Periodically our blog features one of Frederick Buechner's books. In this article we highlight Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation, which is the second of Buechner's four memoirs. Click here to learn more.
Book Description
""There is something more than a little disconcerting about writing your autobiography. When people have occasionally asked me what I was working on, I have found it impossible to tell them without an inward blush. As if anybody cares or should care. As if I myself should even care that much - like showing your baby pictures to strangers.....But I do it anyway. I do it because it seems to me that no matter who you are, and no matter how eloquent or otherwise, if you tell your own story with sufficient candor and concreteness, it will be an interesting story and in some sense a universal story. I do it also in the hope of encouraging others to do the same - at least to look back over their own lives, as I have looked back over mine, for certain themes and patterns and signals that are so easy to miss when you're caught up in the process of living them. If God speaks to us at all other than through such official channels as the Bible and the church, then I think that he speaks to us largely through what happens to us, so what I have done both in this book and in its predecessor is to listen back over what has happened to me - as I hope my readers may be moved to listen back over what has happened to them - for the sound, above all else, of his voice. Because the word that God speaks to us is always in incarnate word - a word spelled out to us not alphabetically, in syllables, but enigmatically, in events, even in the books we read and the movies we see - the chances are we will never get it just right. We are so used to hearing what we want to hear and remaining deaf to what it would be well for us to hear that it is hard to break the habit. But if we keep our hearts and minds open as well as our ears, if we listen with patience and hope, if we remember at all deeply and honestly, then I think we come to recognize, beyond all doubt, that, however faintly we may hear him, he is indeed speaking to us, and that, however little we may understand of it, his word to each of us is both recoverable and precious beyond telling. In that sense autobiography becomes a way of praying, and a book like this, if it matters at all, matters mostly as a call to prayer."" - Frederick Buechner, in the Introduction to Now and Then
Book Reviews
""Strikes to the heart Unpreachy meditations on life and Christianity at its most profound."" People Magazine
""Buechner writes better than almost anyone. This book and its companion, The Sacred Journey, reduce and clarify the who and what and why of his whole life to something not unlike the palm-sized egg of crystal. Deep within it, as we read, the sun shines and the constellations rove."" James Merrill
""The humility of this title--the ""now and then"" that refers to the occasional glimpse of glory but does not claim any more for itself than that--beautifully reveals something of the tone and attitude of Buechner himself. It also suggests what it is about him that readers hold so dear."" - Doug Thorpe
""Buechner is graceful in story and insights."" Los Angeles Times
""Candidwistfulbreathtaking images. Christian Century
""Buechner is a worthy member of the great prose stylists: Pascal, Newman, and Merton, who have harnessed their art to a passionate religious faith."" Louis Auchincloss
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