Frederick Buechner
Frederick Buechner
Carl Frederick Buechneris an American writer and theologian. He is an ordained Presbyterian minister and the author of more than thirty published books. His work encompasses different genres, including fiction, autobiography, essays and sermons, and his career has spanned six decades. Buechner's books have been translated into many languages for publication around the world. He is best known for his works A Long Day's Dying; The Book of Bebb, a tetralogy based on the character Leo Bebb published in 1979;...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth11 July 1926
CountryUnited States of America
The difference to me is not between the believers on one hand and the nonbelievers on the other hand. It's between people who carry in their hearts some sense of what the word "God," at least to me, means, which is a loving, creating, everlastingly renewing presence deeply concerned with the well-being of the earth and all its creatures.
Jesus doesn't say, "The religion founded in my name is the way, the truth, and the life, [and] what people say about me is the way." "Our way of worship, the Christian structure, is not the way," [he would say,] "I am. I am. If you want to know what life is all about, what it's supposed to be, where it's supposed to go, where it's supposed to derive its strength from, don't look at anything people say about me. Don't look at the faith that's been created. Look at my life, which is a life ultimately of sacrificial love."
You can survive on your own; you can grow strong on your own; you can prevail on your own; but you cannot become human on your own.
What's lost is nothing to what's found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup.
If what makes you happy is going out and living it up and spending all your money on wine, women, and song, the world doesn't need that. But on the other hand, if you give your life to good works - you go and work in a leper colony and it doesn't make you happy - the chances are you're not doing it very well.
Go where your best prayers take you.
Sin and grace, absence and presence, tragedy and comedy, they divide the world between them and where they meet head on, the Gospel happens.
Resurrection means that the worst thing is never the last thing.
For some people, going to church is going home. In a very profound sense, I would say the same thing. Home is where Christ is.
To believe in God is to give your heart to God.
Lord, I believe; help my unbelief' is the best any of us can do really, but thank God it is enough.
Beneath our clothes, our reputations, our pretensions, beneath our religion or lack of it, we are all vulnerable both to the storm without and the storm within.
For as long as you remember me, I am never entirely lost.
The other day, the way people [do] who are approaching their 80th birthday, I was thinking about all the last business - funerals and where do you want to be buried - and I thought if anything were to be inscribed on my tombstone, I said let it be that.