Thursday, August 30, 2012

Frederick Buechner, Extraordinary Soul

Since I just finished The Sacred Journey, Buechner's wonderful spiritual autobiography of his early years, I must share a few excerpts that I love. He was born in the same year as my dad, and much of what he tells about his life in the 20s, 30s, and 40s, made me see my dad's early life in a new way.

"God's coming is always unforeseen, I think, and the reason, if I had to guess, is that if he gave us anything much in the way of advance warning, more often than not we would have made ourselves scarce long before he got there."

"To journey for the sake of saving our own lives is little by little to cease to live in any sense that really 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."

I'm looking forward to reading the second volume that continues the story at the point where he, at the age of 27, enters Union Theological Seminary in NYC.

Friday, August 10, 2012

Annie Dillard, kindred soul

I read and admired Pilgrim at Tinker Creek years ago, then promptly forgot about it. Decades later, Annie Dillard wrote in a similar vein, For the Time Being, her thoughts about the presence (or absence) of God in various small events and individual tragedies in the world.

These 2 quotes from the latter book struck something in me:

1) Suddenly there is a point where religion becomes laughable. Then you decide that you are nevertheless religious. - Thomas Merton, p. 77

2) As much as anyone, I imagine, I walk in the shadows of faith. - Teilhard de Chardin, p. 146