Excitement of Triune truth is matched by excitement of telling about God's eternal evangelizing of me. God's pursuit makes the common, such as the following, become a base for exciting, uncommon studies and results. Medora Junction, between small town and campus, promised changes. Shared moments of people-watching with Dad from the drug store door step, spoke of grandeur in persons. Defeated faces of two African American corporals, haunted my social concerns. Mom's rocking chair rhythm of gospel singing, rocked gospels into me. Boyhood railroad adventures helped recognize adventure in theological insight. Value of professional skill was seen in Dad behind the drug store prescription screen. A summer evening walk through Medora heard feet moving to varying rhythms of gospel singing. Church bells told of the sound of God's welcoming grace. Such common experiences support uncommon, disciplined, entertaining and exciting scholarship of professors, who presented theology of the familial, in-history, personal, relational God-Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Their mutuality unified the workings with the natural order that provided for my coming to be, gave saving words and promises of Jesus Christ and, through the Spirit, sustained me in the present and the future-these three in perfect concert evangelized me. An exciting story to tell.
My Journey into the Trinity
A Personal Adventure into FaithBy Emil BeckAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2011 Emil Beck
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4634-0342-3Contents
Preface.......................................................................................vChapter 1 Before Telling The Story............................................................1Chapter 2 "Just Trinity"—Its Community And The Becks....................................3Chapter 3 Legacy In Race Relations............................................................9Chapter 4 Growing Up In The Drug Store And Its Community......................................13Chapter 5 Freedom With Measured Restraint.....................................................17Chapter 6 The Great Depression................................................................21Chapter 7 The Family Circle...................................................................29Chapter 8 The Small And Large Of Medora Life..................................................33Chapter 9 Songs Of The Church.................................................................47Chapter 10 `Medora Junction'—Between Two Worlds.........................................53Chapter 11 Unexpected Assignments In The Army.................................................63Chapter 12 Civilian Life—What To Do Now.................................................69Chapter 13 Becoming A Christian Minister......................................................71Chapter 14 A Good Start In Poultney...........................................................91Chapter 15 Pain And Pleasure In Windsor.......................................................99Chapter 16 Building A Church At Brookside.....................................................103Chapter 17 A Guide To Home....................................................................113Chapter 18 Boston And New Perspectives........................................................123Chapter 19 The Spirit Returns Me To Pastoral Ministry.........................................141Chapter 20 Time To Focus......................................................................145Chapter 21 The Breaking Forth Of Light........................................................149Chapter 22 A Defense Of My Epiphany...........................................................153Chapter 23 Looking Back.......................................................................157Chapter 24 Yes, To The Eternal Evangel........................................................175Chapter 25 Blessed Assurance..................................................................179Chapter 26 A Charge To The Confirmand—Before, During And After..........................183Chapter 27 A Tribute To Scholarship...........................................................185Agenda........................................................................................187Appreciations.................................................................................191A Pictorial Of Some Places And Persons On The Journey.........................................193A Memorial To: Betty May Preston Beck, April 16, 1922—July 21, 2007.....................211
Chapter One
Before Telling The Story
My life's spiritual journey is in summary, a journey into the Trinity—that is into the communion of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In the Sacrament of Baptism, I received the mark of that communion. In the Sacrament of Holy Communion, I participate in that communion through its specificity or through my identification with the humanity and divinity of Jesus Christ in the bread and the cup. This journey was made through the grace of the Holy Spirit. I will write of those personal experiences and qualities which I believe the Spirit used to lead me into the Trinity.
This writing is "after the fact". Change is occurring. God is constantly changing my perceptions of the experience I had, enlarging my view of the experiences and the qualities that were central in keeping me in the journey. In this connection I write in the awareness that the Triune God is a dynamic, relational being—a moving force—not static, sitting back in a perpetual day of rest, waiting to see how well we do with what has been given us. No, the Spirit is always changing so as to extend the impact of the experiences and the qualities developed
I have avoided relating family experiences that are of a very private nature. This causes no loss of what I seek to do through writing of my family. Sometimes the smallest incident leads to a large influence. But the large incidents are not unnoticed. I trust that all this will be illustrated by what follows. In this story I will deal with how I could believe in the Trinity and yet not believe in it. I will deal with how I arrived at the Trinity and yet was not in it. I will deal with my various adaptations of the Trinity (i.e. not quite the Trinity) and yet my holding to the orthodox words of the Trinity.
This account of my journey, will logically follow the general chronology of events. However some events will be placed outside the chronological order. This, in part, is following my family's habit of "looking back", sometimes with joy and sometimes with "how did we do it?" The journey was not a straight line. It revisited places and thus felt a renewed impact of the experience. And the qualities developed became more significant, which is no surprise, considering the dynamic nature of the Triune God. So this account of the journey will "zig-zag"—right and left and back and forward. Theological thinking does this. This is a natural part of any remembering and of any accounting of the influence of experiences on current beliefs. I will avoid any research into the details of the various contacts which have been influential in my journey. Any knowledge that I would gain in my research would not be a part of my actual experience in the journey, except where the knowledge confirms in retrospect what I emphatically sensed at the time. I am convinced that the insights gained from the events have come as a result of the Spirit and his play on the events, which I will discuss in more detail later. Also obviously the emphasis is on "my" journey. Though "my foot steps" would track across others, and would benefit from trails left by others, still it is my experience in the walk. Also the emphasis is "into". There is the aspect of being "in" the Trinity. Of course this cannot now be fully. But in the "after-experience-truth" the Trinity does draw me into a foretaste of the blessed communion.
Chapter Two
"Just Trinity"—Its Community And The Becks
This is the story of my journey.
Significantly the journey began in the Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church in Terre Haute, Indiana. Church was an important part of my family's life. It was a central facet–an assumed facet in my father's and mother's lives and they would make it so in the family they would have a part in creating. The flow of their lives before I came on the scene tells much of what would influence them in the broad aspects of church life. Dad's folks were married in Kansas City, Missouri on May 10, 1871. So William and Margaret Beck started their lives together in one of the jumping-off places into the rigors of the Great Wide West. But they decided to back up from Kansas City a little and settled in Logansport, Indiana. He became a printer. In one picture in our family photos, he is shown in his long working smock at the type-setting table. They stayed put in that community, raising their family in an area with many of German descent who were occupying the Midwestern territories. Dad's family were Lutherans in church affiliation as were most of their German community. In 1905 Dad went to Wittenberg College in Springfield, Ohio. He was a member of the Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity, indicating, at the time, a strong commitment to the college endeavor. The college in its beginning emphasized a study of the classics and theology. During Dad's time, most of the studies centered on the classics and science. This explains the two shelves of historic classical writings in our family book case. The Depression's impact of personal family chaos caused a loss of these books. Dad left the college after two years, perhaps due to finances. Then he became an apprentice pharmacist in Logansport, earning his pharmacy license. Soon after this he came to Terre Haute, being employed as a pharmacist and then establishing his own store at 24th and Third Avenue.
Mom's family (Hines) were Pennsylvania Dutch. They, presumably, came to Indiana by way of Kentucky. They were loyal Methodists which had strong reformed and evangelical roots in the area. Mom was born in Carlisle, Indiana and completed eight grades in school, a very good achievement for women at that time She worked at several jobs around Sullivan, Indiana. Then, being the independent, free thinker she was, she came to Terre Haute and enrolled in Brown's Business College. From there she was employed as a stenographer at the Baldwin Piano Company in Terre Haute. As a child I viewed this with pride for not many women were so independent. She often told of great times when the women would take the trolley to Deming Park and picnic. An expression of independence was reflected in the way it was told. She pointed with pride to her very substantial boarding house on South 7th Street.
Dad and Mom met when Dad helped her off a street car. The acquaintance grew to marriage on Valentines Day 1911. Then as Mom related, they rented a house on North 6th Street and she "set up housekeeping". As a child, I often wondered why she quit working at Baldwins. But she did what was expected of her. Sometimes Mom reflected on this almost regretfully. However Brother Bill was born in 1912, a year later. An independent stream ran strong in Mom. One of her heroines was Eleanor Roosevelt, even though the Hines' and Beck's were solid Republicans. As a youth, the thought often came to my mind, "Mom was really a women's libber" at heart. She often spoke with humor but positively of the Women's Suffrage Movement and the women she knew who were active in spite of their husbands' frowns. I came naturally and quite early in life to a concern for inclusive issues related to women. Thus the gender issues in the church were easily accommodated. Some place in Mom's family, Potawatomi Indian blood was introduced. Later photos show features of this ancestry.
The matter of church relationship had to be settled between Mom and Dad. It was settled quickly. After brief experiences, Mom announced that the Lutheran worship was too long. With Dad being naturally accommodating and with Mom's Methodism being Methodist Episcopal and evangelical and with the Reformed elements being strong in that area, Dad easily became a Methodist. Active participation followed with heavy engagement in developing a new church building that came to be known with sharp clarity as "Trinity Church".
Echoing in all the conversation about the church the name was simply "Trinity". It was echo in me because in me there was some puzzling about the word. Its meaning could get some attention from me before my adult memory because I also wondered about being confirmed at a very early age—some time in the early primary years. There is no record in the family of my baptism or confirmation. Such records, on the whole, became misplaced in the shakeup of the Depression. I could get the record from the Church, but the important matter here is, that I remember wondering about being confirmed at such an early age and wondering about the word, Trinity. Consequently there was a sense of vagueness in me about the church and about beliefs related to it.
Sunday school lessons about Biblical characters, about Jesus' life, about missions of the church, and about how to live were taken in without much debate, leaving a sense of mystery about what it all meant. This mystery was, without it being spoken of, related to the name of the church, just "Trinity". How much this influenced my spiritual journey, I will not venture to say except there was always a vague question, "Trinity?". Such a question could hardly be ignored considering my family's life and my life in the church.
My parents were heavily involved in the decision to relocate the church into a completely new building. Some of their ideas were built into it, and in a literal sense. The building committee adopted the idea of having contributors names put on bricks for a certain level of contribution for each brick. Then the bricks were placed in a wall of the gymnasium. The seven members of our family each had a brick in the wall. This impressed me. There was no other family so completely represented. The bricks are still there, as a visit in later years confirmed, even though the church building was sold a few years before the visit to an independent church group. My Dad bought extra bricks with his name on them. These ended up as door stops around the church building. This was a jolt to me and for some years I carried the question, "Is that any way to treat my Dad's gift?" But in later years, I philosophically concluded that it was a good thing to have a part in an "open door policy".
Community life of the family was centered in the church. Church Women's Aid Society meetings were hosted by Mom in our home. Dad went to finance meetings in the church during evenings after he closed the drug store. In his single minded focus, he passed the house without a sideward glance, much to my mother's distress.
When my mother spoke of the "good old days in the church" she often spoke of a New Years Eve party with refreshing gales of laughter. Such memories later healed some difficult days. Sunday night worship, when my Dad's drug store was closed, was most often my parents worship time. I sat with them, usually on the end of the pew where I could lay my head against the high pew end and sleep. Strangely, I have never been able to remember other members of the family being there. Easter Sundays were special. Mom always arranged corsages with fresh flowers for us to wear.
But life in the church was not always pleasantly nostalgic. At times it did not attract me toward life in and with the church. The memory of Mom's anger at Dad, cruising by the house on the way to a church meeting was not pleasant. It bothered me, but as I grew older, it was one of those little parental disagreements which I exaggerated. Thus much of the negative in church life could be handled with a more mature approach. Church gossip did not give a lift to the spirit, but a more mature view would consider the source and forget it. Those bricks with Dad's name being kicked around as they propped open doors were enshrined in my memory. I could wonder why I did not take a more positive, mature view—keeping the doors open as a welcome to all was a good place for Dad's name. I had a "beef" with Trinity Church on how they dropped us when Dad's business collapsed. That was a hard one to handle. I could go on with more like this, but most of my thinking about the church was filled with joy, which dispelled the negative and translated into a larger sense of the church community as a place to unlock "secrets" in my thinking about God.
The community as a whole added to the raising of questions. To understand this, it is helpful to set "my places" in their spatial relatedness. The church was on a main thoroughfare, 19th Street at Second Avenue; we lived on Third Avenue between 22nd and 23rd Streets; and my father operated a drug store at 24th and Third Avenue. The local grade school and its yard on 25th Street marked a "line" across which you entered the community's area for fabricating metal and glass products and for the homes of relatively recent immigrants and African-Americans. Dad's drug store was patronized by this broader, mixed community and, being a "loafer" in the store, I saw and heard their comings and goings. Those from across 25th Street stirred my interest for many reasons but one was that they came from a neighborhood of many different churches. There were several different nationality-related churches. The appearance of their church buildings and their forms and styles of religious worship and expression varied. On Saturdays and Sundays and periodically other days, some of their church bells were rung for an extended period. And in a sense it rang into me deeper puzzlement. Inevitably stories developed among the boys of the neighborhood. "They are ringing out the devil; getting ready for their church service." This boyhood derision did not dismiss the practice from my mind. It left a deeper desire to penetrate the mystery around religion. The neighborhood continuously echoed with other sounds of its ethnic variety—sounds from African-American and Bible churches; from salvation singing churches; signs from the Eastern Orthodox church; there were Jewish varieties; and Romanian, Czechoslovakian, Yugoslavian, Bulgarian varieties. The horizon showed plain crosses, an Eastern Orthodox cross, and as children remarked, the onion topping. The variety worked up questions in me. It was an emotion laden, Exodus laden, salvation laden religious community. As I look back, it all made a strong impact. Perhaps the Spirit was at work in me.
Terre Haute was a comfortable middle class, working community. On Labor Day, celebrating the day for many men in our neighborhood, meant sitting on the front doorstep holding a watering hose, and sprinkling the lawn for as far as the stream of water would reach without them getting up. It was their lazy day. Men at the end of a summer day would come by with the rust of the metal stamping mill covering their soiled, sweaty clothes and a sweat towel around their neck, and carrying their round lunch pail. Railroad workers came by in their railroad caps and striped overalls, homeward bound. It was a comfortable scene that made a mark on me of satisfaction, and yet, I saw it, sadly, as the Depression was beginning to collapse it. Then when the Depression became worse, one could see the almost total collapse, marching across the neighborhood. "Why was it all happening?" was the question that repeated itself in my childhood, adolescent mind.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from My Journey into the Trinityby Emil Beck Copyright © 2011 by Emil Beck. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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