Here is your life…

The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you.

~ Frederick Buechner ~

Life itself…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Listen to your life.

See it for the fathomless mystery that it is.

In the boredom and pain of it no less

than in the excitement and gladness:

touch, taste, smell your way

to the holy and hidden heart of it

because in the last analysis

all moments are key moments,

and life itself is grace.

~ Frederick Buechner ~

And it is.  It is all grace – the good, the bad and especially the difficult.  It’s in the pain that we find the gems, the new growth, the sense of what we came here to learn. Once again, Buechner says it so beautifully.  What a gift his words are, as I read them each night in his daily meditation book, “Listening to Your Life”.  I learned about this wonderful collection last year from my friend, Corinne, and it’s about time that I pass it on to you. Buechner is an extraordinary writer and a minister, so it is definitely Christian in nature, although I think his wisdom is universal and accessible to all.

the power that memory gives us…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.  We cannot undo our old mistakes or their consequences any more than we can erase old wounds that we have both suffered and inflicted, but through the power that memory gives us of thinking, feeling, imagining our way back through time we can at long last finally finish with the past in the sense of removing its power to hurt us and other people and to stunt our growth as human beings.

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.

~ Frederick Buechner ~

Just the right words, at just the right moment, can be the most incredible gift.

 

 

There must be…

There must be a God because

a- since the beginning of history the most variegated majority of people have intermittently believed that there was;

b- it is hard to consider the vast and complex structure of the universe in general and of the human mind in particular without considering the possibility that they issued from some ultimate source, itself vast, complex and somehow mindful;

c- built into the very being of even the most primitive man there seems to be a profound psychophysical need or hunger for something like truth, goodness, love, and – under one alias or another – for God himself;

and

d – every age and culture has produced mystics who have experienced a Reality beyond reality and have come back using different words and images but obviously and without collusion describing with awed adoration the same

Indescribability.

~ Frederick Buechner ~

Saints and heroes…

In the saints and heroes of the past, we would find someone greater than what we are, more human, more complete, but cut from the same cloth as we are after all, someone who was as often lost, as full of doubt, as full of hope, waiting no less than you and I wait for we’re not sure what to deliver us at last.

~ Frederick Buechner ~

 

Life itself is grace …

Listen to your life.

See it for the fathomless mystery
that it is.

In the boredom and pain of it
no less than in the excitement and gladness:

touch, taste, smell your way
to the holy and hidden heart of it

because in the last analysis
all moments are key moments,

and life itself is grace.

~ Frederick Buechner ~