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Biography
[Transcribed from tape and edited for clarity.] |
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"Failing to See" There’s a story told about a business woman named Marie from Minneapolis who had been away from her family on a two-week business trip to Denver and was on her way home finally. She was very eager to get there, but she needed to change planes here at lovely O’Hare Airport in Chicago. Now it’s not exactly a place you want to be if you expect to be on time, hassle-free for that departure. Marie had 45 minutes to make her connecting flight and, luckily, only had carry-on luggage. She raced from one terminal to the other. Opposite ends of the airport, of course. She arrived breathless at the counter, only to be informed that her flight to Minneapolis was indefinitely delayed. She is furious. She rips the ticket from the seemingly unapologetic agent’s hand, she turns in disgust, only to see looming before her a stand for Mrs. Field’s Cookies. She takes this as God’s consolation to her. If she has to be stuck in this God-forsaken airport, she’ll at least have Mrs. Field’s Cookies to keep her company. Marie gets her bag of cookies but, of course, she can’t find a seat because everyone has been delayed. She finally sees an empty one at a table with a woman with two children. She motions to the woman, “Can I sit?” The woman says sure. Marie takes out a book and begins to read and reaches her hand in the bag for one of her delicious cookies. Well, the woman across from her with the two kids reaches her hand in the bag and takes three cookies, one for herself and one for each of her children. Well, I don’t have to tell you that Marie is in no mood for this woman now to be eating her cookies. But she doesn’t say anything, trying to compose herself. She puts her hand back in the bag for another cookie, and the woman with the two kids puts her hand back in the bag and takes three more cookies, one for herself and one for each of her two children. Marie is about ready to fly to Minneapolis on her own without a plane by this point. She is so angry. Finally there are three cookies left in the bag and Marie defiantly puts her hand in the bag and takes a cookie. And the woman across from her with the two kids puts her hand back in the bag and takes the last two cookies, and gives them to her two children. Well, thank God, they’re now finally calling the flight as ready to depart to Minneapolis because any longer and Marie would have lunged across the table at this woman. She stands up and she crumples the bag in front of her, gives the woman a dirty look. She’s talking to herself the whole way to the plane: “What kind of crazy world is this. I get stuck in this God forsaken airport with this crazy woman eating my cookies.” She finally gets on the plane, puts her carry-on bag on her lap to get something out of it and what does she find but her bag of Mrs. Field’s Cookies. Yeah, the whole time she had been eating the woman’s cookies. Notice however that he’s not the only blind person in the story. There are a lot of blind people in this narrative. Take the disciples who surmise the guy is blind because he must have sinned and is being punished. They aren’t seeing too clearly or the neighbors who say the blind man is a simple beggar and that all this suddenly seeing stuff must be a trick of some kind. Or the Pharisees who refuse to admit that anything good or life-giving has occurred in this healing. Even the blind man’s parents are so full of fear of the Jewish authorities that even they can’t admit that something wonderful has happened here. They even come close to disowning their own son when they say, “We’re really not sure how his eyes were opened. Ask him. He is of age. He can speak for himself.” And you know what? That’s exactly what the blind man does. He says, “Look, all I know is that I was blind and now I can see. And this man Jesus did it. And yes, I believe in him.” So maybe today as you listen to this it’s an opportunity to have your eyes opened just a bit. Not by me, but by the source of all life, all goodness, all possibilities. To believe that God desires us to see so that we might live more authentically. But how instead we sometimes prefer the shroud of inauthenticity. The author Alice Walker has a wonderful line in her book “The Color Purple.” She writes, “When you walk past the color purple in a field and don’t notice it, it gets God mad.” Now, of course, Alice Walker uses a bit more colorful language in the book, but this is a family program. But how often do we do that? Miss what is right in front of us. Walk past it or see something that isn’t there. Or maybe have our hand in someone else’s cookie bag thinking it’s our own. The call today is to hear the gentle voice of a God who wishes to bring us into the light of day with all its possibilities and potential. Yes, sometimes it is a little scary. But the alternative is even scarier. The song goes, “I want to walk as a child of the light. I want to follow Jesus.” And most times that’s going to mean not seeing things just as we are, but as they really are. Conversation with Edward Beck Daniel Pawlus: Edward, wonderful to see you, as always. Thanks for making the trip today. Edward Beck: Thanks. Great to be here! Pawlus: I want to talk about one of the lines that jumped out in your message specifically: “Yet so often it’s more comfortable to remain in darkness,” and then “to dismiss another faith as dangerous or wrong because we don’t want to take the time to see what it is really about.” This relates specifically to what’s been going on in New York this past year around the Ground Zero Mosque and all the kind of controversy around that. You’ve been in the midst of that, talking about that on your program. I wonder if you could share your thoughts about that today with us. Beck: I just think it’s been very unfortunate. I think to be in the midst of that and see the vitriol and the hatred and the misunderstanding, really, that’s been part of that discussion has been very disenchanting for me as a clergy person in the midst of it. I just think there is an opportunity here to really have it be bridge-building experience among faiths and I think that’s what the intent of those is who want to construct this Islamic cultural center. And yet I think people have hijacked it for their own ends and they’re making it something that it’s really not. Pawlus: Hasn’t it been kind of a perfect storm of the media and politics and the faith communities all mixed in to all of this? Beck: I think so. And as you’ll recall, when they first spoke about it in December there was no hubbub about this. Even some conservative radio personalities said this is probably going to be a good thing for New York. And then come May, when it became fodder for the politicians and they could get some support for their position, then it became this controversial problem. I think in some ways, yeah, it’s politics, religion and 9/11 coming together once again and I think not in a good way this time. Lillian Daniel: So one of the things I appreciate so much about your writing and your speaking is that you’re so clearly grounded in your own tradition and the Christian tradition, but you have this opportunity in your ministry in New York to be exposed to all the other faiths. I’m curious, you said that sometimes we avoid people of other faiths because we don’t want to change. How have you been changed in your interactions with folks from other religious traditions? Beck: I think my perspective has been broadened and widened. It’s such a big world and a big church and a big God. It’s so easy for us in our own traditions to box God. We think we know what God thinks and what God feels and how God acts and who God punishes and who God doesn’t. God is so much more than anything we can contain and I think to be exposed to other religious traditions and other ways of looking at it and other ways of perceiving this great mystery that is God, that is the Divine, can only help. I think we each bring a facet of this truth to who God is and if we can share it and not get threatened by each other, and really believe that revelation occurs in various ways, in various people, in various traditions, I think we’re all better for it. It doesn’t mean that we have to go leave our tradition. It means you bring what’s best of your tradition to the conversation and sometimes other people are changed by that, too. It’s a give and take, I think. Pawlus: You do work with different retreats and so forth around the country. How are we doing as Catholics and Catholic communities around interfaith dialogue and things of that nature? What’s your sense of that that you’re seeing? Beck: I think it’s still a struggle. I think that, especially when it comes to Islam, there is so much misinformation and I think again because a lot of people do not have exposure to a lot of Muslims and so they begin to believe all of the stereotypes, everything bad they hear people saying that it even isn’t based in fact. It’s hard to get through. But sometimes you’ll say to a Catholic who’s having this struggle, “Well, do realize how oppressed the Catholics were, how Catholic people were? Do you realize that they were held in suspicion, that they weren’t allowed to have certain jobs, that they couldn’t even run for political office?” This oppression has gone through other religious traditions, as well. Islam is not the first tradition in our country right here. And I think when you can see it through that lens, that it’s kind of cyclical this kind of stuff, it helps someone understand, well, maybe that could be me or maybe I have to get in touch with what it’s like to be on the outside because I have felt so much on the inside and where in my have I been on the outside. Daniel: We have more in common than we think. Beck: I think we do. Daniel: I want to get to the practical applications of your message today. I felt like when you told the story about the stressed out business traveler in the airport, oh my goodness, that’s me! I’ve acted like that. Especially when I’m tired and worn out, I just don’t see the good around me. What do you advise people to do when they’re in that stressed out, tired place? Beck: Noticing is really tough. Seeing what’s there is really tough, even more when we’re stressed out and tired because we get so insular. We tune in and close in just to ourselves. I think it’s really a conscious activity to be attentive and to notice. Awareness is the seed of spirituality, isn’t it? We’ve been told that not only by Anthony de Mello, but way before him, to wake up and to notice what is. But most of us go through life kind of with eyes closed or glazed over because we have that tunnel vision that we were talking about with religious traditions even. I think it’s really an attentive exercise of reflection, of maybe a meditation that says I am really going to be much more aware today than I usually am. That’s why I love that line from Alice Walker. We walk past the color purple all the time. And again, that’s a metaphor for all of the beauty and wonder and blessing that we just don’t perceive. Rather we perceive through our own lens, our own jaundiced or filtered lens, and usually it’s not that accurate. We really don’t see things as they are. Pawlus: It’s been a special year for you, Edward. You celebrated your twenty-fifth year as a priest this year. Beck: I did. Pawlus and Daniel: Congratulations! Beck: Thank you. Pawlus: I want to ask you, just briefly, what are some of the challenges you’ve seen and what are some of the surprises that have really thrilled you along the way? Has it gone quickly in your experience? Beck: It’s gone very quickly. I have to tell you, though, that the recent years have been particularly challenging with the whole sex abuse scandal in the Catholic church. Pawlus: You’ve spoken out on that very strongly so we’d love to hear your thoughts for our audience as well. Beck: I have because I have felt very disappointed in some of the hierarchy and the institution with regards to this particular issue, this scandal. I think it caught everybody by surprise rightly so. And again, the media really made it a story and it deserved to be a story in the sense of how…in the ill way it was handled by certainly our hierarchy. But again, I think what it did was it put a shadow over the whole priesthood and Roman Catholicism in general. I think that’s really been wrong and I think part of my effort in the work that I do is to say, yes, this was definitely bad, this was a mistake. But this is a small group of sick men within our institution that were not dealt with in a good way, but we need to be now agents of healing and reconciliation and kind of rebuild what has been lost. But again, I also think it’s been somewhat humbling for our church in a good. We used to be trumped up, we’re number one, and we’re the best and we hold the truth. And then suddenly the emperor has no clothes and there has been a grace to that because you then have to then realize that sinfulness is part of you and the institution and that God works even in that sinfulness. Daniel: We’re all fallible. Beck: We are all fallible. Daniel: So even given those struggles and the normal struggles of being a priest, twenty-five years later if you could go back in time would you do it differently? Beck: I probably, interestingly, wouldn’t do it that differently. I’ve been very happy and very fulfilled in my priesthood. There are things about my church that I would like to see evolve, that I would like to be a little different. I don’t know if in my next twenty-five years, if God gives me that long, I’ll get to see some of that. I’d like to work toward some of that. I really want us to be an agent for reconciliation and renewal and make some structural changes that need to be made. But it’s been a wonderful twenty-five years and I’m very blessed to have had it the way I’ve had it. Daniel: We’re delighted that you’ve spent those twenty-five years serving the church and all of us. |
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