Nonaligned faith and practice in the present
Earlier this week, I started excerpting Frederick Buechner’s challenging book, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons, by Frederick Buechner (New York, N.Y.: Harper Collins Publishers, 2007, pp.28-31).
My mother Lois gave me the book for my birthday in 2006, and I read through it slowly and thoughtfully over the next two years as a morning devotion. Knowing her so well, I can only imagine that she had found Buechner to be a
…The following is an excerpt from a sermon on the Christmas story in Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons, by Frederick Buechner (New York, N.Y.: Harper Collins Publishers, 2007, pp.23-24).
Buechner begins by describing the first scene of Enrico Fellini’s 1960 film, La Dolce Vita, in which a helicopter carries a life-size statue of Jesus over the outskirts of Rome toward its destination at the Vatican.
Children running in the street, construction
…This morning, while preparing for waiting worship, I started to read another sermon from Frederick Buechner’s Secrets in the Dark (see also here and here). This one is called “Adolescence and the Stewardship of Pain” (205-20).
Buechner begins by decribing the etymology of the word “adolescent”: from the Latin verb adolescere = ad “toward” + alescere “to grow.”
…The word designates human beings who are in the process of growing up. It is as simple as that.
The inside blurb to Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons begins, “Frederick Buechner has long been a kindred spirit to those who find elements of doubt as constant companions on their journey of faith.”
The book was a birthday gift from my mother two years ago, and I’ve been slowly making my way through its gentle, surprising sermons ever since Christmas of that year.
This past weekend, just as the newest post for Walhydra’s Porch
…Part I: Languages of belief
Part II: Survival faith and practice
Part III: “Someone should start laughing”
“Someone should start laughing”
I have a thousand brilliant lies
For the question:
How are you?
I have a thousand brilliant lies
For the question:
What is God?
If you think that Truth can be known
From words,
If you think that the Sun and the Ocean
