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“I Grieve.”
“I Who Have Died, Am Alive Again Today.”
— Peter Gabriel from the song, I Grieve. (the title)
— E. E. Cummings from the poem, i thank You God for most this amazing (the subtitle).
Frederick Buechner is one of my favorite authors. The reason I love him, is because he gets the pain and the yearning we face as humans. I also love him, because he wrote me back when I wrote him letters 30 years ago. I was struggling with my Christian faith when I reached out to him. I first discovered him by picking up his book, A Room Called Remember, off the shelf of the campus bookstore at CalvinnCollege.
He died in 2022 at the age of 96. The last letter I got from him was in 2011, in response to a letter I wrote saying I was now an atheist, and I was moving to L.A. to try to become a screenwriter. In his big, scrawly, black-felt-tip pen writing on a blank white page, he said that atheism and Disneyland were odd bedfellows. I thought it was funny that he said this. They seemed like fine bedfellows to me. And had I never said anything about Disneyland.
He wasn’t one of those stern Christians. He doubted his own faith. Which is why I related to him.
I saw him in this interview with an annoying lady, when I did a search for his name under “video,” tonight. I missed him, and I wanted to hear…
