Quote

When [our secrets] are sad and hurtful secrets, like my father's death, we can in a way honor the hurt by letting ourselves feel it as we never let ourselves feel it before, and then, having felt it, by laying it aside we can start to take care of ourselves the way we take care of people we love.

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
Never
Father
Laying
Love
Death
Aside
Like
Felt
Secrets
People
Care
Letting
Take
Honor
Feel
Hurt
Feels
Secret
Way
Start
Hurtful

More quotes by Frederick Buechner

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In other words to live Eternal Life in the full and final sense is to be with God as Christ is with him, and with each other as Christ is with us.
Frederick Buechner
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Prayers out of, very often, not the most religious part of me, but the most anxious part of me, the most desperately loving, fearing part of me.
Frederick Buechner
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... the world can give you these glimpses as well as fairy tales can--the smell of rain, the dazzle of sun on white clapboard with the shadows of ferns and wash on the line, the wildness of a winter storm when in the house the flame of a candle doesn't even flicker.
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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Remember Jesus of Nazareth, staggering on broken feet out of the tomb toward the Resurrection, bearing on his body the proud insignia of the defeat which is victory, the magnificent defeat of the human soul at the hands of God.
Frederick Buechner
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Theology, like fiction, is largely autobiographical.
Frederick Buechner
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Grace is something you can never get but can only be given. There's no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about anymore than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks. A good night's sleep is grace and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace.
Frederick Buechner
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Faith in God is less apt to proceed from miracles than miracles from faith in God.
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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Despair has been called the unforgivable sin-not presumably because God refuses to forgive it, but because it despairs of the possibility of being forgiven.
Frederick Buechner
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No words come easily to my lips. I think ultimately - what I like to think is that I'm in some sense hearing the mystery itself.
Frederick Buechner
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It is important to tell our secrets too because ... it makes it easier for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own, and exchanges like that have a lot to do with what being a family is all about and what being human is all about.
Frederick Buechner
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The other day, the way people [do] who are approaching their 80th birthday, I was thinking about all the last business - funerals and where do you want to be buried - and I thought if anything were to be inscribed on my tombstone, I said let it be that.
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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Go where your best prayers take you.
Frederick Buechner
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I say, “You may be right, but don’t knock it until you’re tried it. Don’t say, ‘I think it’s worthless therefore I’m not going to spend any time looking into myself the way one who prays does.'” Maybe that’s an even worse mistake than praying might be.
Frederick Buechner
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If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes, that is to say like artists, we must see not just their faces but the life behind and within their faces. Here it is love that is the frame we see them in.
Frederick Buechner
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Almost nothing that makes any real difference can be proved.
Frederick Buechner
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We have God's joy in our blood.
Frederick Buechner
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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