I have started reading Frederick Buechner’s Secrets in the Dark which is a collection of his sermons. My niece’s husband has often spoken of Buechner with great respect and admiration. Every time I visit Half-Price Books in Fort Wayne, I scour the shelves for one of his books. So far, this is the only one I have found, but it is a good starting point.
In “Message in the Stars”, Buechner postulates that even if God were to arrange the stars above us to blatantly spell out GOD IS, it would not be enough for us. We would say, so what? So God exists, what difference does that make to me? He is not part of my life. According to Buechner, what we really need is not proof of God, but the presence of God.
Of course we need both. The good news is that in Jesus we have both. In the incarnation and miracles of Jesus, in his crucifixion and resurrection, in the sending of the Holy Spirit, we have the evidence that God exists and that He wants a personal relationship with us.
Buechner and Ann Voskamp have a lot in common. They both want us to open our eyes to God’s presence in the mundane aspects of our lives; to see His goodness, to feel His presence. God has been hammering me with this message in the past few years through writers like this. Why is it that churches design worship services to be loud and emotionally charged when really what we need is to pause in silence throughout the ordinariness of our days and see and sense that God is with us.
Daily lifting life's empty bowl to see what God provides to sustain, nourish, and strengthen His child.
Hi Paula,
ReplyDeleteI discovered Buechner while doing my undergrad work in the 80's and immediately devoured everything he'd written. Actually, the singer Michael Card introduced me to his work as I was helping his band set up for a local performance, upon which I introduced several of my professors at William Tyndale to him.
His writing played a role in my relationship with Ann: I gave her a fist pressing of The Wizard’s Tide (his first) as the first 'serious' gift. We both treasure his words and were lucky enough to meet him as he spoke at a conference maybe 10 years ago; he signed that book I gave Ann and promptly chided me for not having it re-bound (he is a book-freak to make Al blush!).
I introduced a photographer-friend of mine to his work and dug up his email for him when he asked; Chris (my friend) became friends and has stayed at Buechner's Vermont farm. Chris' (Rank) pictures now adorn the flyleafs of Buechner's books for the past several years (mostly reissues and various collections).
You are quite correct in his theological emphasis: the immanent over the transcendent, focusing on finding God in the present, the mundane. What really stuns me about him is that he is a WRITER, and he is great. I have never been a fan of most devotional writing; it often reads like a collection of trite, canned, spiritualized (the longer I go, the less savory these adjectives will become--in short, I don't like it ;-) fluff, churned out to make a buck and line the shelves with the rest of the bad writing stocked at Family bookstores and their ilk.
Buechner is, in his own words and particularly in his fiction, too salty for the church and to church for the world, which makes him, as Goldilocks might say, "just right" in my reading. Glad you enjoy!
Thanks, Jeff. I would not have even looked for anything by Buechner except for the things that you shared at the family reunion. These sermons are "just right" for me at the present time.
DeleteAs a writing tutor and sometimes English teacher, one might think I would have proofed that second to last sentence...
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