Barry's Blog

One of the things I've come to realize about our ability as men to finish well in life is our need for genuine reflection. One of my favorite authors over the years who has helped me in this endeavor is the novelist  Frederick Buechner. The widely celibrated writer has penned over thirty-two novels and memoirs to date, and has been a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. But Buechner is not your typical writer. His "religious" writings do not seem religious. He has an almost irreverent edge in his writings, which I find attractive, despite his liberal-leaning theology. While he and his wife live on a hilltop in Vermont, in what he calls "fathomless obscurity," for many Christians he has become a celebrity. Buechner's most recent publication is titled, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons, a collection of his sermons over the past fifty years. Earlier this year, he was honored at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., and was interviewed by Bob Abernethy, anchor of the Religion & Ethics Newsweekly. Here are some of his observations from that interview, as well as an article out of The Washington Times.

Q: What do you see as the most important theme, the most important thread running through everything?

A: In various places, I think the phrase "listen to your life." Pay attention to what happens to you. Pay attention to who you see. Pay attention to what you say, what they say. Pay attention to what the day feels like. Observe. That wonderful phrase, "religious observances," means, among other things, just what it says. Observe relgiously. Observe deeply. Don't just get through your life, as all of us are inclined to do, on automatic pilot, not much noticing anything. 

Q: How do you keep your faith in spite of so much suffering in the world?

A: Well, it is in spite of it. You can't pretend it doesn't exist. You can't somehow theologize it away, as people have tried to do...This is the shadow side. There is the great remark of Tillich, "Doubt is not the opposite of faith. It is an element of faith."  How can I hold these things together? I have no formula for doing that. But my answer to myself is, don't give up hope. God is in all those things. The holier, "the More," transcends all of the wretchedness that goes on in the world.

Q: There's a lovely phrase you have used someplace comparing death next to life. What is it?

A: It's from a novel I wrote called GODRIC, told in the voice of an 11th-century English monk and mystic named Godric - at the end of his days, in words he speaks that I in a sense put into his mouth...he said as an old, old man who had lost almost everything, "What's lost is nothing to what's found, and all the death that ever was set next to life would scarely fill a cup." 

Q: Have you eveer been depressed or in despair?

A: Clinically depressed? No. John Updike says God saves His deepest silence for His saints. I've never believed there is no God but I've wondered if it can be true, considering all the wretched things in this world, that it is presided over by a loving and powerful God.

Q: What is your greatest regret? 

A: That I have not been braver, stronger and wiser. I regret that I've not been a saint. A saint is a life giver. To be in the presence of a saint is to be more aware of the richness and the depths of life...

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow