A Crazy, Holy Grace: The Healing Power of Pain and Memory

By Frederick Buechner

When pain is real, why is God silent?

Frederick Buechner has grappled with the nature of pain, grief, and grace ever since his father committed suicide when Buechner was a young boy. He continued that search as a father when his daughter struggled with anorexia. In this essential collection of essays, including one never before published, Frederick Buechner finds that the God who might seem so silent is ever near. He writes about what it means to be a steward of our pain, and about this grace from God that seems arbitrary and yet draws us to his holiness and care. Finally he writes about the magic of memory and how it can close up the old wounds with the memories of past goodnesses and graces from God.

Here now are the best of Buechner’s writings on pain and loss, covering such topics as the power of hidden secrets, loss of a dearly beloved, letting go, resurrection from the ruins, peace, and listening for the quiet voice of God. And he reveals that pain and sorrow can be a treasure—an amazing grace.

Buechner says that loss will come to all of us, but he writes that we are not alone. Crazy and unreal as it may sometimes seem, God’s holy, healing grace is always present and available if we are still enough to receive it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zondervan
• Release date: Oct 3, 2017
• ISBN: 9780310350545

Frederick Buechner

Frederick Buechner, author of more than thirty works of fiction and nonfiction, is an ordained Presbyterian minister. He has been a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and was honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His most recent work is Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith.

Book preview

About Frederick Buechner

Frederick Buechner brings the reader to his knees, sometimes in laughter, sometimes in an astonishment very close to prayer, and at the best of times in a combination of both.

The New York Times Book Review

With profound intelligence, Buechner’s novel does what the finest, most appealing literature does: it displays and illuminates the seemingly unrelated mysteries of human character and ultimate ideas . . . One of our finest writers.

Annie Dillard, Boston Globe

If Frederick Buechner subordinated his nature and chose to write on naughts and nothings, he would still exalt his readers. When he is in representative harmony and writes of the accessibility of God to humanity and of humanity’s agreement with its potential divinity, we, the readers, are lifted up, buoyed up, and promised wholeness.

Maya Angelou

You don’t have to be in the habit of going to church to listen to such a literary minister; you don’t have to be a believer to be moved by Mr. Buechner’s faith.

John Irving

Frederick Buechner is a beacon. When we can’t remember what is true and what it all means, he’s the person we turn to.

Anne Lamott

Frederick Buechner has inspired me not only with his writing, but with his generosity of spirit. I’m incredibly thankful.

Rachel Held Evans

He isn’t trying to persuade—he’s trying to understand what he himself believes and thinks. And that honesty is more persuasive than the most polished argument.

John Ortberg

Frederick Buechner doesn’t just show us how to write; he shows us how to live.

Philip Yancey

Frederick Buechner is not just a wordsmith but an image-smith—he’s the bridge between Gutenberg and Google.

Len Sweet

To each new generation, his work is a revelation.

The Lutheran

Frederick Buechner gives new life to Christian truth.

Katelyn Beaty

He raises the bar not only for Christian writers, but for all of literature.

Mako Fujimura

Also by Frederick Buechner

Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith

The Book of Bebb

The Clown in the Belfry: Writings on Faith and Fiction

The Eyes of the Heart: A Memoir of the Lost and Found

Godric

The Longing for Home

The Magnificent Defeat

Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who’s Who

The Remarkable Ordinary

A Room Called Remember: Uncollected Pieces

The Sacred Journey: A Memoir of Early Days

Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons

The Son of Laughter

Speak What We Feel (Not What We Ought to Say)

Telling Secrets: A Memoir

Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC

The Yellow Leaves

ZONDERVAN

A Crazy, Holy Grace

Copyright © 2017 by Frederick Buechner Literary Assets, LLC

The essays in this book are taken from the author's previously published works and are identified on page 139, which hereby becomes a part of this copyright page.

Requests for information should be addressed to:

Zondervan, 3900 Sparks Dr. SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

Zondervan titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fundraising, or sales promotional use. For information, please email [e-mail].

ISBN 978-0-310-35162-7 (audio)

ISBN 978-0-310-35054-5 (ebook)

Epub Edition August 2017 ISBN 9780310350545

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Buechner, Frederick, 1926- author.

Title: A crazy, holy grace : the healing power of pain and memory / Frederick Buechner.

Description: Grand Rapids, Michigan : Zondervan, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017024954 | ISBN 9780310349761 (softcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Pain—Religious aspects—Christianity. | Suffering—Religious aspects—Christianity.

Classification: LCC BV4909 .B83 2017 | DDC 248.8/6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017024954

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All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Copyright © 1952 [2nd edition 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Any internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers in this book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement by Zondervan, nor does Zondervan vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Art direction: Curt Diepenhorst

Interior design: Denise Froehlich

Zondervan Editorial: John Sloan, Robert Hudson, Gwyneth Findlay

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Foreword

PART 1 PAIN AND GOD’S CRAZY, HOLY GRACE

1: The Gates of Pain

2: A Crazy, Holy Grace

PART 2 THE MAGIC OF MEMORY

3: A Room Called Remember

4: The Magic of Memory

5: The Struggle of Memory

6: The Hope of Memory

PART 3 REFLECTIONS ON SECRETS, GRACE, AND HOW GOD SPEAKS

Sources

Notes

Foreword

It seems that pain and death are on the rise, lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce, ready or not. Our lives are filled with freak accidents, cancer, and the steady decay of time. Stories of destruction and pain come at us from everywhere—our news, TV shows, movies, and social media sites—because fear and death seem to sell even more than sex. Under such a barrage of tragedy, hope can seem a flimsy comfort or, at best, a hole in the ground you can stick your head into, like an ostrich. Is it real? Is God really there? Or are we just fooling ourselves in order to cope?

My mentor and friend Dale Brown was someone whose loss I felt deeply, suddenly. There is still a Dale Brown-shaped hole in the world; I can’t often think of him without tears springing to my eyes. I didn’t see him all that much, but somehow it seemed as if the world would be all right in the end with him around. I met Dale at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, when I took his class in modern literature. He introduced me to Frederick Buechner and showed me how Buechner’s early writings straddle the shift between modern and postmodern eras in Western literature. As our culture shifts again from postmodernism into something post-Christian, Buechner’s voice has never been more relevant. Though he wrote almost everything in the twentieth century, he is a sort of twenty-first-century C. S. Lewis, speaking about truth and hope and faith in a way that resonates with the faithful and the faith-suspicious alike. And he tells the truth in stories we want to read more than once.

The dread pirate Roberts in The Princess Bride famously points out to Princess Buttercup, "Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something." The statement is true, and useful for adjusting our expectations, but it leaves us emptyhanded when life takes a turn and the ones we love, or we ourselves, suffer and die. What Buechner does, and why I keep coming back to him year after year, is to say we will all of us lose everything and everyone we love. We don’t know, really know, what comes next. True hope is hard won, and the struggle to hang on to it is more than we can often bear. But Buechner says if we will simply quiet ourselves and really listen into the stillness and silence, we will hear God speaking to us. In the quiet, we can use our memories and imaginations to remember our stories and the lives of our lost loved ones. And then we can catch glimpses of him who was there all along.

As Buechner’s fictional character Godric says, What’s lost is nothing to what’s found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup. It was Dale Brown’s favorite Buechner quote. It sticks with me still: All the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup. . . . All’s lost. All’s found.

And that’s what this new collection of Buechner’s writings, including a lecture he gave that has never before appeared in print, aims to help us realize—that when we enter the gates of pain and use the healing power of memory, we will hear God speaking, and we can take comfort and rest our weary souls in his crazy, holy grace.

CALEB J. SEELING, EDITOR

GOLDEN, COLORADO

Part 1

Pain and The Crazy, Holy Grace of God

Chapter 1

The Gates of Pain

When I woke up this morning, before I’d gotten out of bed, I was looking around to see what was going on in my room. Not much was going on, I’m happy to say. But there was a cricket on the glazed stone floor. He didn’t belong in the room. Crickets don’t belong in rooms. I looked at him and decided to give him a helping hand, so I picked him up as gently as I could so as not to either alarm him or hurt him, and I carried him out into the sunshine. And he hopped away to do whatever crickets do, where they belong. And I thought to myself, that’s what it’s all about: to be lifted up carefully and in a way not to frighten us, to be taken out of the confinement of the room where we’re locked up away from where we belong, and to be carried out into the fresh air. And that’s, in a way I guess, what this book is about, how to get out of that room or what to do when you’re in that room.

I don’t speak often about my father’s drinking. He wasn’t a raging drunk. He didn’t go around smashing furniture and punching people in the nose. Rather, I think drinking was one of the ways he survived his life. Especially when he went out to parties, he would drink too much. When he would come back, as much as I can remember him, which is dimly, he was another person. He was sort of scary and sad.

One night, he had been drinking, and he decided he wanted to go away somewhere in the car. My mother said something like, You can’t do that. You’ll kill yourself or smash up the car, and she somehow got hold of the keys. She gave them to me and said, Whatever else you do, don’t give them to your father. I was in bed, and I remember gripping the keys in my hand. There were two twin beds—I was in one with the covers over my head, scared. My father came into the room, sat on the other bed, and pled for me to give him the keys. I didn’t know what to do or what to say or what to be or what to think or what to do. I just remember, sort of dimly, his voice saying, Please give me the keys. And I, of course, said nothing at all. The keys were clenched in my fist under the pillow and the covers were over my head. Eventually I think he went to sleep, and that was the end of that. But, of course, it left a tremendous mark; I can remember it to this very day. That is the kind of shadow side of my childhood.

I told this story to a group in Texas once, and afterward the retreat leader came up to me and said, You’ve had a good deal of pain in your life, which, of course, he could’ve said to any one of us. And he said, You’ve been a good steward of it. You’ve been a good steward of your pain. That caught me absolutely off balance. I’ve never heard that before. Steward has always been a boring, churchy word to me, you know? Stewardship Sunday or something like that. It’s about taking care of your money, probably. But to be a steward of your pain, what a marvelous idea. I’ve thought a great deal about it ever since—what it means to be a steward of your pain, the various ways in which we deal with the sad and puzzling things that happen to us over the course of our lives.

Maybe the first thing to say is that pain, of course, is universal. All the great visionaries, the great holy ones, I think have known that. I think of Siddhartha Gautama, the