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 5 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
12 years 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

Athletes who never make mistakes, who never lose, do not exist. Champions are not perfectly functioning machines, but real men and women, who, when they fall, find the courage to get back on their feet.
Pope Leo XIVJune 15, 2025
In his video message at White Sox stadium, Pope Leo encouraged young people to look inside themselves, recognize God’s presence in their own hearts and “recognize that God is present and that, perhaps in many different ways, God is reaching out to you,
Pope Leo XIVJune 14, 2025
The June 14 celebration featured the first-ever airing of Pope Leo XIV’s video message to the world’s youth at the White Sox stadium in Chicago’s Southside.
Pope Leo XIV prays at the conclusion of an audience with pilgrims in Rome for the Holy Year 2025 in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican June 14, 2025. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)
Pope Leo called for a “commitment to build a world that is safer and free from the nuclear threat.”
Gerard O’ConnellJune 14, 2025