[The] Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
—1 Cor. 11:23-26
The term “anamnesis” is from the Attic Greek, ἀνάμνησις, and it means, “to call to mind, to reminisce.” In philosophy, it refers to Plato’s belief that learning is the rediscovery (the “recollection”) of knowledge which was innate within the soul prior to birth. In Socrates’ dialogue with Meno, the old teacher states, “there is no teaching, but only recollection.” All knowledge is remembering, recovering what the soul once knew. In Christian theology, the term refers specifically to the remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice in the Eucharistic service—Christ’s “real presence” in the service—and generally to the recollection of all of God’s saving acts throughout history.
The Buechner Review is just such a remembrance and reminiscence of Frederick Buechner, his works, and the way in which they have impacted our own lives. Our offerings help to keep the memory of him alive and to keep his memories alive; we do this in remembrance of him. Buechner’s works, fiction and non-fiction alike, are themselves anamnestic. His writing is suffused with remembrances of times and places, events and conversations from his own life, some real and some imagined. The work of his life and literature is the calling to mind of knowledge and truth that was within him and simply needed to be unlocked.
Buechner himself observed that “memory is more than a looking back to a time that is no longer; it is a looking out into another kind of time altogether where everything that ever was continues not just to be, but to grow and change with the life that is in it still.”[1] Offering us a glimpse into his self-reflection, this analysis of memory is interposed as a brief excursus, nestled among pages of recollections, between remembrances of his maternal grandparents’ home in western Pennsylvania and Grandma Buechner in her flat high above Fifth Avenue. Buechner reflects on what really makes a “home,” while he remembers and reimagines those most central to his past so that they might continue to live in his present. “The people we loved. The people who loved us. The people who, for good or ill, taught us things. Dead and gone though they may be, as we come to understand them in new ways, it is as though they come to understand us—and through them we come to understand ourselves—in new ways too.”[2]
Years after writing this ground-breaking spiritual memoir, Buechner will return to the contemplation of memory in The Eyes of The Heart (1999).[3] Indeed, I imagine the topic never really left his thoughts, the idea of “memory” is embedded within “memoir,” after all. In the first chapter of this memoir, Buechner recalls a spectral visit from his beloved Naya, his maternal grandmother. It may well be that he is remembering a vision that he had; what it illustrates is the way in which memory does not have to be of things that actually happened. He called Naya into his Magic Kingdom, the name he gave his study, “part Disneyland, part the Land of Oz,” and she was there, to converse with him and help him contemplate his own mortality, which was much on his mind after his life-long friend Jimmy Merrill died.[4] Naya was his conversation partner and confidant, allowing him to explore the coming transition that, ultimately and thankfully, was delayed another quarter of a century. He asked Naya if she were really there, and she simply narrowed her eyes at him and smiled faintly. “The answer to my question is that yes, Naya can really be there. I suspect there is no one on earth, or anywhere else, who cannot really be there if I want them to be and summon them properly.”[5]
Buechner is first describing in The Sacred Journey (1982) and then enacting in The Eyes of the Heart the redemptive process of memorialization. These are acts of anamnesis that allow him to enter into the real presence of those who are no longer with him, to continue and expand those previous relationships. “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” As in so much of Buechner’s work, his faith is not stated, rather it informs and is infused within his thinking and writing. He does not invoke the Eucharistic prayer, but we can hear its evocation echo within his encounters with Naya, his father, and Jimmy.
Buechner’s fluid, anamnestic movement from the present to the past, or even another location in the present, can be found within his fiction, as much as in his overt spiritual reflections. We can see it in Lion Country (1971), where the sight of the cat Tom, “struggling with death” (not simply dying, but wrestling like Jacob), brings to our narrator Tono’s mind his sister, “O Miriam, Miriam, my sister, my love…. I suddenly saw the thing that was happening to poor Tom on the bed as Miriam’s thing.”[6] The image of the cat in its death throes evoked in Tono’s imagination his sister’s own struggle with cancer, with death. His mind, our minds, the mind of the author no less than the character, flit back and forth from the present to the past, our attention moves from one person or thing right in front of us to another that we love so dearly who may be miles or years away. And in so remembering, we bring them into our presence, distance and time is compressed into nothing and we are together again.
This understanding and use of memory and recollection is most noticeable and explicit (although always implicitly present) when Buechner is reflecting upon his father and his suicide. Buechner was only ten and, as Jeffrey Monroe noted in his essay in The Buechner Review, the “stewardship of pain” has been the thread of Buechner’s life and literature ever since that day in 1936.[7] Monroe goes even further in his outstanding study from 2019, “It’s not a stretch to say Buechner’s life and career have been a quest to understand the meaning of that event and to understand where God was when the unthinkable happened.”[8] That event, like all occurrences, happened in a particular place and time; it is moored in Buechner’s childhood and yet he draws it forth in memory and story throughout the rest of his life.
Buechner’s quest to understand the meaning of this pivotal single event and God’s presence (or absence) in it, also led to his reflection on the nature of history. He taught religion at Exeter, not only Judaism and Christianity, but also eastern religions, and he found in them all elements that are of value and worthy of emulation. Ultimately, however, Buechner came to understand the biblical view of history as more compelling than the explanations in eastern religions. “Unlike Buddhism or Hinduism, biblical faith takes history very seriously because God takes it very seriously. God took it seriously enough to begin it and to enter it and to promise that one day it will be brought to a serious close. The biblical view is that history is not an absurdity to be endured or an illusion to be dispelled or an endlessly repeating cycle to be escaped. Instead, it is for each of us a series of crucial, precious, and unrepeatable moments that are seeking to lead us somewhere.”[9]
This is the faith of Buechner, it is that hope which runs through his writings and sermons. It is what allows him to answer the question he poses in the introduction to Sacred Journey, “what is God saying through a good man’s suicide?” History is not a random assortment of cruel, unfathomable events, rather it is all those moments, taken in aggregate, that form a narrative which moves us towards an end and, for Christianity and Buechner, that end is redemption. “The true history of humankind and the true history of each individual has less to do than we tend to think with the kind of information that gets into most histories, biographies, and autobiographies. True history has to do with the saving and losing of souls, and both of these are apt to take place when most people—including the one whose soul is at stake—are looking the other way. …The real turning point in human history is less apt to be the day the wheel is invented or Rome falls than the day a child is born in a stable.”[10] What is God saying through that good man’s suicide? I am still with you, saving souls.
Where history and memory come together is what biblical scholars and theologians call Heilsgeschichte, the “holy history” of the world, the narrative of God’s salvific work in human history. Heilsgeschichte traces the way in which God’s presence and grace flow throughout the sequential events that make up the lives of God’s people. We find it throughout the prophets and the psalms, as they remind the community of faith how God created the world, blessed (and burdened) humanity with knowledge and productivity, and when inevitably we stumbled and fell, God reached down into our stream of time to bring healing and hope and the “saving of souls.” We find this same conception of history moving through Buechner’s own works and even his retelling of his own, personal history. Buechner is able to depict as few others, the ongoing actions of humanity, the fumbling in the dark with the commensurate poking in the eye, the elbow to the face, and, as Annie Dillard reminded us, “Never forget his ribaldry. Love is on earth and in the flesh.”[11] Somewhere in there, through all of the really real life of Buechner’s world, there is always God setting a calming, guiding hand upon humanity — real and imagined — to lead them to peace, consolation, and resolution.
It is just this aspect of Buechner’s work, the way in which he embraces all of life, the good and the bad, the beautiful and the terrible, with a subtle but clear theme of hope, that compels so many to read on and read again. When Dale Brown reviews Buechner’s retelling of the story of Tobit—On the Road with the Archangel (1997), perhaps my favorite, if we are allowed just one—he notes this characteristic of reality and hope in Buechner’s works. “From A Long Day’s Dying to Secrets in the Dark (2006), Buechner has studied the improbable presence of grace in the mundane day-to-dayness of human experience. The work continues here in fiction and in memoir. The novel could be said to be about the unmarked presence of God.”[12] Buechner never settles for a narrative of a simple salvation or a bleak break with faith and this is compelling because this reflects so well not only the biblical account of history but also our own lived experience. Which brings me to my own encounter with Mr. Buechner.
* * *
Every year, three times a year, it was my privilege as Dean to offer some final words to our graduating seniors in the Honors College. One year, stumbling around for something wise and thoughtful to say, I came across several graduation speakers invoking the words of Frederick Buechner, “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.” I had heard his name (and knew how to pronounce it) from the title track on Daniel Amos’ 2001 album, “Mr. Buechner’s Dream,” but I had never read any of his works. The quote was perfect for sending students out from the grove of academe into the world of work and worries. “Don’t be afraid.” I have now used it many times.
In the years after our son died, I began work on a book addressing how we, as Christians, can grieve and wrestle with such unaccountable (and unacceptable) tragedies. Mack died on New Year’s Eve 2012, just two weeks shy of his ninth birthday. Sepsis, a blood infection, had raged through his body in a matter of hours and, with no warning (and still no explanation), he was gone. His life, full of soccer and friends, silliness and a love of LEGO, was truly one of the most beautiful things of this world, at least of our world. His death was terrible. The line “beautiful and terrible things” came to mind early and often. It seemed a fitting title for the book.
Like any good scholar, I felt it was important to understand the quote in context and to provide its proper citation. Immediately upon reading the passage in full, I understood the author’s deep grasp of God’s presence throughout history and within our lives.
The grace of God means something like: “Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are, because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created the universe. I love you.”[13]
I confess that my second thought, after reading this powerful definition of God’s grace, was to laugh. Knowing their reputation, I am certain that several of the academics within whose speeches the abbreviated quote appeared would be appalled to realize the line was part of a faithful confession of the confidence of God’s presence in this life. Why should we not be afraid? There are beautiful things, but the terrible can be oh-so-terrible. Why should we not be afraid? Because “I am with you.” God is with us and nothing can ever separate us from God.
Nearly eleven years after Mack died, I can attest that the beautiful continues to intrude into life, if I have eyes to see and ears to hear. Having read most (but I will not pretend to have read all) of Mr. Buechner’s work, I now know that this short paragraph is a tidy encapsulation of his theology as well as the lived experience of a faithful people. Our history as remembered, rather than simply recounted, is replete with engagements with God. Like Moses in the desert, God is there to meet us, even in the most barren times of life, to call us into action and to save souls. As a string of discrete and sometimes devastating events, life can seem, as Buechner shared with his mother in a letter, “a black comedy,” but he added “even at its worst, life doesn’t feel like a black comedy.”[14] One child born in a stable, another child dies before his ninth birthday. Some grow up and one gave up his life for all. This is not simply the world that Buechner weaves into his stories. Rather, he assures us that it is a deeper truth, that when history is remembered, when we enter into it with the expectation to find God and all the saints there in the room called Remember, we will find that history “is for each of us a series of crucial, precious, and unrepeatable moments that are seeking to lead us somewhere.”[15]
I invite Mack to step into my study, not quite the Magic Kingdom, but a corner of a special library, with my books and his LEGO, and he is…not yet there. Not quite. Or, at least, we do not converse in quite the way that Freddy and Naya did. But then again, Mack and I had our own relationship. He returns and sits quietly next to me as I build a LEGO I think he might have liked. He was by my side (complaining I was too slow) while running the Turkey Trot, an American Thanksgiving tradition. When I invite Mack into that room, he is there, we are together, and it is a real presence.
And the name of the room—that was where the mystery came from; that was at the heart of the healing though I did not fully understand why. The name of the room was Remember. Why Remember? What was there about remembering that brought a peace so deep, a sense of well-being so complete and intense that it jolted me awake in my bed? It was a dream that seemed true not only for me but true for everybody.[16]
EDITOR’S NOTE: Thank you for reading The Buechner Review. If you would like to receive future articles in your email inbox you can sign up here.
Works cited:
[1] Frederick Buechner, The Sacred Journey, (San Francisco: Harper & Row), 1982, p.21.
[2] ibid., pp.21-2.
[3] Frederick Buechner, The Eyes of the Heart: A Memoir of the Lost and Found, (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999).
[4] I feel I have to note that Wikipedia, that source of all knowledge if “knowledge” is simply whatever people happen to write on a website, notes that the poet James Merrill “befriended” Buechner when they were students at Lawrenceville. That seems an awfully lopsided way of describing what was clearly a lifelong bond and friendship. Then again, perhaps it is all dependent upon who is doing the remembering of their first encounter.
[5] The Eyes of the Heart, p.8.
[6] Frederick Buechner, Lion Country (New York: Atheneum, 1971), p.29-30.
[7] Jeffrey Monroe, “The Stewardship of Pain (Part II): Telling Our Stories.” The Buechner Review (November, 2023).
[8] Jeffrey Monroe, Reading Buechner: Exploring the Work of a Master Memoirist, Novelist, Theologian, and Preacher, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2019), p.12.
[9] “History,” in Beyond Words. Originally, and slightly edited, in Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1973), p.38.
[10] ibid., p.38.
[11] W. Dale Brown, The Book of Buechner: A Journey Through His Writings, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), p.372. As told to Brown in personal correspondence.
[12] ibid., p.319.
[13] Frederick Buechner, “Grace,” in Beyond Words: Daily Reading in The ABC’s Of Faith, (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2004).
[14] The Eyes of the Heart, p.16.
[15] “History”, Beyond Words, p.38.
[16] Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984), p.3..
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