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Telling Secrets: A Celebrated Author's Candid Memoir of a Father's Suicide and Its Influence on a Son and Minister
With eloquence, candor, and simplicity, a celebrated author tells the story of his father's alcohol abuse and suicide and traces the influence of this secret on his life as a son, father, husband, minister, and writer.
130 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1991
117 people are currently reading
2471 people want to read
About the author
Frederick Buechner
93 books1,245 followersFrederick Buechner is a highly influential writer and theologian who has won awards for his poetry, short stories, novels and theological writings. His work pioneered the genre of spiritual memoir, laying the groundwork for writers such as Anne Lamott, Rob Bell and Lauren Winner.
His first book, A Long Day's Dying, was published to acclaim just two years after he graduated from Princeton. He entered Union Theological Seminary in 1954 where he studied under renowned theologians that included Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, and James Muilenberg. In 1955, his short story "The Tiger" which had been published in the New Yorker won the O. Henry Prize.
After seminary he spent nine years at Phillips Exeter Academy, establishing a religion department and teaching courses in both religion and English. Among his students was the future author, John Irving. In 1969 he gave the Noble Lectures at Harvard. He presented a theological autobiography on a day in his life, which was published as The Alphabet of Grace.
In the years that followed he began publishing more novels, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist Godric. At the same time, he was also writing a series of spiritual autobiographies. A central theme in his theological writing is looking for God in the everyday, listening and paying attention, to hear God speak to people through their personal lives.
His first book, A Long Day's Dying, was published to acclaim just two years after he graduated from Princeton. He entered Union Theological Seminary in 1954 where he studied under renowned theologians that included Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, and James Muilenberg. In 1955, his short story "The Tiger" which had been published in the New Yorker won the O. Henry Prize.
After seminary he spent nine years at Phillips Exeter Academy, establishing a religion department and teaching courses in both religion and English. Among his students was the future author, John Irving. In 1969 he gave the Noble Lectures at Harvard. He presented a theological autobiography on a day in his life, which was published as The Alphabet of Grace.
In the years that followed he began publishing more novels, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist Godric. At the same time, he was also writing a series of spiritual autobiographies. A central theme in his theological writing is looking for God in the everyday, listening and paying attention, to hear God speak to people through their personal lives.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 208 reviews
July 15, 2018
An absolute must-read. Moving, inspirational, raw and real. This book will take everything you think you know about your self-perception and cause you to reconsider how you express that.
April 8, 2011
I love Buechner's work, period. While reading his books, I'm frequently struck with an odd sense of familiarity, realizing only after considering that he just essentially said (in a much more eloquent manner) something that I've been wrestling with, thinking about, praying through, and more. He's incredibly quotable, as well.
'Telling Secrets' is a very personal, raw, and open book - if you're looking for something prescriptive, or specifically theologically pointed, you may do best to read something else by him. I love 'Telling Secrets' simply for the man's vulnerability throughout its pages. He plainly explores his father's suicide, his daughter's struggles with anorexia, and his own issues with doubt, pride, and more. In doing so, he encourages the reader to consider 'telling secrets' in our lives that we oftentimes leave buried, knowing full well (if we truly stop to think about them) that it is those secrets that foundationally affect our current relationships, expectations, hopes, fears, propensities, and more.
I let my mother borrow this, and she had it finished within four days. Immediately afterward, she had copies purchased for a number of her friends, and her own copy for her to return to, "so I can highlight and underline like I need to". I've also been informed that if I need Christmas and birthday ideas for her, I need look no further than his other books.
'Telling Secrets' is a very personal, raw, and open book - if you're looking for something prescriptive, or specifically theologically pointed, you may do best to read something else by him. I love 'Telling Secrets' simply for the man's vulnerability throughout its pages. He plainly explores his father's suicide, his daughter's struggles with anorexia, and his own issues with doubt, pride, and more. In doing so, he encourages the reader to consider 'telling secrets' in our lives that we oftentimes leave buried, knowing full well (if we truly stop to think about them) that it is those secrets that foundationally affect our current relationships, expectations, hopes, fears, propensities, and more.
I let my mother borrow this, and she had it finished within four days. Immediately afterward, she had copies purchased for a number of her friends, and her own copy for her to return to, "so I can highlight and underline like I need to". I've also been informed that if I need Christmas and birthday ideas for her, I need look no further than his other books.
October 25, 2015
I'll return to this one, both mindfully and with re-reads, because already within two weeks after having completed it this book has been very influential in my behavior, decisions, and general understanding of myself. Telling Secrets is beautifully honest and true. A wonderful read.
February 21, 2022
I've read better memior than Buechner writes, and I've read better theological reflection than Buechner offers. But dammit, I just love *how* Buechner writes memior and *how* he theologially reflects. In the other two books I've read by him, as well as this one, he is always doing such strange things with prepositions and adverbs and syntax, and writes just off-kilter enough to hook my lip and drag me into his works.
The only memorable parts of the book, and I mean this with no malice or critique, were (1) a set of great, piercing paragraphs on the oddity of Buechner's time teaching Harvard Divinity students who identified as atheist humanists; (2) a set of paragraphs on how parents fear less for their children's safety than for the potential collapse of their own identity if the child dies, because they've located all their meaning in parenting; and (3) maybe a few punchy, preachy sentences on how strange being a Christian is, typified by Buechner's time teaching at Wheaton.
I wasn't blown away, but I was also not dissuaded from reading more Buechner. In fact, I think I hear Godric calling my name now!
The only memorable parts of the book, and I mean this with no malice or critique, were (1) a set of great, piercing paragraphs on the oddity of Buechner's time teaching Harvard Divinity students who identified as atheist humanists; (2) a set of paragraphs on how parents fear less for their children's safety than for the potential collapse of their own identity if the child dies, because they've located all their meaning in parenting; and (3) maybe a few punchy, preachy sentences on how strange being a Christian is, typified by Buechner's time teaching at Wheaton.
I wasn't blown away, but I was also not dissuaded from reading more Buechner. In fact, I think I hear Godric calling my name now!
April 7, 2023
Poetic, thoughtful, reflective words that seemed like a man chatting by the fire shortly before he dies. Buchner calls us to pay attention to our life, our memories, our present, because we find God there. Still, I'm not sure I understand (yet) how he believes that memory is a way to bless the past.
I could wish the book said more, were longer, because I started well into it, then it stopped. But what he says is worth hearing, and maybe it's humility that keeps him from pontification.
I enjoyed his stories of Harvard and Wheaton.
I could wish the book said more, were longer, because I started well into it, then it stopped. But what he says is worth hearing, and maybe it's humility that keeps him from pontification.
I enjoyed his stories of Harvard and Wheaton.
July 23, 2021
I think it was very brave of Frederick Buechner to write about the deep wound his father’s suicide left on him and his mother, and how he was able to find healing and hope in his life through the power of literature and art, and the agape love of Christ. He writes about faith in a way for people of all worldviews, in contrast to much of the cheesy, repetitive, and insincere propaganda things out there which does not correlate to daily life.
This book also explores the horrific experience Buechner had of watching his daughter battle anorexia, and how he learned that as much as he wanted to, he could not save her, but she had to be willing to find healing and hope on her own, which she did, and it changed her life for the better. This book is good for anyone who has experienced great loss and painful seasons of grief, because this book is a great affirmation of hope. I read it at just the right time in my life when I needed too. I like the references Buechner’s makes to J.R.R.Tolkien, George MacDonald, G.K. Chesterton and C.S.Lewis. These quotes below are my favorite from the book,
“If writers write not just with paper and ink or a word processor but with their own life's blood, then I think something like this is perhaps always the case. A book you write out of the depths of who you are, like a dream you dream out of those same depths, is entirely your own creation. All the words your characters speak are words that you alone have put into their mouths, just as every situation they become involved in is one that you alone have concocted for them. But it seems to me that nonetheless that a book you write, like a dream you dream, can have more healing and truth and wisdom in it at least for yourself than you feel in any way responsible for.”
“My 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… 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."- Frederick Buechner
This book also explores the horrific experience Buechner had of watching his daughter battle anorexia, and how he learned that as much as he wanted to, he could not save her, but she had to be willing to find healing and hope on her own, which she did, and it changed her life for the better. This book is good for anyone who has experienced great loss and painful seasons of grief, because this book is a great affirmation of hope. I read it at just the right time in my life when I needed too. I like the references Buechner’s makes to J.R.R.Tolkien, George MacDonald, G.K. Chesterton and C.S.Lewis. These quotes below are my favorite from the book,
“If writers write not just with paper and ink or a word processor but with their own life's blood, then I think something like this is perhaps always the case. A book you write out of the depths of who you are, like a dream you dream out of those same depths, is entirely your own creation. All the words your characters speak are words that you alone have put into their mouths, just as every situation they become involved in is one that you alone have concocted for them. But it seems to me that nonetheless that a book you write, like a dream you dream, can have more healing and truth and wisdom in it at least for yourself than you feel in any way responsible for.”
“My 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… 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."- Frederick Buechner
March 14, 2008
Buechner's pen inks poetry, his words elegant and thoughtful. I enjoy reading him for his prose alone.
But this third memoir on his life runs too relativistically. He responds to a Divinity student with a humanistic athiest worldview, "Maybe she was right," Another student, a Unitarian Universalist, said he believed in "faith." When questioned "faith in what?", he responded "faith in faith." Buechner responded "he was doing the best he could." His mystical side comes out as he reflects on are anything from dreams, to license plates, to writing a conversation with his left hand instead of his right hand, and very little emphasis at all is given on the ultimate reality God has given us in His word. This is a memoir, I do give him that - it isn't just a work of theology, but I do want to make you aware, if you're interested in reading this.
However, if you can sift through your own beliefs without being derailed by where you differ, there are some things to think about here. He meditates on his father's suicide, his mother's response - wordlessly swearing the family to silence, dealing with his daughter's bout with anorexia and what it showed him of his own heart. His thoughts on Alcoholics Anonymous groups carry some weight for the church, too. Buechner understands people, the importance of how God works in each of our lives, each of our stories, often in very similar ways, allowing us to connect, to walk together, to seek God in community.
This is my favorite quote from the book, and though I can't recommend the whole of the book due to some of his views, this passage alone garnered the book another star. It is about why he has written another memoir, his third, and what benefit can come from it.
"I talk about my life because if, on the one hand, hardly anything could be less important, on the other hand, hardly anything could be more important. My 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. Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I, of these stories of who we are and where we have come from the the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity... that God makes himself known to each of us most powerfully and personally."
But this third memoir on his life runs too relativistically. He responds to a Divinity student with a humanistic athiest worldview, "Maybe she was right," Another student, a Unitarian Universalist, said he believed in "faith." When questioned "faith in what?", he responded "faith in faith." Buechner responded "he was doing the best he could." His mystical side comes out as he reflects on are anything from dreams, to license plates, to writing a conversation with his left hand instead of his right hand, and very little emphasis at all is given on the ultimate reality God has given us in His word. This is a memoir, I do give him that - it isn't just a work of theology, but I do want to make you aware, if you're interested in reading this.
However, if you can sift through your own beliefs without being derailed by where you differ, there are some things to think about here. He meditates on his father's suicide, his mother's response - wordlessly swearing the family to silence, dealing with his daughter's bout with anorexia and what it showed him of his own heart. His thoughts on Alcoholics Anonymous groups carry some weight for the church, too. Buechner understands people, the importance of how God works in each of our lives, each of our stories, often in very similar ways, allowing us to connect, to walk together, to seek God in community.
This is my favorite quote from the book, and though I can't recommend the whole of the book due to some of his views, this passage alone garnered the book another star. It is about why he has written another memoir, his third, and what benefit can come from it.
"I talk about my life because if, on the one hand, hardly anything could be less important, on the other hand, hardly anything could be more important. My 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. Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I, of these stories of who we are and where we have come from the the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity... that God makes himself known to each of us most powerfully and personally."
June 6, 2010
Very important book. Beautifully written, of course, Buechner can only write beautifully. Buechner's father committed suicide when he was 10 years old. The book is wise, full of grace and hope and very tender. It relates how harmful secrets can be and it recounts what God can do when secrets are exposed to the light of day.
June 11, 2024
I love Buechner’s memoirs, this volume most of all…but on this read-through, I'm unable to shake the nagging suspicion that it’s a bit thin and dated. There’s a lot of therapeutic language that doesn’t hold up for me - e.g. ‘learning to love yourself.’ And yet. I love this man and can’t seem to separate the man from the memoir, or for that matter, this particular memoir from any of his other literary works, fiction or nonfiction. The secrets told here are always lurking just below the surface of Buechner's writing, and so this book becomes a useful companion read to Godrick, Bebb, et al.
***
It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are--even if we tell it only to ourselves--because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing. It is important to tell our secrets too because it makes it easier that way to see where we have been in our lives and where we are going. It also makes it easier for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own, and exchanges like that have a lot to do with what being a family is all about and what being human is all about. Finally, I suspect that it is by entering that deep place inside us where our secrets are kept that we come perhaps closer than we do anywhere else to the One who, whether we realize it or not, is of all our secrets the most telling and the most precious we have to tell. (P. 3)
***
It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are--even if we tell it only to ourselves--because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing. It is important to tell our secrets too because it makes it easier that way to see where we have been in our lives and where we are going. It also makes it easier for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own, and exchanges like that have a lot to do with what being a family is all about and what being human is all about. Finally, I suspect that it is by entering that deep place inside us where our secrets are kept that we come perhaps closer than we do anywhere else to the One who, whether we realize it or not, is of all our secrets the most telling and the most precious we have to tell. (P. 3)
February 13, 2023
One of those underline most words, take pictures of most pages and then scribe most of the wisdom onto your own personal pages to not forget them. I love most of Buchners work that I’ve read and this didn’t disappoint. He creates this account full of “becauses” that make up his life. I love his need to put things into words to make them more real, his veil/vulnerability to share secrets we have been told our whole lives to keep close to chest, and to find God in friendship, memory and dark spaces. Telling the secrets of who we are (even if only to ourselves) allows us to be truly and fully us.
QOTB: “We work and goof off, we love and dream,
we have wonderful times and awful times, are cruelly
hurt and hurt others cruelly, get mad and bored and
scared stiff and ache with desire, do all such human
things as these, and if our faith is not mainly just win-
dow dressing or a rabbit's foot or fire insurance, it is
because it grows out of precisely this kind of rich
human compost. The God of biblical faith is the God
who meets us at those moments in which for better or
worse we are being most human, most ourselves, and
if we lose touch with those moments, if we don't stop
from time to time to notice what is happening to us and around us and inside us, we run the tragic risk of losing touch with God too.”
QOTB: “We work and goof off, we love and dream,
we have wonderful times and awful times, are cruelly
hurt and hurt others cruelly, get mad and bored and
scared stiff and ache with desire, do all such human
things as these, and if our faith is not mainly just win-
dow dressing or a rabbit's foot or fire insurance, it is
because it grows out of precisely this kind of rich
human compost. The God of biblical faith is the God
who meets us at those moments in which for better or
worse we are being most human, most ourselves, and
if we lose touch with those moments, if we don't stop
from time to time to notice what is happening to us and around us and inside us, we run the tragic risk of losing touch with God too.”
March 1, 2024
For some reason, my Goodreads friends have consistently rated this the lowest of Buechner’s first three memoirs. Yet I found this to be of the same calibre of the first two, yet with an older man’s greater insights into himself and his family. There’s profound wisdom in here on the role of self-care in the life of a Christian leader, written long before it was popular to write about such things.
September 7, 2024
One of the most beautiful books I’ve read in a long time.
October 17, 2023
I’m trying to slowly make my way through all the Fellow’s books. This was a very honest and thoughtful reflection of his own life and the influences that shaped him. Definitely would recommend!
November 16, 2022
This is one of those books that I enjoyed the reading of, but likely won't remember anything in it a few months from now.
Buechner simply shares his thoughts on the suicide of his father, whom he didn't know well; his daughter's anorexia, which made him realize he was expecting more from his family than they could give him; what it means to share our secrets with others, as well as hold theirs.
He has a writing style that is very calming, so this felt like comfort reading, even though I don't agree with all of his theology.
Though he identifies as a Christian, there was a lot of talk about how we all have God inside of us and need "God" or "whatever you want to call your higher power."
In reality, the Bible is clear that there is only one God, and that we don't get to define who or how He is. We can accept the truth of who He is, or deny Him. There is no in-between, no room for gods of our own making or naming.
Buechner briefly says something about "God's forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of God," (33) which is completely unbiblical. God is perfect and has no need of anyone's forgiveness.
Also of note: God's name was used flippantly a few times. Evolutionary theory is stated as fact.
Apart from that, there are still some good, worthwhile thoughts here, and I wrote down several quotes that I particularly liked.
Buechner simply shares his thoughts on the suicide of his father, whom he didn't know well; his daughter's anorexia, which made him realize he was expecting more from his family than they could give him; what it means to share our secrets with others, as well as hold theirs.
He has a writing style that is very calming, so this felt like comfort reading, even though I don't agree with all of his theology.
Though he identifies as a Christian, there was a lot of talk about how we all have God inside of us and need "God" or "whatever you want to call your higher power."
In reality, the Bible is clear that there is only one God, and that we don't get to define who or how He is. We can accept the truth of who He is, or deny Him. There is no in-between, no room for gods of our own making or naming.
Buechner briefly says something about "God's forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of God," (33) which is completely unbiblical. God is perfect and has no need of anyone's forgiveness.
Also of note: God's name was used flippantly a few times. Evolutionary theory is stated as fact.
Apart from that, there are still some good, worthwhile thoughts here, and I wrote down several quotes that I particularly liked.
September 26, 2023
Underlined a lot and will likely be revisiting and thinking on this. Got a bit lost in some of Beuchner’s words/sentences/thoughts, but maybe that was some of the point and beauty of it (and reflective of our lives).
“The sad things that happened long ago will always remain part of who we are just as the glad and gracious things will too, but instead of being a burden of guilt, recrimination, and regret that make us constantly stumble as we go, even the saddest things can become, once we have made peace with them, a source of wisdom and strength for the journey that still lies ahead.”
“The sad things that happened long ago will always remain part of who we are just as the glad and gracious things will too, but instead of being a burden of guilt, recrimination, and regret that make us constantly stumble as we go, even the saddest things can become, once we have made peace with them, a source of wisdom and strength for the journey that still lies ahead.”
August 27, 2021
I mean...just a frickin banger. Freddy Buechner never fails to speak to my soul.
"The world is full of suffering indeed, and to turn our backs on it is to work a terrible unkindness maybe almost more on ourselves than on the world. But life indeed is also to be enjoyed. I suspect that may even be the whole point of it."
"The world is full of suffering indeed, and to turn our backs on it is to work a terrible unkindness maybe almost more on ourselves than on the world. But life indeed is also to be enjoyed. I suspect that may even be the whole point of it."
April 26, 2024
Very beautiful and heart wrenching. Lots of amazing nuggets and quotes
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July 14, 2021Amazing writer. Fascinating and gracious story. Well-written, easy read.
November 14, 2013
This book sat on my books-to-read shelf for a long time, possibly a decade. I don’t recall why or when I bought it and can’t explain why I never read it until now. Maybe it was waiting until I needed it. I think that happens a lot.
This is my first read of Buechner’s thirty books. It’s difficult to describe. He is an ordained minister who writes fiction and non-fiction. This memoir is in three parts. The titles seem allegorical, but Buechner delves into very real, personal and tragic events in his life which I won’t spoil here. Even if his stories had not worked for me (which they did), these quotes made the book one I will never forget.
As a writer, this was a favorite gem. “. . .a book you write, like a dream you dream, can have more healing and truth and wisdom in it at least for yourself than you feel in any way responsible for.”
I especially liked the author’s open, almost self-deprecating style, not what we usually expect from an ordained minister. As a husband, father and grandfather, I especially enjoyed the way he integrated the meetings of a particular group to bring readers a valuable lesson. Buechner does not mention the group by name, but you will recognize it when he eloquently describes their meetings.
“They have slogans, which you can either dismiss as hopelessly simplistic or cling on to like driftwood in a stormy sea. One of them is ‘Let Go and Let God’-which is so easy to say and for people like me, so far from easy to follow. Stop trying to protect, to rescue, to judge, to manage the lives around you—your children’s lives, the lives of your husband, your wife, your friends—because that is just what you are powerless to do. Leave it to God. It is an astonishing thought. It can be a life-transforming thought.”
And as a believer, this has to be my favorite: “Even if there be no hereafter, I would live my time believing in a grand thing that ought to be true if it is not.” . . . “I will go farther, and say I would rather die forevermore believing as Jesus believed, than live forevermore believing as those who deny him.”
This is my first read of Buechner’s thirty books. It’s difficult to describe. He is an ordained minister who writes fiction and non-fiction. This memoir is in three parts. The titles seem allegorical, but Buechner delves into very real, personal and tragic events in his life which I won’t spoil here. Even if his stories had not worked for me (which they did), these quotes made the book one I will never forget.
As a writer, this was a favorite gem. “. . .a book you write, like a dream you dream, can have more healing and truth and wisdom in it at least for yourself than you feel in any way responsible for.”
I especially liked the author’s open, almost self-deprecating style, not what we usually expect from an ordained minister. As a husband, father and grandfather, I especially enjoyed the way he integrated the meetings of a particular group to bring readers a valuable lesson. Buechner does not mention the group by name, but you will recognize it when he eloquently describes their meetings.
“They have slogans, which you can either dismiss as hopelessly simplistic or cling on to like driftwood in a stormy sea. One of them is ‘Let Go and Let God’-which is so easy to say and for people like me, so far from easy to follow. Stop trying to protect, to rescue, to judge, to manage the lives around you—your children’s lives, the lives of your husband, your wife, your friends—because that is just what you are powerless to do. Leave it to God. It is an astonishing thought. It can be a life-transforming thought.”
And as a believer, this has to be my favorite: “Even if there be no hereafter, I would live my time believing in a grand thing that ought to be true if it is not.” . . . “I will go farther, and say I would rather die forevermore believing as Jesus believed, than live forevermore believing as those who deny him.”
February 12, 2013
Telling Secrets is Buechner’s third volume of autobiography/memoir. The two earlier books, The Sacred Journey and Now and Then, dealt with what he calls the headlines of his life – his birth, his father’s death, the family’s moves to various different cities, school, marriage, and the like. This book turns to “the back pages of the paper where I have always thought the real news is anyway,” the interior life.
The author does an admirable job of sharing and exploring the secrets of his own life while maintaining respect for others who are, so to speak, joint owners of the secrets: “I will not try to tell my daughter’s story…it is not mine to tell but hers…I do not know…the inside story of what it was like for her…I can tell only my part in it, what happened to me.”
Echoing his statement in The Sacred Journey that “the story of any one of us is in some measure the story of us all,” Buechner says here that “by and large the human family all has the same secrets.” He goes on to note that “It is important to tell…the secret of who we truly and fully are…because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are…(and) because it makes it easier…to see where we have been in our lives and where we are going.” And of course, by candidly sharing from the deep places in our own hearts, we encourage others to do the same, “and exchanges like that have a lot to do with what being a family…what being human is all about.”
The author does an admirable job of sharing and exploring the secrets of his own life while maintaining respect for others who are, so to speak, joint owners of the secrets: “I will not try to tell my daughter’s story…it is not mine to tell but hers…I do not know…the inside story of what it was like for her…I can tell only my part in it, what happened to me.”
Echoing his statement in The Sacred Journey that “the story of any one of us is in some measure the story of us all,” Buechner says here that “by and large the human family all has the same secrets.” He goes on to note that “It is important to tell…the secret of who we truly and fully are…because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are…(and) because it makes it easier…to see where we have been in our lives and where we are going.” And of course, by candidly sharing from the deep places in our own hearts, we encourage others to do the same, “and exchanges like that have a lot to do with what being a family…what being human is all about.”
February 10, 2016
This is what candor looks like. There is so much truth in this. I have not read anything like this before. It is not so much what he says as how he says it. It is to real to be a novel but also to personal to be a Christian non-fiction. A memoir is obviously something else entirely. I loved the melodic language. I loved Fredericks way of expressing complicated aspects of life by elaborate thoughts through the simplest of words. There were a few times where I struggled following his line of thoughts since English ain't my first language, but eventually I understood, it just took a little effort. I'm glad he taught me what homiletics is. I could not resist to write down a couple of profound quotes, which rarely happens to me. In the end, despite of everything, he gives the glory to God. And for that, anything below five stars would be a crime.
April 15, 2009
The last in the series of masterfully written 3 memoirs in which the author's personal journey of faith pierces the darkness of family secrets and denial, thus illustrating his central theme that redemption is available to all.
April 7, 2011
"God himself showed how crucial human life is by actually living one and hallowed human death by actually dying one, and lives and dies still with us and for us and in spite of us."
The best one-sentence summary of Christianity I can think of.
The best one-sentence summary of Christianity I can think of.
January 25, 2014
My copy of this book has notes and highlights and underlining on just about every page. Buechner's honesty and storytelling has made my life richer. I highly recommend this for anyone struggling to make sense of complicated family histories.
August 21, 2009
Oh, Frederick, I think you might be my soul mate. Your writing stirs me deeply and puts words to experiences I have not been able to verbalize. I will be reading more of you!
February 5, 2017
I love Buechner for his honesty and his gentleness, and this book has deeply impacted me. I have no doubt I'll return to it.
June 22, 2023
"what we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in all our full humaneness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else. It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are--even if we tell it only to ourselves--because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing" (2-3).
"'If I didn't have something to look for, I would be lost'" -Frederick's mom (12).
"Although death ended my father, it has never ended my relationship with my father" (22).
"The fearsome blessing of that hard time continues to work itself out in my life in the same way we are told the universe is still hurtling through outer space under the impact of the great cosmic explosion that brought it into being in the first place. I think grace sometimes explodes into our lives like that--sending our pain, terror, astonishment hurdling through inner space until by grace they become Orion, Cassiopeia, Polaris to give us our bearings, to bring us into something like full being at last" (24-5).
"'Perfect love casteth out fear,' John writes (1 John 4:18), and the other side of that is that fear like mine casteth out love, even God's love. The love I had for my daughter was lost in the anxiety I had for my daughter" (26).
"Ministers in particular, people in the caring professions in general, are famous for neglecting their selves with the result that they are apt to become in their own way as helpless and crippled as the people they are trying to care for and thus no longer selves who can be of much used to anybody. If your daughter is struggling for life in a raging torrent, you do not save her by jumping into the torrent with her, which leads only to your both drowning together. Instead you keep your feet on the dry bank--you maintain as best you can your own inner peace, the best and strongest of who you are--and from that solid ground reach out a rescuing hand. 'Mind your own business' means butt out of other people's lives because in the long run they must live their lives for themselves, but it also means pay mind to your own life, your own health and wholeness, for your own sake and ultimately for the sake of those you love too" (27-8).
"My 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. Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I, of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories and all their particularity that God makes himself known to each of us most 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" (30).
"The Exodus, the Covenant, the entry into the Promised Land--such mighty acts of God as these appear in Scripture, but no less mighty are the acts of God as they appear in our own lives...to say that God is mightily present even in such private events as these does not mean that he makes events happen to us which move us in certain directions like chessmen. Instead, events happen under their own steam as random as rain, which means that God is present in them not as their cause but as the one who even in the hardest and most hair-raising of them offers us the possibility of that new life and healing which I believe is what salvation is" (30-1).
"God acts in history and in your and my brief histories not as the puppeteer who sets the scene and works the strings but rather as the great director who no matter what role fate casts us in conveys to us somehow from the wings, if we have our eyes, ears, hearts open and sometimes even if we don't, how we can play those roles in a way to enrich and ennoble and hallow the whole vast drama of things including our own small but crucial parts in it.
"In fact I am inclined to believe that God's chief purpose in giving us memory is to enable us to go back in time so that if we didn't play those roles right the first time around, we can still have another go at it now. It is through memory that we are able to reclaim much of our lives that we have long since written off by finding that in everything that has happened to us over the years God was offering us possibilities of new life and healing which, though we may have missed them at the time, we can still choose and be brought to life by and healed by all these years later" (32-3).
"Maybe the most sacred function of memory is just that: to render the distinction between past, present, and future ultimately meaningless; to enable us at some level of our being to inhabit that same eternity which it is said that God himself inhabits" (35) .
"a major part of [ministers'] ministry is to remind us that there is nothing more important than to pay attention to what is happening to us, yet again and again they show little sign of doing so themselves. There is precious little in most of their preaching to suggest that they have rejoiced and suffered with the rest of mankind...Ministers run the awful risk, in other words, of ceasing to be witnesses to the presence in their own lives--let alone in the lives of the people they are trying to minister to--of a living God who transcends everything they think they know and can say about him and is full of extraordinary surprises" (36-7).
"we are called to love our neighbors not just for our neighbors' sake but for our own sake...when John wrote, 'He who does not love remains in death' (1 John 3:14), he was stating a fact of nature as incontrovertible as gravity" (49).
"I realized that if ideas were all I had to preach, [e.g., peace, kindness, social responsibility] I would take up some other line of work...Basically, [preaching] is to proclaim a Mystery before which, before whom, even our most exalted ideas turn to straw. It is also to proclaim this Mystery with a passion that ideas alone have little to do with. It is to try to put the Gospel into words not the way you would compose an essay but the way you would write a poem or love letter--putting your heart into it, your own excitement, most of your own life. It is to speak words that you hope may, by grace, be bearers not simply of new understanding but of new life both for the ones you are speaking to and also for you" (61).
"If your principles keep you from being able to draw on the wisdom of writers of earlier generations who didn't happen to share those principles or even to be aware of them, you may keep your principles intact but at the same time do yourself a tragic disservice" (63).
"We are commanded to love our neighbors as ourselves, and I believe that to love ourselves means to extend to those various selves that we have been along the way the same degree of compassion and concern that we would extend to anyone else" (74).
"By quieting our minds and keeping still, by praying less in words perhaps than in images, maybe most of all by just letting up on ourselves and letting go, I think we can begin to put ourselves back in touch with that glory and joy we come from and begin moving out of the shadows towards something more like light" (77).
"The church often bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the dysfunctional family. There is the authoritarian presence of the minister--the professional who knows all of the answers and calls most of the shots--whom few ever challenge either because they don't dare to or because they feel it would do no good if they did. There is the outward camaraderie and inward loneliness of the congregation. There are unspoken rules and hidden agendas, the doubts and disagreements that for propriety's sake are kept more or less undercover. There are people with all sorts of enthusiasms and creativity which are not often enough made use of or even recognized because the tendency is not to rock the boat but to keep on doing things the way they have always been done" (93-4). Groups like AA are often more like families than churches are.
"[I used to believe] that I had no right to be happy unless the people I loved--especially my children--were happy too. I have come to believe that that is not true. I believe instead that we all of us have not only the right to be happy no matter what but also a kind of sacred commission to be happy--in the sense of being able to bless our own lives, even the sad times of our own lives, because through all our times we can learn and grow, and through all our times, if we keep our ears open, God speaks to us his saving word. Then by drawing on all those times we have had, we can sometimes even speak and live a saving word to the saving of others. I have come to believe that to be happy inside ourselves...is in the long run the best we can do both for ourselves and for the people closest to us" (102).
"Is it true, what Jesus believed, this Truth that he died for and lived for? Maybe the only way to know finally this side of falling off that precipice ourselves is to stop speaking and thinking and reading about it so much and to start watching and listening...I am talking about prayer--prayer not as speaking to God, which in a scattered way I do many times a day because I cannot help doing it, but prayer as being deeply silent, as watching and listening for God to speak...What deadens us most to God's presence within us, I think, is the inner dialogue that we are continuously engaged in with ourselves, the endless chatter of human thought. I suspect there is nothing more crucial to true spiritual comfort...than being able from time to time to stop that chatter including the chatter of spoken prayer" (104-5).
"'If I didn't have something to look for, I would be lost'" -Frederick's mom (12).
"Although death ended my father, it has never ended my relationship with my father" (22).
"The fearsome blessing of that hard time continues to work itself out in my life in the same way we are told the universe is still hurtling through outer space under the impact of the great cosmic explosion that brought it into being in the first place. I think grace sometimes explodes into our lives like that--sending our pain, terror, astonishment hurdling through inner space until by grace they become Orion, Cassiopeia, Polaris to give us our bearings, to bring us into something like full being at last" (24-5).
"'Perfect love casteth out fear,' John writes (1 John 4:18), and the other side of that is that fear like mine casteth out love, even God's love. The love I had for my daughter was lost in the anxiety I had for my daughter" (26).
"Ministers in particular, people in the caring professions in general, are famous for neglecting their selves with the result that they are apt to become in their own way as helpless and crippled as the people they are trying to care for and thus no longer selves who can be of much used to anybody. If your daughter is struggling for life in a raging torrent, you do not save her by jumping into the torrent with her, which leads only to your both drowning together. Instead you keep your feet on the dry bank--you maintain as best you can your own inner peace, the best and strongest of who you are--and from that solid ground reach out a rescuing hand. 'Mind your own business' means butt out of other people's lives because in the long run they must live their lives for themselves, but it also means pay mind to your own life, your own health and wholeness, for your own sake and ultimately for the sake of those you love too" (27-8).
"My 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. Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I, of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories and all their particularity that God makes himself known to each of us most 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" (30).
"The Exodus, the Covenant, the entry into the Promised Land--such mighty acts of God as these appear in Scripture, but no less mighty are the acts of God as they appear in our own lives...to say that God is mightily present even in such private events as these does not mean that he makes events happen to us which move us in certain directions like chessmen. Instead, events happen under their own steam as random as rain, which means that God is present in them not as their cause but as the one who even in the hardest and most hair-raising of them offers us the possibility of that new life and healing which I believe is what salvation is" (30-1).
"God acts in history and in your and my brief histories not as the puppeteer who sets the scene and works the strings but rather as the great director who no matter what role fate casts us in conveys to us somehow from the wings, if we have our eyes, ears, hearts open and sometimes even if we don't, how we can play those roles in a way to enrich and ennoble and hallow the whole vast drama of things including our own small but crucial parts in it.
"In fact I am inclined to believe that God's chief purpose in giving us memory is to enable us to go back in time so that if we didn't play those roles right the first time around, we can still have another go at it now. It is through memory that we are able to reclaim much of our lives that we have long since written off by finding that in everything that has happened to us over the years God was offering us possibilities of new life and healing which, though we may have missed them at the time, we can still choose and be brought to life by and healed by all these years later" (32-3).
"Maybe the most sacred function of memory is just that: to render the distinction between past, present, and future ultimately meaningless; to enable us at some level of our being to inhabit that same eternity which it is said that God himself inhabits" (35) .
"a major part of [ministers'] ministry is to remind us that there is nothing more important than to pay attention to what is happening to us, yet again and again they show little sign of doing so themselves. There is precious little in most of their preaching to suggest that they have rejoiced and suffered with the rest of mankind...Ministers run the awful risk, in other words, of ceasing to be witnesses to the presence in their own lives--let alone in the lives of the people they are trying to minister to--of a living God who transcends everything they think they know and can say about him and is full of extraordinary surprises" (36-7).
"we are called to love our neighbors not just for our neighbors' sake but for our own sake...when John wrote, 'He who does not love remains in death' (1 John 3:14), he was stating a fact of nature as incontrovertible as gravity" (49).
"I realized that if ideas were all I had to preach, [e.g., peace, kindness, social responsibility] I would take up some other line of work...Basically, [preaching] is to proclaim a Mystery before which, before whom, even our most exalted ideas turn to straw. It is also to proclaim this Mystery with a passion that ideas alone have little to do with. It is to try to put the Gospel into words not the way you would compose an essay but the way you would write a poem or love letter--putting your heart into it, your own excitement, most of your own life. It is to speak words that you hope may, by grace, be bearers not simply of new understanding but of new life both for the ones you are speaking to and also for you" (61).
"If your principles keep you from being able to draw on the wisdom of writers of earlier generations who didn't happen to share those principles or even to be aware of them, you may keep your principles intact but at the same time do yourself a tragic disservice" (63).
"We are commanded to love our neighbors as ourselves, and I believe that to love ourselves means to extend to those various selves that we have been along the way the same degree of compassion and concern that we would extend to anyone else" (74).
"By quieting our minds and keeping still, by praying less in words perhaps than in images, maybe most of all by just letting up on ourselves and letting go, I think we can begin to put ourselves back in touch with that glory and joy we come from and begin moving out of the shadows towards something more like light" (77).
"The church often bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the dysfunctional family. There is the authoritarian presence of the minister--the professional who knows all of the answers and calls most of the shots--whom few ever challenge either because they don't dare to or because they feel it would do no good if they did. There is the outward camaraderie and inward loneliness of the congregation. There are unspoken rules and hidden agendas, the doubts and disagreements that for propriety's sake are kept more or less undercover. There are people with all sorts of enthusiasms and creativity which are not often enough made use of or even recognized because the tendency is not to rock the boat but to keep on doing things the way they have always been done" (93-4). Groups like AA are often more like families than churches are.
"[I used to believe] that I had no right to be happy unless the people I loved--especially my children--were happy too. I have come to believe that that is not true. I believe instead that we all of us have not only the right to be happy no matter what but also a kind of sacred commission to be happy--in the sense of being able to bless our own lives, even the sad times of our own lives, because through all our times we can learn and grow, and through all our times, if we keep our ears open, God speaks to us his saving word. Then by drawing on all those times we have had, we can sometimes even speak and live a saving word to the saving of others. I have come to believe that to be happy inside ourselves...is in the long run the best we can do both for ourselves and for the people closest to us" (102).
"Is it true, what Jesus believed, this Truth that he died for and lived for? Maybe the only way to know finally this side of falling off that precipice ourselves is to stop speaking and thinking and reading about it so much and to start watching and listening...I am talking about prayer--prayer not as speaking to God, which in a scattered way I do many times a day because I cannot help doing it, but prayer as being deeply silent, as watching and listening for God to speak...What deadens us most to God's presence within us, I think, is the inner dialogue that we are continuously engaged in with ourselves, the endless chatter of human thought. I suspect there is nothing more crucial to true spiritual comfort...than being able from time to time to stop that chatter including the chatter of spoken prayer" (104-5).
June 21, 2020
This book was so incredible. Reminds me a lot of Henri Nouwen’s and C.S. Lewis’s writing. One of my favorite sections is when he talks about how the church should be more like AA groups:
“I do not believe that such groups as these which I found my way to not long after returning from Wheaton, or Alcoholics Anonymous, which is the group they all grew out of, are perfect any more than anything human is perfect, but I believe that the church has an enormous amount to learn from them. I also believe that what goes on in them is far closer to what Christ meant his church to be, and what it originally was, than much of what goes on in most churches I know. These groups have no buildings or official leadership or money. They have no rummage sales, no altar guilds, no every-member canvases. They have no preachers, no choirs, no liturgy, no real estate. They have no creeds. They have no program. They make you wonder if the best thing that could happen to many a church might not be to have its building burn down and to lose all its money. Then all that the people would have left would be God and each other.”
Overall, amazing, and I’m looking forward to looking back and re-reading, in addition to exploring his other books.
“I do not believe that such groups as these which I found my way to not long after returning from Wheaton, or Alcoholics Anonymous, which is the group they all grew out of, are perfect any more than anything human is perfect, but I believe that the church has an enormous amount to learn from them. I also believe that what goes on in them is far closer to what Christ meant his church to be, and what it originally was, than much of what goes on in most churches I know. These groups have no buildings or official leadership or money. They have no rummage sales, no altar guilds, no every-member canvases. They have no preachers, no choirs, no liturgy, no real estate. They have no creeds. They have no program. They make you wonder if the best thing that could happen to many a church might not be to have its building burn down and to lose all its money. Then all that the people would have left would be God and each other.”
Overall, amazing, and I’m looking forward to looking back and re-reading, in addition to exploring his other books.
November 10, 2024
The first chapter contains some of the most beautiful writing I've encountered, but the metaphor of the White Tower in the second chapter fell flat for me, which is why I gave this 4 stars. His diagnostic of ministers and evangelical preachers is moving and largely true. I wish more preachers would convey their faith in such a way that they are "drawing out of the raw stuff of his own life." (85)
I really like his talking about God as not a puppeteer but as a "great director of a vast drama" called life. I also hope to be someone who my friends would describe as "richly alive," as he describes his friend on page 50.
Here's my favorite quote:
"My 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....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 most powerfully and personally." (30)
Read this book. There's a lot packed into this memoir.
I really like his talking about God as not a puppeteer but as a "great director of a vast drama" called life. I also hope to be someone who my friends would describe as "richly alive," as he describes his friend on page 50.
Here's my favorite quote:
"My 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....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 most powerfully and personally." (30)
Read this book. There's a lot packed into this memoir.
June 20, 2017
More good stuff here. This time Buechner goes a little deeper into two 'secrets' from his story - his experiences of his father's suicide and his daughter's journey with anorexia. This develops into an examination of his secret internal spaces - both constrictive and liberating (explored metaphorically through two rooms found in the Tower of London - the Little Ease (a cell in which you can neither stand up nor lie down) and the peaceful Chapel of St John on the floor above it) - and a movement towards that second space.
'Go where your best prayers take you. Unclench the fists of your spirit and take it easy. Breathe deep of the glad air and live one day at a time.'
'Go where your best prayers take you. Unclench the fists of your spirit and take it easy. Breathe deep of the glad air and live one day at a time.'
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