Editor's Note

July 25, 2022

The summer theme has been for me one of renovation, restoration, and recovery, all of which we find in the stories of our July issue. The grounds here have seen it, as with the Manor House and its scaffolded repairs. The head of Cory’s Lane, the road connecting us to the world, has been cleared of decades of overgrowth and prepared for beautification. The repaving of the Lane recalls John the Baptist’s exhortations to make straight his path, and all this physical work thus reminds us of the spiritual, as labora is woven into ora. Our community members have travelled afar, and guests have joined us here, on varied missions with a shared purpose, being strengthened for the journey of faith. For myself, the time away from teaching has allowed for reflection, revision and restructuring of class syllabi. The moral of the story I discern in all of this seemed echoed in the parable of the sower we recently read at Mass. I have begun to see in many parables expressions of different dimensions of myself – I see in myself both the foolish prodigal and the resentful elder. I harbor within both harvestable fruit and overgrowing tares. In the parable of the sower, I find all of the venues for sowing to be part of me. The parable is actually one of great mercy: that God continues to shower on me His goodness, though I am quick to deflect it, too shallow to receive it, too open to temptations of the world to allow it to grow. Somehow, somewhere, God must still see within me a soil, a remnant, worthy and receptive of Him. And He keeps sowing. Perhaps it is a similar hope that inspires much of our summer’s renovation, restoration, and recovery. It is surely His grace that will tend it, and render it at all fruitful.

Pax,

Blake Billings