July 2021
The month of June carries an array of meanings for each of us, I am sure. It is a month that surprises with its stark contrasts. Here at the Abbey, as the grounds erupt in a breathtaking beauty, the school empties into quiet and restoration. The headmaster exhorted faculty members this month to simply take time this summer to regroup, to relax. The summer pace allows most here to do that. While our double graduation experience this June, together with the Portsmouth Institute Summer Conference and its PIETAS program, have kept us a bit more active than usual, life seems to slow nevertheless. And even so, still more momentous events arise: deaths and anniversaries of deaths; births and new beginnings – testing the fabric of a halcyon month and season that would seem to want to take it all in stride. For me, this shuddering, this chop on the irenic waters of our Narragansett, makes me aware of the character of perseverance of a life shaped by faith, and by a rule of prayer. The continuing of the Divine Office and the Mass, the rhythm these provide to each day – constitutes a basso continuo of context for the ebbing and flowing of the events of life. Some June days, there is little else above the surface, empty days that draw out in relief that supporting skeletal frame of each day, of each week. We just passed into Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time. The Eleventh, the Twelfth have come and gone like mile-markers along an interstate highway. The schedule of prayer seems to make smooth the jarring and dissonant realities of other days, pierced by moments of loss, levitated in moments of celebration. In all this, the Divine Office is a task which we take up together, and it would surely not happen without us – yet it feels more that it takes us up, holds us up, binds us. This strange year, the month of June has offered a taste of the “post-pandemic”: the opening of liturgies to singing, without masking, revealing a more tangible, visible sense of lived community. Yet still we see those wearing masks, reminding that the health crisis it is not just where we were, but still are. And still, we slowly begin to turn towards September. And in any case, in any case whatsoever, we pray.
Pax,
Blake Billings
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.