Discoveries
How is it that I have gone my whole life without ever reading or knowing about Frederick Buechner until a few months ago?? Why did I not stumble onto him sooner? First I read Telling Secrets, which I just discovered via Amazon is the third volume of his autobiography. (Meaning I apparently need to get myself to the library and find the other two.) Incredible.
Next I read Godric, probably is his most famous work and an incredible novel about the life of the (real) 12-century saint named Godric, a book I quickly added to my favorite-books-of-all-time list.
Two days ago I started reading A Room Called Remember, which is a collection of sermons and essays that is hauntingly beautiful and, to use Jeff's word, sublime. A snippet from my favorite essay so far in the book:
"By faith we understand, if we are to understand it at all, that the madness and lostness we see all around us and within us are not the last truth about the world but only the next to last truth. Madness and lostness are the results of terrible blindness and tragic willfulness which whole nations are involved in no less than you and I are involved in them. Faith is the eye of the heart, and by faith we see deep down beneath the face of things--by faith we struggle against all odds to be able to see--that the world is God's creation even so. It is he who made us and not we ourselves, made us out of his peace to live in peace, out of his light to dwell in light, out of his love to be above all things loved and loving. That is the last truth about the world....The truth of God as the last and deepest truth--they none of them saw it in its fullness any more that we have, but they spent their lives homesick for it-- seeking it like a homeland, like home, and their story is our story because we too have seen from afar what peace is, light is, love is, and we have seen it in something like that room that love brought me back to that rainy day on the train and the bus, and where I found supper waiting, found love waiting, love enough to see me through the night."
--A Room Called Remember, Buechner, page 22.
Next I read Godric, probably is his most famous work and an incredible novel about the life of the (real) 12-century saint named Godric, a book I quickly added to my favorite-books-of-all-time list.
Two days ago I started reading A Room Called Remember, which is a collection of sermons and essays that is hauntingly beautiful and, to use Jeff's word, sublime. A snippet from my favorite essay so far in the book:
"By faith we understand, if we are to understand it at all, that the madness and lostness we see all around us and within us are not the last truth about the world but only the next to last truth. Madness and lostness are the results of terrible blindness and tragic willfulness which whole nations are involved in no less than you and I are involved in them. Faith is the eye of the heart, and by faith we see deep down beneath the face of things--by faith we struggle against all odds to be able to see--that the world is God's creation even so. It is he who made us and not we ourselves, made us out of his peace to live in peace, out of his light to dwell in light, out of his love to be above all things loved and loving. That is the last truth about the world....The truth of God as the last and deepest truth--they none of them saw it in its fullness any more that we have, but they spent their lives homesick for it-- seeking it like a homeland, like home, and their story is our story because we too have seen from afar what peace is, light is, love is, and we have seen it in something like that room that love brought me back to that rainy day on the train and the bus, and where I found supper waiting, found love waiting, love enough to see me through the night."
--A Room Called Remember, Buechner, page 22.
Comments
I lost my copy of Godric years ago. But Hannah and I really, really like: Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale.
Dave