Special Edition: In Gratitude for the Life of Frederick Buechner

A Few Quotes of Insight and Encouragement

Special Edition

The author, Presbyterian pastor, and theologian Carl Frederick Buechner died today at the age of 96. It would be hard to overestimate his impact on my formation as a writer and pastor. In fact, Small Stories about Big Things is published from the conviction that Buechner articulated many years ago:

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.

He had a way with words, stories, and probing insights about faith that found deep resonance with people of every background.

Today I give thanks for his life by offering you, the reader, a few of my favorite quotes from him. I hope one of them might prove a helpful guide or encouragement today:

Courage: One life on this earth is all we get, whether it is enough or not enough, and the obvious conclusion would seem to be at the very least we are fools if we do not live it as fully and bravely and beautifully as we can.

Stories: My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours… it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us more powerfully and personally. If this is true, it means that to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished not only humanly but also spiritually.

Calling: The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.

Secrets: What we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else. It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are . . . because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing. It is important to tell our secrets too because it makes it easier . . . for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own . . .

Grace: The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you.

Anger: Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back--in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.

Truth and Courage: Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.

Wisdom: To be wise is to be eternally curious.