CHILD-LIKE FAITH

'...within the child-self that is part of us all, there is perhaps nothing more precious than the fathomless capacity to trust.' 

Frederick Buechner, 'All's Lost - All's Found' in A Room Called Remember, p.190. 

LITERARY HYPOCONDRIA

'I have never had an ache or pain that wasn't fatal or an illness that wasn't terminal. One of the occupational hazards of being a writer of fiction is to have an imagination as overdeveloped as a blacksmith's right arm.' 

Frederick Buechner, 'All's Lost - All's Found' in A Room to Remember, p.185. 

HERMENEUTICAL HUMILITY

'...the principle of hermeneutical honesty: we should never pretend to understand more than we do.'
Richard B Hays, First Corinthians, p.190. 

CORRECTING FRIENDS

'A friend should sympathize with and make allowance for a friend. He should consider his friend's fault his own. He should correct his friend with humility and compassion. His face and voice should show sadness and disappointment , with sobs interrupting his words. His friend should not only see but feel that the correction comes not fout of rancour but out of love.'

Aelred of Rievaulx, Spiritual Friendship, p.117.   

THE IMPORTANCE OF FRIENDSHIP

'...no life can be pleasing without friends...'
Aelred of Rievaulx, Spiritual Friendship, p.106.  

FRIENDSHIP & LOVING GOD

'...friendship is a step toward the love and knowledge of God.' 

Aelred of Rievaulx, Spritual Friendship, p.74. 

A FRIEND IS MEDICINE FOR LIFE

"a friend is medicine for life." What a striking metaphor! No remedy is more powerful, effective, and distinctive in everything that fills this life than to have someone to share your every loss with compassion and your every gain with congratulation.' 

Aelred of Rievaulx, Spiritual Friendship (Translated by Lawrence C Braceland), p.73. 

FAITH IS WAITING

'Faith is a way of waiting - never quite knowing, never quite hearing or seeing, because in the darkness we are all but a little lost. There is doubt hard on the heels of every belief, fear hard on the heels of every hope, and many holy thing lie in ruins because the world has ruined them and we have ruined them. But faith waits even so, delivered at least from that final despair which gives up waiting altogether because it sees nothing worth waiting through. Faith waits - for the opening of a door, the sound of footsteps in the hall, that beloved voice delayed, delayed, so long that there are times when you all but give up hoping of ever hearing it. And when at moments you think you do hear it (if only faintly, from far away) the question is: Can it possibly be, impossibly be, the one voice of all voices.' 

Frederick Buechner, 'Delay' in A Room Called Remember, p.130. 

HOW HUMANKIND DOESN'T CHANGE

'Three things were immortal: good and evil and the hope in men's hearts that evil would be overcome by good.' 

Howard Spring, Fame is the Spur, p.646. 

AMBITION

'"...he'll do like the rest of us. He'll do what he wants to, till the time comes for him to wonder whether it was worth doing...'"

Howard Spring, Fame is the Spur, p.469. 

GRIEF

'It hurts just as much as it is worth'
Julian Barnes in Zadie Smith. 'Joy' in Feeling Free, p.435. 

JOY

'The thing no one ever tells you about joy is that it has very little real pleasure in it. And yet if it hadn't happended at all, at least once, how should we live?' 

Zadie Smith, 'Joy' in Feel Free, p.434. 

THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IS ABOUT WAITING

'There is a kind of high comedy about our faith. There is a kind of high comedy about our seeing and not seeing, about waiting, about being human but not quite human. We wait for him to come - more than we know, each of us waits for our heart's desire - and he comes only in metaphors, in shadowy glimpses through the tall and bleeding trees; in long silences through which some words should be spoken and are spoken but never quite audibly enough for us to be sure we've heard them right: "The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ which was shed for thee preserve they body and soul unto everlasting life" 

Body and soul, we wait for the new life to make us everlastingly alive, new blood to flow through our dusty and sorrowing world, soft as rainwater and almost without taste but with the faintest tinge of sweetness to it. He was a fine man, our Lord and General. He was everything a man should be. He was everything we all should be and from the deepest part of ourselves yearn to be - loving, brave, just - but are not yet, not by a long shot.' 

Frederick Buechner, 'A Little While' in A Room Called Remember, p.103. 

THE SORROW OF NOT YET SEEING JESUS

'"Truly, truly, I say to you, ...you will be sorrowful," Jesus said. Well, ...we're sorrowful about lots of things, you and I, God knows. It goes with the territory, sorrow. We carry it about with us the way a snail carries it shell; it is one of the homes we live in - sorrow about our country and about our pillaged earth, sorrow that youth grows old and beauty fades. Sorrow about death - about all the undone things the dead leave behind them as we will leave undone things behind us too when our time comes, like a pair of old shoes broken in to to take us on some blessed journey we never got around to taking, maybe the most crucial journey of our lives. But as Christians we inherit this special refinement of sorrow that Jesus speaks of, this sorrow for connoisseurs - which is the sorrow of not seeing plainly the One we need most to see.' 

Frederick Buechner, 'A Little While' in A Room Called Remember, p.99. 

WE GO TO CHURCH ON OUR SEARCH FOR JESUS

'Sunday after Sunday we go to church because we are looking for Jesus in some uncertain way or another - of all the reasons we have, I think this is the heart of them. We go to church looking for him because not just maple woods and silence and the occasional testimony of his saints speak to us of him, but becuase the spirit of him is so at large in the air we breathe that almost anything we see can turn into the shadow of him if we're not careful or if we are creaful - a piece of bread, a glasss of wine. We go to church looking for Jesus in some uncertain way because in some uncertain way we have seen him, have seen enough of him to suspect that if there is anyone who can lighten the dimness of us, he is the one who can - the Light of the World; the light, if we could only see him, even of our own dim inner worlds.' 

Frederick Buechner, 'A Little While' in A Room Called Remember, p.98. 

THE TOPSY-TURVY INCARNATION

'When Quirinius was governor of Syria, in a town called Bethlehem, a child was born who, beyond the power of anyone to account for, was the high and lofty One made low and helpless. The One who inhabits eternity comes to dwell in time. The One whom none can look upon and live is delivered in a stable under the soft, indifferent gaze of cattle. The Father of all mercies puts himself at our mercy.' 

Frederick Buechner, 'Emmnauel' in A Room Called Remember, p.61.