URBANarmy

I came across this quote and used it on Sunday... "The original selves  which we were born with, and which I believe we continue in some measure to be no matter what, are selves which still echo with the holiness of their origin. I believe that what Genesis suggests is that this original self, with the print of God's thumb still upon it, is the most essential part of who we are and is buried deep in all of us as a source of wisdom and strength and healing which we can draw upon or, with our terrible freedom, not draw upon as we choose."       Buechner F. (1991) Telling Secrets. Harper and Row 44-45

We're looking at faith development today and I came across this interesting quote which I wanted to jot down somewhere. "Almighty God, are you true...When you are standing up to your neck in darkness, how do you say yes to that question? You say yes, I suppose, the only way faith can ever say it if it is honest with itself. You say yes with your fingers crossed..." Frederick Buechner, Clown in the Belfry pp 124

"If only we has eyes to see and ears to hear and wits to understand, we would know that the Kingdom of God in the sense of holiness, goodness, beauty is as close as breathing and is crying out to be born within ourselves and within the world... The kingdom of God is where our best dreams come from and our truest prayers. We glimpse it at those moments when we find ourselves being better than we are and wiser than we know ... The kingdom of God is where we belong. It is home, and whether we realise it or not, I think we are all homesick for it." Buechner, F. (1992). The clown in the belfry: writings on faith and fiction . San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.  152 ff

Of course it is the sermons we preach to ourselves around the preachers sermons that are the ones that we hear most powerfully. Frederick Buechner, F(1992) Telling Secrets. pp 85

Interesting thoughts by Buechner! The raw material of a myth, like the raw material of a dream, may be something that actually happened once. But myths, like dreams, do not tell us much about that kind of actuality. The creation of man, Adam and Eve, the Tower of Babel, Oedipus - they do not tell us primarily about events. They tell us about ourselves. In poplar usage, a myth has come to mean a story that is not true. Historically speaking that may well be so. Humanly speaking, a myth is a story that is always true. (Frederick Buechner)

There is perhaps no better proof for the existence of God than the way year after year he survives the way his professional friends promote him. Buechner, F. (1988:5-6). Whistling in the dark: an ABC theologized. San Francisco: Harper & Row.

"...a library is as holy a place as any temple..." "How like a winter hath my absence been from thee.." Doestoevsky - Words have power writes Buechner. "Words written fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, can have as much of this power today as ever they had it then to come alive for us an in us and make us more alive within ourselves... even across great distances of time and space do they ever lose their capacity for becoming incarnate. And when these words tell of vitue and nobility, when they move us closer to that truth and gentleness of spirit by which we become fully human, the reading of them is sacramental and a library is as holy a place as any temple." Buechner, F., & Connor, G. (1992:170ff). Listening to your life: daily meditations with Frederick Buechner . San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.

"....it is our business (not like so many peddlers of God's word but as men and women of sincerity) to speak with our hearts (which is what sincerity means) and to bear witness to, and live out of, and live toward, and live by, the true word of his holy story as it seeks to stammer itself forth through the holy stories of us all." Buechner, F. (1984). A room called Remember: uncollected pieces . San Francisco: Harper & Row. pp 56

It has been sometime since I looked out another lost theme . The irony of reading this was not lost on me the day that we looked at lost themes in mission. Buechner seems to share a similar frustration. There is a danger in mishandling the words that hold the essence of faith. "If the language that clothes Christianity is not dead, it is at least, for many dying ... Take any English word, even the most commonplace and try repeating it twenty times in a row - umbrella ... by the time we have finished, umbrella will not be a word any more. It will be a noise only, an absurdity, stripped of all meaning. And when we take even the greatest and most meaningful words that Christian faith has and repeat them over and over again for some two thousand years, much the same thing happens. There was a time when such words as faith, sin, redemption and atonement had great depth of meaning, great reality; but through centuries of handling and mishandling they have tended to become empty banali...

Frederick Buechner is an author that I am introducing myself to. You often see him quoted and I am beginning to understand why! It is out of the whirlwind that Job first hears God say "who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?" job 42:3. It is out of the absence of God that God makes himself present,... God is not an answer that man can give. Buechner, F. (1977:43). Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale

What's prayer? It's shooting shafts into the dark. What mark they strike, if any, who's to say? It's reaching for a hand you cannot touch. The silence is so fathomless that prayers like plummets vanish in the sea. You beg. You whimper. You load god down with empty praise. You tell him sins that he already knows full well. You seek to change his changeless will. Yet Godric prays the way he breathes, for else his heart would wither in his breast. Prayer is the wind that fills his sail. Else waves would dash him on the rocks, or he would drift with witless tides. And sometimes, by God's grace, a prayer is heard. Buechner, F. (1983:142). Godric: A Novel. New York: Harperone.

I found resonance in Buechner's reflection, I like the idea of getting to a place where our doing, knowing rather than exclusive to each other informs and shapes each other in the way Buechner describes. I wanted to learn about Christ - about the Old Testament, which had been his bible, and the New Testament, which was the Bible about him; about the history of the church, which had been founded on the faith that through him God had not only revealed his innermost nature and his purpose for the world, but had released into the world a fierce power to draw people into that nature and adapt them to that purpose, the church that not even the assorted barbarities and blunders of it's ragged two thousand years had ever quite managed finally to discredit or destroy; about the theological systems that the passion of his original followers, and of Saint Paul in particular , had been distilled into. [having been] moved to astonished tears which came from so deep inside me that to this da...

Frederick Buechner says "When you find something in a human face that calls out to you, not just for help but in some sense for yourself, how far do you go in answering that call...?" There was something in Bob's face last night at Faith House that called out to me. The Quality Street was being handed around and someone decided to take the lion's share to Bob this was simply unjust. Bob took action rescued the sweets and brought them to the safety of the kitchen and explained the injustice. "Bob I've just seen the face of Jesus in you...!" I wasn't too sure about how he took this as he walked of with a 'whatever' kind of shrug! But something in his face called out to me. Paul Tillich apparently is quoted as saying "Here and there in the world and now and then in ourselves, is a New Creation". That deep desire for righteousness was to be found in Bob, I was left thinking how much a better place the world be for more of that!

"To journey for the sake of saving our own lives is little by little to cease to live in any sense that matters, even to ourselves, because it is only by journeying for the world's sake - even when the world bores and sickens and scares you half to death - that little by little we start to come alive" Quoted in Listening to Your Life - Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner (1992:22) Frederick Buechner ( The Sacred Journey: A Memoir of Early Days )

Frederick Buechner points to the danger of 'reducing life to size', and gets us to think about life beyond reducing it even to 'a mystery'. Life he says is the mystery, the one true miracle. Here's a good review of the year... 'Have you wept at anything during the past year?' 'Have you thought seriously about the fact that someday you are going to die?' 'Has your heart beat faster at the sight of young beauty?' 'More often than not do you really listen when people are speaking to you instead of just waiting for your turn to speak!' 'Is there anyone you know in whose place, if one of you had to suffer great pain, you would volunteer yourself?' Buechner suggests that if you answer no to all or most of these questions the chances are that you are already dead! Buechner F (1992) Listening to your Life. Harper Collins.