Wishful Thinking (1973)
A Seeker's ABC
Book Description
In Wishful Thinking: a seeker’s ABC, the first book in his much-loved lexical trilogy, Frederick Buechner puts the language of God, the universe, and the human spirit under his wry microscope.
Formed and inspired from his experience as school minister and theology teacher at the Phillips Exeter Academy, the book springs from a desire to reconsider and return to the meanings of well-used words. ‘Many of the boys I taught had picked up such distortions of those words that they seemed entirely justified in rejecting them’, he writes in his memoir, Now and Then (1983).
From ‘Abraham’ and ‘Agnostic’ to ‘Wine’ and ‘Worship’, Buechner invites his reader to rediscover the power behind the words that populate the human experience, to reevaluate the presence of doubt and necessity of faith, and to fall in love with language again:
WORD:
In Hebrew the term dabar means both "word" and "deed." Thus to say something is to do something. I love you. I hate you. I forgive you. I am afraid. Who knows what such words do, but whatever it is, it can never be undone. Some- thing that lay hidden in the heart is irrevocably released through speech into time, is given substance and tossed like a stone into the pool of history, where the concentric rings lap out endlessly.
Words are power, essentially the power of creation. By my words I both discover and create who I am. By my words I elicit a word from you. Through our converse we create each other.
When God said, "Let there be light," there was light where before there was only darkness. When I say I love you, there is love where before there was only ambiguous silence. In a sense I do not love you first and then speak it, but only by speaking it give it reality.
Reviews
"The same stylistic power, subtlety and originality that have distinguished Frederick Buechner's novels lift Wishful Thinking far above commonplace religion books nearly to the level of C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters. An artist is at work here in the vineyard of theology, a wit with wisdom."
— The New York Times Book Review
"Thoughtful, spirited, entertaining...a dictionary for doubters and restless believers."
— Chicago Tribune
"[Buechner] examines language about God and human life with immense perception, a great economy of words, and an engaging use of irony."
— Methodist Recorder
"Original, pungent and joyful."
— The Christian Century
"A beguiling book...Buechner handles difficult subjects (eternity, immortality, prayer) with a casual aplomb and easy analogy."
— Time
“Wishful Thinking is a new lexicon, a dictionary for the restless believer, for the doubter, for anyone who wants to redefine or define more concretely those words that have become an integral part of our daily language—words that we use about God, the universe and, last but never least, humankind. [...] With such wit and wisdom, imagination and innovation, we are led to a fuller awareness and greater understanding of the true relevance of familiar terms to each of our own lives."
— Steve Petty, Senior Pastor, St. Andrew's By-the-Sea United Methodist Church, San Clemente
