The preaching is part of the reason I don't go to church. Plus, I don't know, it was never part of my tradition.
Frederick BuechnerMy story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yoursโฆ it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us more powerfully and personally. If this is true, it means that to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished not only humanly but also spiritually.
Frederick BuechnerMy story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours.
Frederick BuechnerThat's five friends, one each for Jesu's wounds, and Godric bears their mark still on what's left of him as in their time they all bore his on them. What's friendship, when all's done, but the giving and taking of wounds?
Frederick BuechnerWhatever you do with your life-whatever you end up achieving or not achieving-the great gift you have in you to give to the world is the gift of who you alone are; your way of seeing things, and saying things, and feeling about things, that is like nobody elseโs. If so much as a single one of you were missing, there would be an empty place at the great feast of life that nobody else in all creation could fill.
Frederick BuechnerWhenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are but, more often than not, God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go to next.
Frederick Buechner