Buechner

BUECHNER IS MY NAME. It is pronounced Beek-ner. If somebody mispronounces it in some foolish way, I have the feeling that what's foolish is me. If somebody forgets it, I feel that it's I who am forgotten. There's something about it that embarrasses me in just the same way that there's something about me that embarrasses me. I can't imagine myself with any other name—Held, say, or Merrill, or Hlavacek. If my name were different, I would be different. When I tell you my name, I have given you a hold over me that you didn't have before. If you call it out, I stop, look, and listen whether I want to or not. 

In the book of Exodus, God tells Moses that his name is Yahweh, and God hasn't had a peaceful moment since. 

-Originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words

Bread

WE DON'T LIVE BY BREAD ALONE, but we also don't live long without it. To eat is to acknowledge our dependence both on food and on each other. It also reminds us of other kinds of emptiness that not even the blue-plate special can touch.  

-Originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words

The Storm Without and the Storm Within

Beneath our clothes, our reputations, our pretensions, beneath our religion or lack of it, we are all vulnerable both to the storm without and to the storm within, and if ever we are to find true shelter, it is with the recognition of our tragic nakedness and need for true shelter that we have to start. 

-Originally published in Telling the Truth

Boredom

BOREDOM OUGHT TO BE ONE of the seven deadly sins. It deserves the honor. 

You can be bored by virtually anything if you put your mind to it, or choose not to. You can yawn your way through Don Giovanni or a trip to the Grand Canyon or an afternoon with your dearest friend or a sunset. There are doubtless those who nodded off at the coronation of Napoleon or the trial of Joan of Arc or when Shakespeare appeared at the Globe in Hamlet or when Lincoln delivered himself of a few remarks at Gettysburg. The odds are that the Sermon on the Mount had more than a few of the congregation twitchy and glassy-eyed. 

To be bored is to turn down cold whatever life happens to be offering you at the moment. It is to cast a jaundiced eye at life in general, including most of all your own life. You feel nothing is worth getting excited about because you are yourself not worth getting excited about. 

To be bored is a way of making the least of things you often have a sneaking suspicion you need the most. 

To be bored to death is a form of suicide.  

-Originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words

Books

BOOKS ARE TO READ, but that is by no means the end of it. 

The way they are bound, the paper they are printed on, the smell of them (especially if they are either very new or very old), the way the words are fitted to the page, the look of them in the bookcase—sometimes lined up straight as West Point cadets, sometimes leaning against each other for support or lying flat so you have to tip your head sideways to see them properly. Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, the Pléiade edition of Saint Simon, Chesterfield's letters, the Qur'an. Even though you suspect you will probably never get around to them, it is an honor just to have them on your shelves. 

Something of what they contain gets into the air you breathe. They are like money in the bank, which is a comfort even though you never spend it. They are prepared to give you all they've got at a moment's notice, but are in no special hurry about it. In the meanwhile they are holding their tongues, even the most loquacious of them, even the most passionate. 

They are giving you their eloquent and inexhaustible silence. They are giving you time to find your way to them. Maybe they are giving you time, with or without them, just to find your way. 

-Originally published in Beyond Words