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I suspect that Jesus spoke many of his parables as a kind of sad and holy joke and that that may be part of why he seemed reluctant to explain them because if you have to explain a joke, you might as well save your breath.

Frederick Buechner

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Frederick Buechner
Age: 98
Born: 1926
Born: July 11
Autobiographer
Novelist
Poet
Theologian
Writer
New York City
New York
Carl Frederick Buechner
Kind
Holy
Spoke
Jesus
Joke
Part
Breath
May
Explain
Parables
Wells
Breaths
Reluctant
Might
Seemed
Suspect
Well
Jokes
Spokes
Many
Save
Suspects

More quotes by Frederick Buechner

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You can't be too careful what you tell a child because you never know what he'll take hold of and spend the rest of his life remembering you by.
Frederick Buechner
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I'm a hopeless prayer. I think somewhere in there I spend a great deal of time at it.
Frederick Buechner
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Your vocation lies in the intersection of the world's deep need and your deep joy.
Frederick Buechner
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That's five friends, one each for Jesu's wounds, and Godric bears their mark still on what's left of him as in their time they all bore his on them. What's friendship, when all's done, but the giving and taking of wounds?
Frederick Buechner
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Faith is not being sure where you're going, but going anyway.
Frederick Buechner
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We must be careful with our lives, for Christ's sake, because it would seem that they are the only lives we are going to have in this puzzling and perilous world, and so they are very precious and what we do with them matters enormously.
Frederick Buechner
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You hear as many things as you would imagine. I hear voices of people I loved once. I hear moments that took place. I hear silences.
Frederick Buechner
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Don't look down on them for looking down on us. Look at them, instead, as friends we don't know yet and who don't yet know what they are missing in not knowing us.
Frederick Buechner
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For some people, going to church is going home. In a very profound sense, I would say the same thing. Home is where Christ is.
Frederick Buechner
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Five friends I had and two of them snakes.
Frederick Buechner
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Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom, the good thief said from his cross (Luke 23:42). There are perhaps no more human words in all of Scripture, no prayer we can pray so well.
Frederick Buechner
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Laugh till you weep. Weep till there's nothing left but to laugh at your weeping. In the end it's all one.
Frederick Buechner
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Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.
Frederick Buechner
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We cannot make the Kingdom of God happen, but we can put out leaves as it draws near. We can be kind to each other. We can be kind to ourselves. We can drive back the darkness a little. We can make green places within ourselves and among ourselves where God can make his Kingdom happen.
Frederick Buechner
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The world says, The more you take, the more you have. Christ says, the more you give, the more you are.
Frederick Buechner
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If it seems a childish thing to do, do it in remembrance that you are a child.
Frederick Buechner
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Snobs are people who look down on other people, but that does not justify our looking down on them. Who can say what dark fears of being inferior lurk behind their superior airs or what they suffer in private for the slights they dish out in public?
Frederick Buechner
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To believe is not intellectual assent: Yes, I believe in Jesus. I will sign my name to the Nicene Creed. I believe it all - which you could do, [but] it would have no effect on who you were or what you did. It is, rather, to give your heart.
Frederick Buechner
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Thus, when you wake up in the morning, called by God to be a self again, if you want to know who you are, watch your feet. Because where your feet take you, that is who you are.
Frederick Buechner
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ON HER DEATHBED, Gertrude Stein is said to have asked, 'What is the answer?' Then, after a long silence, 'What is the question?' Don't start looking in the Bible for the answers it gives. Start by listening for the questions it asks.
Frederick Buechner