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Frederick Buechner

When you wake up in the morning called by God to be a self again, if you want to know who you are, watch your feet. Because where your feet take you, that is who you are.

Frederick Buechner

"Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all...is grace.”

Frederick Buechner
mystery life holy pain despair Grace struggle listen

"For what we need to know, of course, is not just that God exists, not just that beyond the steely brightness of the stars there is a cosmic intelligence of some kind that keeps the whole show going, but that there is a God right here in the thick of our day-by-day lives who may not be writing messages about himself in the stars but in one way or another is trying to get messages through our blindness as we move around down here knee-deep in the fragrant muck and misery and marvel of the world.  It is not objective proof of God's existence that we want but the experience of God's presence.  That is the miracle we are really after, and that is also, I think, the miracle we really get."

Frederick Buechner
God Faith incarnation presence suffering miracle Christianity

"God cannot be expressed but only experienced. 

In the last analysis, you cannot pontificate but only point. A Christian is one who points at Christ and says, 'I can't prove a thing, but there's something about his eyes and his voice. There's something about the way he carries his head, his hands, the way he carries his cross—the way he carries me.'"

Frederick Buechner
God proof Jesus Faith experience

"If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes, that is to say like artists, we must see not just their faces but the life behind and within their faces. Here it is love that is the frame we see them in."

Frederick Buechner
love Neighbor imagination other

Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.

Frederick Buechner
Grace Fear

Justice is the grammar of things. Mercy is the poetry of things.

Frederick Buechner
Justice Mercy
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