My Journey into the Trinity: A Personal Adventure into Faith

By Emil Beck

Excitement of Triune truth is matched by excitement of telling about Gods eternal evangelizing of me. Gods 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.
Moms 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 Gods welcoming grace.

Such common experiences support uncommon, disciplined, entertaining and exciting scholarship of professors, who presented theology of the familial, in-history, personal, relational GodFather, 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 futurethese three in perfect concert evangelized me. An exciting story to tell.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 23, 2011
• ISBN: 9781463403409

Emil Beck

Emil Beck, parish centered theologian–believes “. . . the local church is where theology is tested.” Retired clergyman—ordained 1951, nine years of advanced studies. 22 years serving New England churches and 12 years in their ruling judicatory. Outdoorsman—theological inspiration came on his land—at the headwaters of the Connecticut River.

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© 2011 Emil Beck. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 6/20/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4634-0342-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-0341-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-0340-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011908051

Printed in the United States of America

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Preface

In this account of my journey into the Trinity, family will be a major companion for the journey throughout and at culmination. Therefore it seems appropriate to list the family contexts in which I have lived and am living.

My father: Walter William Beck, born 1880, Logansport, Indiana.

My mother: Lona May Hines Beck, born 1883, Carlisle, Indiana.

My parents: married February 14, 1911, Valentines Day, Sullivan, Indiana.

Myself and my brothers and sister:

William Henry Beck, born 1912, Terre Haute, IN.

Walter Wright Beck, born 1914, Terre Haute, IN.

Ivan Eugene Beck, born 1918, Terre Haute, IN.

Emil Charles Beck, born 1920, Terre Haute, IN.

Mary Ellen Beck, born 1925, Terre Haute, IN.

My wife:

Betty May Preston Beck, born 1922, Rochester, NY

We were married May 5, 1945, Hempstead, NY.

Our children:

Charles Emil Beck, born 1946, Mineola, NY.

James Walter Beck, born 1954, Rutland, VT.

Our grandchildren:

Deborah Elizabeth Beck, born 1987, Natick, MA

William David Beck, born 1989, Natick, MA

(The narrative of the book reports on their mother, Martha, and Chuck becoming a single-parent.)

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 Before Telling The Story

Chapter 2 Just Trinity—Its Community And The Becks

Chapter 3 Legacy In Race Relations

Chapter 4 Growing Up In The Drug Store And Its Community

Chapter 5 Freedom With Measured Restraint

Chapter 6 The Great Depression

Chapter 7 The Family Circle

Chapter 8 The Small And Large Of Medora Life

Chapter 9 Songs Of The Church

Chapter 10 ‘Medora Junction’—Between Two Worlds

Chapter 11 Unexpected Assignments In The Army

Chapter 12 Civilian Life—What To Do Now

Chapter 13 Becoming A Christian Minister

Chapter 14 A Good Start In Poultney

Chapter 15 Pain And Pleasure In Windsor

Chapter 16 Building A Church At Brookside

Chapter 17 A Guide To Home

Chapter 18 Boston And New Perspectives

Chapter 19 The Spirit Returns Me To Pastoral Ministry

Chapter 20 Time To Focus

Chapter 21 The Breaking Forth Of Light

Chapter 22 A Defense Of My Epiphany

Chapter 23 Looking Back

Chapter 24 Yes, To The Eternal Evangel

Chapter 25 Blessed Assurance

Chapter 26 A Charge To The Confirmand— Before, During And After

Chapter 27 A Tribute To Scholarship

Agenda

Appreciations

A Pictorial Of Some Places And Persons On The Journey

A Memorial To: Betty May Preston Beck, April 16, 1922—July 21, 2007

Chapter 1

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 2

 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.

Chapter 3

Legacy In Race Relations

I cannot write about my community without writing of its race relations. Terre Haute was basically a segregated city. My neighborhood was segregated. The African-American children (Negroes was the race designation then.) walked through our community to their segregated school, passing our school on the way. When we met on our way to school, we heard frequent threats. There was a separate public swimming pool for the Negroes. Dubbing it the ink well. showed the depths of the segregation. My father was highly regarded for his respectful treatment of all who came in the store, for whatever purpose. He served Negroes at the soda fountain but I do not remember any eating ice cream there. The unwritten codes of segregation in both the minds of whites and Negroes operated.

Our family was the benefactor of Dad’s treatment of Negroes. But there were times of stress, such as on the sidewalks to and from school. But one episode tells the full story. Dad sometimes had to ask one of us boys to deliver a prescription. One day the available son was me. The neatly wrapped prescription, showing Dad’s trademark way of wrapping, was in my hand. There were no loose ends of wrapping, no rubber bands, no string, no tape—just folds tightly made and tucked into the right places for a firmly wrapped package. At times through the years I have tried to imitate this but with evidence of failure coming loose at all the corners. I have never seen a successful imitation. But the package with its trademark wrapping, tightly gripped in my hand, provided me little comfort in my mission. Another skill, for which I had great respect of Dad, would save me. The prescription was to go to a home on the hill—the immigrant, African-American neighborhood. I was nervous but kept my eyes straight ahead. Then that which was dreaded happened. A group of Negroes appeared and blocked my way. I did not know whether to turn and run back to the drug store or attempt a fast detour. At the critical moment, a tall black girl appeared at the back of the group. She shouted, Leave that boy alone. He’s the Beck Boy. The group parted and I was on my way. Gratitude for Dad’s way with the Negro community was overflowing in me. What would have happened to someone else? They would not have escaped without bruises. This underlines the mixed attitudes in race relations of our neighborhood. But through it all, in Dad there was constant, unbiased attention. Dad treated black people the same as he treated white people. He was respected for this by the Negro community. This equal treatment would work its way into my practices in an administrative position in later years.

But the impact of Dad’s influence on my race relations was deeper than giving African Americans the same welcome into the store as whites. Dad could get angry with them as he could with all his customers. The blacks from the Hill could prize this above all