God Underneath: Spiritual Memoirs of a Catholic Priest

God Underneath, a memoir by the Catholic priest Edward L. Beck, is composed of moving, funny, and profound vignettes that blur the line between sermon and story. Beck's reflections meander through a variety of topics, including friendship, sexuality, illness, alcoholism, death, demanding mothers, reticent fathers, and the political struggles that doomed a spiritual retreat in Peoria, Illinois. Like a homily, each chapter begins with a verse of scripture, then proceeds to tell a story that helps readers understand that verse and, even more, learn to live it. In the book's introduction, Beck describes his belief in "incarnational spirituality," which he explains as follows:

God chooses to be revealed in the people and events of our lives. ("Incarnate" comes from the Latin incarnati, to be made flesh.) Thus, this spirituality is of the very stuff of our lives. God becomes incarnate, a God with skin.

Beck's way of telling stories is faithful to this mode of spirituality: he describes people whose lives describe truth, welling up from the God who is underneath and in all. -- Michael Joseph Gross