Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that 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. ~ Frederick Buechner

When I was twenty-five I unexpectedly came to the proverbial fork in the road. Much to my surprise, I gave up my dream of becoming a college basketball coach and took the road less traveled by exiting the ramp to graduate school in theology. Equally surprising, I ended up at Princeton Theological Seminary of all places, a Catholic at a school founded in 1812 by Protestant Reformers. Long story. It had a world-renowned ecumenical faculty and I ended up stacking degrees and staying from 1980-1988—some of the best years of my life.

Looking back to those years when I first began to read seriously in theology, and especially in Christian spirituality, I noticed a pattern. Every seven years or so there was always a formative figure or two on whose lives and writings I concentrated. I could trace my journey for the next thirty years with those names. During my eight years in Princeton, the two figures who received my attention most were the American Catholic Trappist monk and prophetic mystic, Thomas Merton, and the American writer, novelist, autobiographer, essayist, poet, Protestant preacher, and minister Frederick Buechner (Beek-ner). I learned this morning that Frederick Buechner died in his sleep Monday, August 15 at age 96.

In high school, Frederick Buechner went to the Lawrenceville School, a distinguished boarding prep school only six miles down the road from Princeton, New Jersey where he met and became best friends with the distinguished poet-to-be James Merrill. Beginning college in 1943, his studies at Princeton University were interrupted for two years by WWII. So he  graduated in 1948. Following college, he taught English at Lawrenceville and lectured on writing at New York University. In 1950 he published his first novel A Long Day’s Dying to great acclaim being featured in LIFE magazine as a bright star to watch. His second novel, he said, was as unsuccessful as his first book was successful.

While living, writing and lecturing in New York City, he uncharacteristically began going to Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church where renowned preacher George Buttrick was the pastor. It is fitting that one Sunday Buechner was so surprised and moved by the wording of one sentence in Buttrick’s sermon that shortly after he enrolled nearby in the prestigious Union Theological Seminary. In 1955 he won the O Henry Award for his short story “Tiger.” He graduated and was ordained in 1958.

Buechner never pastored a church or worked on a church staff. For the next nine years (1958-67) Buechner taught Literature, started a Religion program, and served as school chaplain at Philips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, writing when able. One of his students was the accomplished American novelist John Irving who wrote such celebrated books as The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules, and A Prayer for Owen Meany. In 1967, now married and father of two daughters, the Buechner family moved to a farmhouse on Rupert Mountain in Vermont where he became a full-time writer. He lived and wrote there until yesterday.

For the next fifty years Buechner’s main ministry, forte, and passion were as a witty and wise wordsmith. In addition to more novels, he wrote essays, gave lectures, and published his memoir as a trilogy. But Buechner’s ability to write fiction, memoir, sermons, and essays that were earthy, religious, humorous, moving and wise has made him a favorite of many. In particular, persons who appreciate beautiful and insightful writing and those who are asking big questions about the warp and woof of human experience, the spiritual life, of course, dealing with God, Jesus, faith and doubt, struggle and joy, and who are suspicious, weary, or turned off by so much godawful religious drivel out there were drawn to Buechner’s work.

In a 1983 interview, Buechner described how he understood his vocation and intention as a writer:

[T]here are really two frontiers: the outer-concerned with issues such as civil rights, the peace movement and poverty, the frontier where justice does battle with injustice, sanity with madness, and so on-and the inner, where doubt is pitted against faith, hope against despair, grief against joy. It’s this inner frontier that I live with and address myself to. And when I feel like justifying myself, I say that ultimately the real battle is going to be won there.1

As he once said, “I am too religious for the secular reader and too secular for the religious reader.” As for me, he is the perfect blend since a “religion” that is not down to earth doesn’t intersect with our lives and is rendered meaningless while the day-to-day reality of human living devoid of Spirit feels utterly lacking to me as well. A Pulitzer Prize nominee, it is a shame that people who avoid all things religious or spiritual have deprived themselves of his work. It is like those adults who refuse to read YA (Young Adult) fiction because of the word young.

On a more personal note, I had many opportunities while at Princeton to hear Buechner give talks, preach sermons, and read from his works. For forty years his writing has influenced my life, my theology, and my writing. Here are five things I greatly appreciate about Buechner’s writing.

First, he has mastered Emily Dickinson’s counsel “Tell the truth, but tell it slant.” It’s not just that he makes religious talk and themes palatable, but that he comes at the topics listed above from angles that few before him have. His creative retelling of Biblical stories and characterizations of biblical figures breathe new life into old, familiar material.

Second, for certain uncertain Christians Buechner is user-friendly because he himself is so unpretentious, vulnerable, and attractively human. In large circles of Christians where it was once considered anathema, he has made doubt acceptable. Few writers capture the mixed-bag that is the human person better than Buechner. He reveals and describes the little hypocrisies and small braveries, ignominy and magnanimity, deep suffering and tall joy, awkwardness and grace, burdens and blessings of humans doing their worst and best to make their way each day. Given that no one could have been more surprised than himself that he would go to seminary and get ordained, Buechner has no desire or temptation to be anyone’s answer man, to tell people what to believe or how to live. But whatever the genre, he has the capacity to help readers find their own way, discover their own truth, identify their own gut-wrenching brokenness, accept their own heartbreaking beauty, and live into their own faithfulness.

Third, I resonate with his theology and perhaps the central feature of his religious orientation which is that even the most disgusting or duplicitous or brittle human person can be the means or agent or channel of God’s grace. Many of his main characters, like Leo Bebb in his tetralogy, are consciously shaped like Graham Greene’s whisky priest, and are blatantly deceitful, broken, or morally wobbly yet are never so completely repulsive or unredeemable that they are unable to surprise the reader with a moment of enacted mercy or generosity or daring dignity or radiant goodness. Buechner knows saints come not only in many guises but in many disguises as well. For those of us who have eyes to see let us see; for those of us who have ears to hear, let us hear.

Fourth, the only two authors I can think of who have made me smile and laugh out loud as much or more than when reading certain of Frederick Buechner’s books are Mark Twain (especially his fiction) and Gregory Boyle in his nonfiction. While levity abounds in his books, there is always the sense that he loves the fictional and historical characters we find there. Rarely do we laugh at them, but often with them as we identify with their flaws and duplicity and suffering no less than with their sincerity and faith and hopefulness. There is always plenty of joy and echoes of kindness in Buechner’s writing. Anne Lamott would not deny that Buechner has been one of her formative guides as a writer and Christian.

Fifth, Buechner, who took great pleasure in the mirth his books brought to others, was well acquainted with melancholy. While he would no doubt consider himself socio-economically privileged, he knew suffering. Two of his most poignant pieces deal with his father who died by suicide when Buechner was only ten and with his agonizing helplessness as a parent when one of his daughters was critically ill and flirting with death from anorexia. And yet, as one host who invited Buechner to speak at his retreat center famously said to him, “You have been a good steward of your pain.”

Frederick Buechner was a generous and faithful steward of his hard work and God’s grace, his words and wisdom, and of what pulled him down and what raised him up. May he enjoy forever the embrace of grace and God’s lavish love.

1 From the Christian Century, November 16, 1983

BUECHNER’S BOOKS: SOME OF MY PERSONAL FAVORITES

• Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale

• The Sacred Journey
• Now and Then
• Telling Secrets (His memoir in three separate books)

• The Book of Bebb ~ a tetralogy also published as four separate novels

• Lion Country
• Open Heart
• Love Feast
• Treasure Hunt

• Godric (Novel)
• Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC

• Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner

COMPLETE BIBLIOGRAPHY on Frederick Buechner’s website—click HERE.

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