Frederick Buechner - Telling the Truth

Decided to have a Fred Buechner week. Telling the Truth. The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale is Buechner's Beecher Lectures on preaching. It is full of that kind of wisdom that you instinctively listen to, because it sounds true - not only its content but the voice that speaks it. Genuine wisdom has a tone, a timbre, a listenability that comes from the unmistakable notes and cadences of humanity that inform it, a combination of compassion, humour, joy, sadness and gratitude for the life we live.

Here's Buechner the preacher doing what he does best - preaching the text of his own heart interpreted through the text of the Gospel - or, if you will, preaching the text of the Gospel through his own heart.
 

"If preachers or lecturers are to say anything that really matters to anyone including themselves, they must say it not just to the public part of us that considers interesting thoughts about the Gospel and how to preach it, but to the private inner part too, to the part of of us all where our dreams come from, both our good dreams and our bad dreams, the inner part where thoughts mean less than images, elucidation less than evocation, where our concern is less with how the Gospel is to be preached than with what the Gospel is wand what it is to us. They must address themselves to the fulness of who we are and to the mptiness too, the emptiness where grace and peace belong but mostly are not, because terrible as well as wonderful things have happened to us all." (Page 4, Telling the Truth)

Comments

[Geoff Colmer]

Hi Jim! I've just got back from holiday during which I read Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, which I found provocative and stimulating. He mentioned Buechner several times and renewed my interest so I'm reading Listening to Your Life most days. I thoroughly enjoyed Telling the Truth and intend to read his auto-biographies. I'll try Secrets in the Dark.

In relation to a previous post, I was grabbed by the Lyn Constable Maxwell sculture and delighted to see that it's in London Colney which is part of my patch, so next time I'm over that way I'm going to explore the possibility of a visit.

[simon jones]

Thanks for the reminder about Buechner's Telling the Truth which I've taken off my shelf and blown the dust off so I can read it this week.

I too thought the Lyn Constable Maxwell scultpure was stunning.

[Jim Gordon]

Simon and Geoff, good to hear from another pair of closet Buechner fans! And with good taste in sculpture too. I'm just ever so slightly but not grudgingly jealous you get to see the real thing Geoff - but do enjoy it, and contemplate it for a while.