Frederick Buechner is one of my favorite writers. The Eyes of the Heart is beautiful and wise, full of insight, charm, and tenderness.
Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do – the actual act of writing – turns out to be the best part. It’s like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward. I.
And while everyone has to make a living and show up for family, listening is optional. You have to make a conscious decision to listen harder.
I hoped her life would turn topsy-turvy enough to get her attention. Topsy-turvy is often a symptom for the presence of God – the last become first, the hungry are fed, the obnoxious are welcomed.
Some of my wise, more evolved friends say that loathing certain people, henceforth referred to as Them, is not worth the effort, that they are too thin as human forms to actually hate. I say, ‘Not for me, baby.
Sin is not just affairs, or porn shops, or drug cartels. It is also the ignorance and brokenness of the world, extreme self-centeredness, hoarding wealth, using others as objects, not caring.
How did we all get so screwed up? Putting aside our damaged parents, poverty, abuse, addiction, disease, and other unpleasantries, life just damages people. There is no way around this.
We are going to save the world by repeatedly busting the dread that looms over us like a blimp, by pushing back our sleeves and distracting it with the next right thing and good works.
The facts of this world will never satisfy the human heart, but what we give each other can, when it holds love.
Is the soul damaged by acne, political madness, rigid or unloving parents? I think so, damaged but not mortally so. It becomes callused, barricaded, yet it’s always there for the asking, always ready for hope. Some poet once wrote that we think we are drops in the ocean, but that we are really the ocean in drops, both minute and everything there is.
Love is gentle if sometimes amused warmth for annoying and deeply disappointing people, especially ourselves.
Goodness and courage are how the divine presents itself so often – whether in drag, as close friends, or as EMTs.
The point was to lean toward goodness, to resist less, to pray for our enemies. The point was to have a spiritual awakening of any sort that would help us live more often in kind awareness.
It’s all here, everything we seek and need, inside us.
Transcendence means you go from judgment, separation from life and yourself, to feeling at one-ish with the universe. We hook into something bigger than we are, truer than the self-serving stories we make up about life and ourselves.
I guess it’s like discovering you’re on the shelf of a pawnshop, dusty and forgotten and maybe not worth very much. But Jesus comes in and tells the pawnbroker, ‘I’ll take her place on the shelf. Let her go outside again.
Yet not matter how much we recycle, believe in our Priuses, and abide by local laws, we see that our beauty is being destroyed, crushed by greed and cruel stupidity.
Why am I here? To love this dumb old day. Ugh. If I could only remember this.
You don’t care about those first three pages; those you will throw out, those you needed to write to get to that fourth page, to get to that one long paragraph that was what you had in mind when you started, only you didn’t know that, couldn’t know that, until you got to it.
What I resist is not the truth but when people put a pretty bow on scary things instead of saying, “This is a nightmare. I hate everything. I’m going to go hide in the garage.
How can we know all this, yet somehow experience joy? Because that’s how we are designed – for awareness and curiosity. We are hardwired with curiosity inside us, because life knew that this would keep us going even in bad sailing.