Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
James Martin, S.J.January 04, 2013
Frederick Buechner in 1955, photo courtesy of Mr. Buechner.

 

Two of my favorite spiritual memoirs are the magnificent works The Sacred Journey and Telling Secrets, by Frederick Buechner, an ordained Presbyterian minister who, since 1967 has lived in and written from Vermont.  Buechner's prose is supple, his mind fertile and his way of looking at religious and spiritual concepts always inviting and often very surprising.  So when I heard that our digital editor Tim Reidy was asked to write a profile of Buechner for the Princeton Alumni Weekly, I was delighted.  Tim's delightful essay, based on his interview with Mr. Buechner, is here.  My favorite passage:  "For Buechner, the process of writing about his life is sacred: 'My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours. ... It is precisely through these stories in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us more powerfully and personally.'"
 

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
Beth Cioffoletti
12 years 4 months ago
Good job, Tim. I really enjoyed reading that article, even though I haven't read anything by Buechner. He sounds like the real deal to me.
Andrew Alfray
11 years 12 months ago
My favorite works of Frederick Buechner is the The Sacred Journey I really enjoyed reading it.buy instagram comments
Vanessa Sandow
11 years 6 months ago
During his third year at Princeton, Frederick Buechner received the Irene Glascock Prize for poetry which was pretty amazing at that early age. He also began working on his first novel "A Long Day’s Dying, published in 1950. Bottom line is that Frederick Buechner has accomplished more than most of us and will always be a great man. Regards Vanessa the "Opzioni Binarie" girl

The latest from america

Paola Ugaz, a Peruvian journalist who helped expose the abuse committed by leaders of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, gives Pope Leo XIV a stole made of alpaca wool, during the pope's meeting with members of the media May 12, 2025, in the Paul VI Audience Hall at the Vatican. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)
Pope Leo offered a heartening message for a global media that has endured a pretty awful year.
Kevin ClarkeMay 23, 2025
If you think our enthusiasm for our basketball team was intense, just wait until you see our support for Pope Leo XIV.
Jack DoolinMay 23, 2025
“I don’t think he’s the kind of man who sends coded messages,” Cardinal Michael Czerny says in this exclusive interview with Gerard O’Connell.
Gerard O’ConnellMay 23, 2025
First-grade students finish an assignment at St. Ambrose Catholic School in Tucson, Ariz., in this 2014 photo. Arizona has one of the nation’s strongest school choice programs, with vouchers available to every child in the state. (CNS file photo/Nancy Wiechec)
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a ruling denying state funds to a Catholic charter school in Oklahoma. What should American Catholics be asking about public funding for school choice?
Beth BlaufussMay 23, 2025