Editor's Note

January 27, 2023

The midwinter moment is upon us. For many it presents a call for perseverance, endurance, faith. Our articles this week reveal some of that call: in a symposium addressing the need for continued evangelization, in a homily on the need for Christ, and in a conversation reflecting the transformative power of reading. Perhaps we can see in this ordering an echo reflecting the theological virtues of love, hope, and faith. As our Manquehue friends speak of the “echo” one may offer in lectio divina, of Christ having a message for us, perhaps we can see the messages of these articles as developed and extended echoes, speaking of how Christ addresses us in our engagement in the world, in our turning to Him in prayer and in sacrament, in our encounters with others in person or through their texts. And perhaps such echoes can transform the hardships of the perseverance to which we are called into gratitude, for the opportunities and challenges of grace. As February 2 comes around this week, maybe that can remind us that it is indeed worth it to light a candle.

Pax,
Blake Billings

January 19, 2023

Like many these days, I have gotten into the habit of periodically changing the “wallpaper” on my phone. My own penchant is to somehow link the images to moments liturgical or events and experiences spiritual. My efforts with this weekly journal have trained me to keep an attentive eye for possible “photo ops” capturing the religious life of this community. Presently, I have on my phone the afternoon light playing off the wall at the back of the monastic choir. It somehow elicits for me a sense of hope in our dark season. I have often had variations on the statue of mother and child, the Sedes Sapientiae, which graces the Mary chapel in our church. And I have also, particularly during Lent, had an image of the railroad tracks here, similar to the one on this week’s cover. It is for me somehow an image of contemplation, of passage, of stages, of life’s journey. It is a kind of horizontal ladder, embodying for me something of Jacob’s Ladder, particularly in its Benedictine incarnation - a humble and understated path, a path of conversatio morum. It always seems to invite me to a simple walk, a walk of humility with my God (Micah 6:8). It is, I would say, one of the many such invitations I continue to receive around here. And I am grateful for the history that has kept those rails, literal and spiritual, in place for so many years, keeping such long-standing invitations available.

Pax,
Blake Billings

January 12, 2023

As we continue to step into the season without seasoning, the time we call Ordinary, we again encounter the quotidian of existence. We may experience both the comforts and discomforts of routine. With 2023 and the arrival of the new, we also experience the continuation of the same old, same old. Perhaps then this issue’s three articles offer a prophetic corrective to the apathy or ennui that might ensue. We gratefully encounter the youthful enthusiasm of our new Manquehue missionaries. We hear a reminder from Abbot Michael that our “Ordinary” days are not entirely ordinary, that each contains an Epiphany. And we offer a rediscovery, for the attentive listener, of the structured and resonant reminders of prayer that the tolling of our bells brings beautifully to our ears. May the new year give us new eyes and new ears to discern these hidden seasonings amidst our cold and constant experiences of the ordinary this winter.

Pax,
Blake Billings

January 6, 2023

As we move into 2023, the construction of the new Student Center has resulted for me in a curiously profound ringing “out with the old and in with the new.” As the space has been opened up for the newest of buildings on the grounds, the excavation has dug up the foundations of the former St. Bede’s dormitory. St. Bede’s was the dorm I moved into when I first returned to the School as a faculty member in 1987, thirty-five years ago, serving then as assistant houseparent to Dom Ambrose Wolverton. I am not sure how to interpret the fact that the dorm’s foundations were recently deposited behind the faculty house I presently occupy. Maybe a Freudian “archeology” of the subconscious would explain the impact this has had on my psyche, as we advance into a new year. Now I walk past those subterranean remnants each day of this new year on my way onto campus. It seems my dreams have been more vivid and intense lately, perhaps a consequence. And while this issue of The Current hopes to update the reader on the present, and even “seek” with FOCUS our future, we look back into our past with a review of some of the life and work of Ade Bethune, early oblate of this community. In all this, may we gain perspective on our perplexing yet grounding temporal horizon.

Pax,
Blake Billings