but she makes lovely things. I want her to help Sinovuyo from Landsend to learn more about sewing and we are working on that.

    Sunday, was busy at Savannah Park, my outstation. I took Fr. Macarius along, who is totally blind in his left eye and only 10% in his right eye. He was also just operated on to improve his vision a bit but it doesn’t seem to be working well. He will be returning to Zambia next week after his final checkup with the eye doctor.

     Then we had a nice curry lunch prepared by Mike Pillay’s wife, Net (Annette) and came home to rest a bit.

Monday I got up very early, had some breakfast and took my filled in form and went off to the traffic bureau where I arrived at 7:40. I got in the queue that was already there (about 20 people in front of me) and at 7:50 they allowed us to go up to the rooms where the people sit in rows and rows of chairs, moving up one by one as one is finished. Would you believe it, I had my fingerprints taken, my eyes were already checked and OK, my papers filled in, my picture taken by their machine, and the bill paid (R250) and was out by 8:15. Holy Moses.

   Today, Tuesday 11^th, in spite of a very light drizzle, I managed between the morning and afternoon cuttings to get most of what I wanted cut cut. In between I was able to catch a few winks, take another shower to clean up, do some pretty deep reading, get some people on Skype, etc. So it was a good day.

    My cousin’s wife, I found out by a Skype from my 97yr. old aunt in Chicago, who just had a liver and kidney transplant, that she was having a bad day on Sunday and they had to drain a lot of liquid out of her body which had collected while her kidneys stopped working before the operation. We are praying for her to get over all these obstacles. The operation was a success but there are so many things that can still go wrong Keep her in your prayers.

    Hey, that is more than enough for one sitting. It is time for me to put my eye drops in, brush my teeth, and hit the sack for an early start tomorrow. I love you all.

Nov. 1, 2014

I just got back from the eye doctor (ophthalmologist) yesterday. I went in at 11am in the morning and my turn only came at about 3pm in the afternoon. He finished the job of taking out the cataract and putting in a new lens by 4pm. I left the hospital at about 4:30 getting a lift back here to our place, Mater Dolorsa, ugh! Home.

     In the meantime, I have been going to the outstation, Savannah Park, each Sunday.

It has been raining a lot and the grass (weeds of all descriptions) has grown. Finally, last Wednesday, Br. Conrad brought me a new weed eater ( some call it a brush cutter). By the time I got it together properly and read the instruction booklet (it is a Stihl—a great machine, made in Austria), I had no time left except to try it out a bit that Wednesday. However, on Thursday, I really got stuck into it and whacked those weeds for and hour and a half before breakfast (5 to 6:30am) and then again, after bkfst another hour and a half (9 to 10:30) and once more, after lunch another half hour (2 to 3:30). I got most of what I wanted to do done. The grass was, in most places, about 18 inches high and it took a lot of effort to chop it down. There is a section near the septic tank that grows like crazy and that was the area I tried to concentrate on. The rest is more or less easy.

    I didn’t want to overdo it the first time so I took in in small chunks. I am grateful that I still have the stamina to do that kind of thing and some look in awe on my ability to do that at my age. Yes, I am grateful to the Lord for pretty reasonable health, in spite of the normal aches and pains that go with ageing.

    Friday was the op day so I didn’t try anything.

    Today I go for an examination by the doctor as to how satisfied he is with his job. I am wearing a patch over my right eye and I don’t know if I will have to do that or not for a while. I have Mass tomorrow at the hospital and they will be laughing if I come with this patch, but we will see.

     He said that there could be pain, and there was something that felt like razor blades moving around in the right eye but I wouldn’t call it pain, exactly, but more like sharp irritation. But I  managed to get a fairly good sleep in any case.

     I am hoping that when I finish this update, I will be able to test my right eye and see how it is going In the meantime, I received this lovely email from a friend who is an ophthalmologist and who worked for some years in Guatemala training young Guatemalans to be Opthalmologists, only to discover that many of them forgot to help the poor but went for the big money in the citieis there. Disappointing. She has given her life to helping the poor to get decent eye care. Here is the email she sent to me. We were both participants on the sabbatical at CTU in Chicago back in 2012. She decided to do more studies in Theology but still continue as an eye doctor. She has been chosen by the Lord for something special which is still to come, I am sure.

Linda Novak	9:03 PM (10 hours ago)
to me

Hi Fr. Cas,I have been trying to contact you - and I thought that you were trying to contact me via "Linked In" however I do not do linked in - I sort of started but really I have been to busy other than to respond to personal emails.

I am at CTU doing a MA in Theology - I started thinking that it would be Bible and Spirituality and now it may be either a MAPS or an Mdiv.  The hard part is fitting this all into a ministry and whether I will continue with the student part from Loyola.  Altho I do intend to keep going there myself and actually I want to just do Ophthalmology there now that the technology will allow health promoters to go out to the villages and get a prescription for glasses and even do a visual field - which is a FREE App that you can put on your iPad.  I will give you the name of the app once I get back to my room.  We are having internet problems at 5401 - and have been for the past month.

We had an all building Halloween part last night - it was a huge success - something about Halloween brings out the fun in folks - that is one reason why I enjoy it.  We played telephone, Biblical charades and we had a ballon contest where everyone stood in a circle with a paper plate and had to keep a series of about 20 balloons getting passed onto the next person - drop the balloon and you are out.

The hit costume - and there were many - however the real hit was a thin priest who came dressed as a nun - very funny!!

With respect to your eye - I will say a prayer for the surgery - most likely the pressure will drop just by removing the lens - I don't know if he is also planning on doing a filter or putting in a tube.  If you do need a tube or something.  We can try and arrange something - - I have a dear friend - who just spent a few days with me at CTU - last week - who is the top Glaucoma person in New Orleans.  and we can see what can be done there - or else I will look for someone in Chicago for you.  

As a rule , cataract surgery in the face of glaucoma - does well.  Most important for you is to not lift anything heavy and not to rub your eye especially with an unwashed hand or unclean tissue.  The most common cause of post op infection - which is rare - is from microorganisms on the skin of the face and lashes - so stay out of the dust and dirt.

Also a shield for bedtime and sunglasses or eye protection during the day.

I would expect a positive result - so much so that you may desire to have the other eye done for cataract surgery in the near future.

Anyway lots to say - really I should call or figure out how to Skype you.

I believe Fran is coming to Chicago Nov 5-8 or so - I am really looking forward to seeing her.

Much love, many blessings and prayers for you and your community,

Linda - your next door neighbor

I just came back from the doctor and pharmacy. Have to clean my eye once every day and put it 3 different drops, do of them 4 times a day and one once a day in the right eye. The left eye still gets the drop that stops the pressure from buikding up (what caused the glaucoma in the first place). Dr. says I can that the patch off tomorrow but should make sure that I clean my eye with the sterilized water and the cotton pads every morning. The pad is to make my eye comfortable. But don’t get gunk into that eye. Hmmm!

     He said that I can continue to use the weed eater but I don’t want to take a chance of getting dust in that eye. Also, the instructions say that I should not lift heavy things. The weed-eating machine is heavy but not so heavy. But if I don’t do something, the grass will get uncontrollable.. So, a dilemma. I will probably have to wait at least till Wednesday to start again.

    Le me call it quits for now. I just had some eye drops put in (I need three hands—one to hold up the eye patch, one to pull down the eye at the botton, and one to put in the drops. We haven’t yet learned how to grow and extra appendage as have some of Gods’ Creatuers. 

Sept. 27th, 2014

Well, here we go again. I went to the States on the 10th of Sept. a Wednesday, arrived on Thurs. after some very looooong flights (Durban, Joburg,Zurich, Chicago, Milwaukee), had the wedding practice on Friday, the beautiful wedding on Saturday where I had a chance to meet the groom's family and get to know better the people in the wedding party, along with, of course, all the other relatives and friends whom I already know. It was a great bonding of the two families as well as the bridal couple, Jo and Jeff. I was delighted and I think that everyone else was happy to rejoice with the newly weds.
     I was lucky to have a chance to celebrate a home mass with my Unlce Casey and his wife Rose. Casey is 9 yrs. older than I am and Rose a few years younger than Casey, but both have health problems related to simply getting older and more fragile. Both have trouble hearing now and usually watch the Mass for shut-ins on the TV, but can't receive communion. We were able to offer them that chance on the Sunday after the wedding before going to a gathering of those who were in the wedding party for a brunch at a local restaurant. It was just good to be with the family again, and to meet and get to know the other family members (Jeff Johnson's mom and dad and sister, among others)
    My cousin Sue rented a car for me on Monday to visit my Aunt Rose in Chicago. She is 97 now and delights me by sending an email with the signature---sent from my i-Pad. Ha! My cousin Jeannie thoughtfully invited Aunt Rose and the angel from the Phillippines, Lita, who looks after Rose, to her house to save her the commotion of preparing something to eat. There I had a chance to catch up with Tom, Jeannie's husband and Michael, the son. Of course, I soaked this all up and savored it.
     I also had a chance to talk with Sue and Dave, the parents of the bride. Usually it is hit and run, but this time we had a bit more time, in spite of the hectic preparations for the wedding and the collecting of the debris after the wedding.
     On Tues. morning, Sept. 16, Sue took me to the airport where I flew from Milwaukee to Chicago and on to Los Angeles to visit other friends and family there. I missed my niece Karla who lives and works in Santa Barbara, because she had a chance to go to Africa and enjoy some game viewing there, but I did meet my cousin's daughter (Jerry and Barb Pietrusiak) Leah, who is a journalist and is working on a project regarding the ecology of the crabs up in Alaska. We managed to meet twice and she took some photos and did an interview for the family archives several evenings after work.
    I stayed with a good friend, Judy child, and met her three sons and their wives and children and enjoyed seeing the kids who had grown since I last saw them.
    I also saw an old friend, Reggie Grzeskowiak and his wife Nancy. They have also been very supportive, over the years for whatever projects I had gotten involved in and have helped many people with funding for school fees, repairs to houses and many other ntreeeds that crop up. Reggie studied at our seminary way back in the 50's.
     Judy had booked us tickets for a concert by Yanni. I had heard the name but didn't really know about him. It was fantastic. There were 13 musicians, each of them skilled in the use of their instruments, (a harpist, two violas, three violins, a kind of trumpet, a trombone, a french horn, a percussionist on the bongo drums, a drummer from Chicago, and another guy, like Yanni, on the keyboards, and they made some really beautiful music. Both Yanni and his other keyboardist, had several instruments, each having three keyboards, and kept switching back and forth on the to create beautiful sounds. The impression was that the whole was much greater than the sum of its parts. I really enjoyed that concert.
    I was reminded of how civilization has improved our human living by experiencing, once again, the Los Angeles traffic on the six lane-each way, highways. Ha! No wonder there is so much domestic violence. To face that traffic every day??? Wow! Give me the bush.
     My friend Judy (we met when she was nursing at St. Joe's Hospital in Ann Arbor in 1964) hosted me, for which I am happily grateful, and then dropped me off at the airport for the return journey to SA on Tues. the 23rd of Sept. The return journey went from LA to Chicago (long layover--just missed the closing down by a few hours) to Munich (long layover where I was able to connect with Reinhard Maier, a friend from long back, for few hours, catching up on family and work things. Then back to the plane and on to Joburg and finally to Durban where I arrived on Thursday at 12 noon. In Munich, I had grabbed a sandwich and when I went to pay for it, I left my carry on next to the counter. When I went to the boarding gate, I wanted to put something in to the carry on and noticed that it was not mine. Wow. I hurried back to the small restaurant and the guy whose case I had was happy to make the exchange but was disappointed that I didn't have any Kruger Rands in my case.
     Bishop Lobinger was there at the airport to fetch me, and after grabbing a  quick lunch we arrive back at Mater Dolorosa at about 2pm.
     That evening when we were watching the news on TV, I drifted off and only woke up as the news was ending. Bishop Lobinger tried, unsuccessfully to wake me up before that. So I slept the sleep of the dead that night and am now ready for work again.
     I will have two masses on Sunday, one in Zulu and one in English with a visit to the hospital in between to see how the mother of the other yet unborn twin is doing and will meet her husband to plan the baptism.
     Fr. Macarius, from Zambia, is back, getting ready for an operation in October, that may help him to improve his sight. He is totally blind in one eye and 90% in the other. We are trying to organize things for him.
    By theway, I was given a gift of an i-Pad during my stay in the States and that will be one of my challenges---how to use it.
    I think that that is enough for now. A bit long winded. See you again after some time.
    By the way, people have been deluging me with request for Linkedin or Facebook. I made the mistake of peeking into both of them to see what they are like but I am not familiar with them and am lost and really don't have the time for them. It seems that they are using my name to send messages out to others, some of whom and not happy about it. Me either. Just ignore them.
    My email is: frcascmm50@gmail.com   Use that if you want to get in contact with me.
Amen!

Sept. 8, 2014
Holy Moses, how time flies. It is a month since I put something in my blog. In the meantime, I gave a one day presentation on the Holy Spirit, especially now the Holy Spirit works today in lots of big and little ways, like Pope Francis and Mandela and lots of little ways at the super market, in the office, at school, in the hospital, and just about everywhere and all the time. Wake up and see for yourself.
     I have also been working in the garden (not a flower garden or a vegetable garden but a long stretch of grass with lots of trees. Raking leaves and making a compost pile, collecting fallen branches and pruning trees and dragging the big limbs to the dump, etc. etc. etc.
    Twice I had the opportunity to celebrate Mass with groups of youth. I always get turned on when I see young people and all the potential and energy waiting to get released on the world. Just guide it in the right direction and watch the fantastic results.
     I am organizing two baptisms. One for the doctor, Chiara Henry, who is still keeping quiet so as to deliver the second twin in a few weeks and the other for the daughter of a good friend, Theresa Chisanga, who lives and works in Durban while her mother, Theresa, who is chaplain to the students at the university in Mthatha, teaches as head of the English dept. there.Both baptisms, when the time comes, will be here at the monastery. How nice.
    I have been visiting, in the hospital, Clive, who managed to avoid having his right foot amputated 4 times, but finally, the doctor said it has to go. No circulation. I saw him at home yesterday and met the family and we prayed and said thanks for providing great medical care and now for healing so that he can eventually get a prosthesis for walking.
     I also was involved in a three evening presentation, last week, on FAMILY. After Mass, each evening (Mon. Tues. Wed.) there was a half hour presentation. I began with explaining that a priest doesn't just fall from the sky or pop out of an egg, but comes from a family like anyone else with all the ups and downs of any family, squabbles, divorces, medical problems, drugs and alcohol, etc. We survive by prayer and supporting one another. Then on Tues. an Indian couple explained their ups and downs in their families and marriage. And finallyt i

Aug. 9, 2014

A lot of water over the dam as usual. I am even too lazy to have a look at where I left off in my blog. I have been keeping busy visiting the sick in various hospitals , doing garden work, preparing homilies for Sundays and taking on morning masses with the sisters at Jacob’s Well, Augustinian Sisters, who celebrated their feast day last Thursday. I had a Mass with a group of 9^th graders and was delighted to be with them. When I see these kids I think of the tremendous potential with all their talents and energies that could turn this world of ours into something much better than we have now. In many cases, God is gone, faith is gone, church is an anachronism, people don’t bother to pray any more, and you can see how much the world has improved. (That is sarcastic). But the faithless will also attack us, who are trying to practice our faith by saying, have a look at these bloody “faithful” people, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, whoever, see how they invoke God when they want to kill people and raise hell in general. Yes, we have our fanatics, but I hope that those few don’t represent the main body of faithful, or any faith, who, I think, I hope, abhor violence as a way of settling problems, or even, as the will of God somehow.

One of the patients I had been visiting, a good Presbyterian, had an operation to remove her Ovaries, because of ovarian cancer. They couldn’t get it all and it continued to grow. The doctor said that it would eventually kill her and warned her to get her affairs in order, in as gentle a way as he could tell her. I tried to follow his lead and suggested that she should just join her sufferings with those of the Jesus whom she loves, and who loves her, and be open to whatever his will is for her. It may be that it is time for her to come home to the Father, so just get things in order and don’t be afraid. As it turned out, Last Wednesday (Tuesdays with Morrie, Wednesdays with Parklands hospital) I visited her and prayed with her but because she was having difficutly breathing because of the accumulation of water in her chest, (she was on oxygen) I sang her a bunch of songs from the Xhosa hymnal, some of which she recognized and tried to join in with, with great difficulty. That was about 11:30 on Wed. morn. I got an SMS from the doctor that she passed away just before 5am on Thursday. Talk about timing. She was prepared to go home and I was happy that we had those few times together to help her to prepare for her final journey home. I don’t think that God will mind that a Catholic priest prepared the way home for one of his Presbyterian daughters, do you? It was my privilege and blessing (thanks to the doctor who invited me to visit his patient) that I was able to accompany her on the last days of her journey here on this earth. I am blessed.

    As for the situation in the whole world, IS (beheading has become the fashion again, after the French Revolution), mass killings, the intransigence of Hama and Netanyahu costing the lives of more than 2000 Palestinians, (and still going) and untold damage to the homes and schools and hospitals and even UN compounds, the onward movement of the IS in Iraq and in Syria, the racism that raises its ugly head, openly, in the States (it has always been there and I felt that the churches had their heads in the sand in that regard, doing little or nothing to counteract it), etc. etc. etc. (Afghanistan, Ukraine and Russia, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, …..) One feels so helpless as it seems that the whole world is going down the tubes. What can one person or even a group of persons do to help. No answer. But I just receved this today, Friday, Aug. 29. Can you think of something better. Stay well, you all. Love and Peace, Cas.

Have you tried praying?

by Frances Correia

The last couple of months have been marked by more than ordinarily distressing news headlines. On the international front there is the slow creep of Ebola through western Africa. Further abroad there are the deteriorating situations in Gaza, Syria, Ukraine and the race riots in the United States. Here at home we have our familiar news stories of corruption, the ongoing strikes and service delivery protests in the public sphere and in the private sphere the stories of murder and rape continue unabated.

In the midst of all this darkness it is easy to understand how people may despair, and especially to find it hard to believe in a loving God. We see footage of children killed in missile strikes, or lying waiting to die in isolation from a terrifying disease and it offends our innate sense of what is right.

For myself, although I am not directly affected by these terrifying situations, still knowing of them and reading about them has a profound impact on my life of faith. I am easily cast into a desolate sense of there being no hope, when I look at the enormity of these problems.

This reminds me of when I was a student at the time of the Rwandan Genocide, and feeling then also a terrible sense of helplessness. I knew that in truth there was very little I could do, as I had no useful skills to offer, I did not speak any of the local languages and I was a student living many miles away.

Some years later, when I was slightly more skilled, I encountered in my ministry of spiritual direction some Rwandan refugees. At this time I noticed in myself a far greater sense of God’s loving presence. All those whom I encountered had suffered horrifically, yet they had been sustained by a sense of hope and now they were rebuilding their lives. Central to my conversations with them was the passion of Jesus. Although I was supposed to be the one listening, I remember this as a time of deep growth for me. I came to trust God’s love in a new way, by seeing how Jesus knows from his own experience the depths of our human ability to suffer. I came to more deeply believe in the redemption that Jesus offers us in his own suffering and death.

There is no easy answer for what we should do to aid our fellow brothers and sisters who are in need, but there is a biblical injunction that we should do something. At the very least we should be aware of the pain in the world. We should know what is happening. Finally I am reminded of a story told of Archbishop Tutu during one of his trips to the United States, he was asked what people there could do to help end Apartheid and his reply was to ask a question in return; ‘Have you tried praying?’