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The Resurrection, for Beginners
April 23, 2022
The Resurrection is surprisingly challenging. This seems to be the message I hear in the readings of the week, in our homilies, and in my own prayer and in my spiritual life. We have an entire octave of days to commemorate the event, to celebrate it, to process it. It is not enough. Eight lifetimes, not enough. We still, it seems, run to the tomb and stoop to look in. We still challenge the witnesses. We still weep. The prophecy is supposed to be, “I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.” How do I feel even more scattered, that the Shepherd has been Raised? There are so many reversals in the gospel message, so many ways in which the world is turned on its head, so many ironies and paradoxes. Perhaps here is the supreme irony: the world that so seeks joy, that crafts its entire way of being to attain and sustain joy, cannot fathom Joy when face-to-face with it. Cannot accept joy. Cannot trust joy, cannot believe in it. This resistance – please pardon me if I speak here only for my own faithlessness – it makes me grateful for the stability of a community that seeks faith, for the solidarity found in the ninety-nine, for the struggles shared in the week’s sacred scriptures, the Thomases, Cleopases, Peters. And, as I reflect on the “picture” of a life of faith Leonard Sargent envisioned for this Portsmouth community (which we explore in this issue), I am grateful for a Rule that concludes: “Are you hastening toward your heavenly home? Then with Christ’s help keep this little rule that we have written for beginners.” (RB 73) I should hasten toward my heavenly home, and not to inspect the Tomb. Well, if there is one lesson that I keep relearning each Easter, it seems to be that I am still a beginner. So, if Benedict is right, I suppose it is with the help of his Rule “for beginners” that I must hasten.
Pax,Blake Billings
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Being Here
April 14, 2022
I enjoy telling students that the large shrubs, some fifteen feet high, that currently stand in front of St. Aelred’s dormitory were actually planted there by classmates of mine. To my dismay, this was now 45 years ago. But it points to the fact that we find in the landscape hidden traces of our heredity here on the grounds. Many of the trees, bushes, lawns, flowers and other plantings, as well as the pathways that situate them, speak to us of our forebears, and provide us with the fruits of their labors and even something of their vision of community life. One sometimes gets the feeling that our grounds were designed with springtime in mind. It is most certainly high season liturgically, a most formative time in our spiritual journeys. And we are grateful to see the birds, the trees, and the flowers all taking up the chorus. This week’s issue of the Current offers a few glimpses into our Holy Week and the beginnings of the Easter season we enjoy at Portsmouth. We pray, dear readers, that this season of new life may manifest for you many blessings and much joy.
Easter Joy,
Blake Billings
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What is happening here?
April 8, 2022
This weekly newsletter has the basic goal of conveying to our readers what is happening in our lives here at Portsmouth Abbey. It occurs to me as I try to summarize such a message, that for me it is actually more of a question. Just what is happening in our lives? Whether it be through a basic examination of conscience, a more articulated Ignatian examen, or simply the Benedictine “obsculta” - listen! - I realize that Lent is dedicated to the very task of discerning the real answer to that question. And each year, as Holy Week approaches, I am nearly brought to despair realizing that my answer has so little improved in clarity over the previous year. So, sorry, reader, that I leave you somewhat unsure of what is really happening in our lives. I am still in my Lenten desert, trying to figure that one out. But, however, although, nevertheless – and strangely – it is a discerning process that is hope-driven, faith-embraced, and the greatest of all – beloved. All that is going on here, it seems to me. And it also seems to me that this somehow, in part, is how it should be, amidst a world that is not as it should be.
Pax,
Blake Billings
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Out of the Depths...
April 1, 2022
I keep returning to the first words of the first antiphon of Tuesday Vespers: “Out of the depths have I cried to you, O Lord.” It is always jarring. It is jarring because I am often, well, a bit superficial. Living on the surface. I would like to blame this on the superficiality of my culture and era, but I suppose I have only myself to blame. Am I truly crying “from the depths”? It is true that I am in the depths of the Lenten journey. And it is deeply troubling to me that our world now faces the depths of a grave international crisis. And I am aware of a number of people encountering “depths” of various sorts, which my own prayer takes up. These concerns reveal some of my own personal “depths.” And I also was struck in that moment at Tuesday Vespers that the same antiphon - it was on the lips of all of those gathered to pray. It seemed a kind of collective confession. This too was jarring: counterposing the meaning of the words with the serenity of the chant in which they were couched. Counterposing the pious gestures of those in prayer with the raw, unrestrained, searing human suffering expressed in the psalter. It is curious that for the same evening, the Vespers psalms conclude with the antiphon, “How pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity.” Pleasant, that brothers, in unity, had just shared that they are “crying out of the depths”! There is so much going on beneath the surface. I was reminded of St. Benedict’s admonition that our outward prayer must authentically reflect our inward self: “We must know that God regards our purity of heart and tears of compunction, not our many words.” (Rule, chapter 20) This purity, these tears: are these the true fruits of the Lenten effort? I am grateful for a community that, week after week, takes up such an effort. Week after week, seeks to remember what is happening in the depths.
Peace,
Blake Billings
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About
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Blake Billings '77, Ph.D. is a graduate and current faculty member of Portsmouth Abbey School. He received his undergraduate education at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, then joining the Jesuit Volunteer Corps to assist in an inner-city parish in Oakland, California. From Oakland, he went to Leuven, Belgium, receiving degrees in theology and philosophy. He returned to the Abbey in 1987, teaching for three years before getting married and returning to Leuven to pursue a Ph.D. in philosophy, which he was awarded in 1995. Having taught in higher education at various schools, including St. John's University, Fairfield University, and Sacred Heart University, he decided his calling was at the secondary level, gratefully returning to Portsmouth in 1996, where he has resided ever since. He became an oblate of the Portsmouth community ten years ago. His four children were all raised on campus and graduated from the school, the youngest in 2020.
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