From Frederick Buechner’s Alphabet of Grace.
What’s to be done? Do what you need most to do this day and what is most needed of you… Guide thou my feet. O Thou invisible, manifest thyself in this visible day.
Darkness moved upon the face of the something or other, and something like a voice said, ‘Let there be…Buechner. Let there be something like Buechner,’ and there was, there is, here in the bathroom with sleep in his eyes and the rain washing at the windowpanes as he pulls on his trousers one leg at a time.
Come unto me. Come unto me, you say. All right then, dear my Lord. I will try in my own absurd way. In my own absurd way I will try to come unto you, a project which is in itself by no means unabsurd. Because I do not know the time or place where you are. And if by some glad accident my feet should stumble on it, I do not know that I would know that I had stumbled on it. And even if I did know, I do not know for sure that I would find you there. I do not know for sure that it was indeed your name that made my tears come when I wrote it with my finger in the wet. And if you are there, I do not know that I would recognize you. And if I recognized you, I do not know what that would mean or even what I would like it to mean. I do not even well know who it is you summon, myself.
For who am I? I know only that heel and toe, memory and metatarsal, I am everything that turns, all of a piece, unthinking, at the sound of my name. Am where my feet take me. Buechner. Come unto me, you say. I, Buechner, all of me, unknowing and finally unknowable even to myself, turn. O Lord and lover, I come if I can to you down through the litter of any day, through sleeping and waking and eating and saying goodbye and going away and coming back again. Laboring and laden with endless histories heavy on my back.
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2 responses to ““Through the Litter of Anyday”: A Friday Prayer from Frederick Buechner”
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I have never heard of Fredrick Buechner until now, and now is the right time to have heard. I wake up with my hands clinched and shoulders stiff then turn over onto my back to purposely fight the beginings of my Fibonacci curl just to feel( or imagine) that I feel the connective tissue of my cheeks pulling away from my eyes that will, I know, eventually expose the truth that I am all ghastly eyeballs. I can’t help it; little by little I am going the way of death and turning ugly and it hurts to die. I am forty-five and have a large family to care for but I must waste my living figuring out why I am here. Being aware of oneself or one’s condition is a curse. Sometimes I want to be like the others who don’t know that they are naked. Good post. Thank You
I discovered Buechner about a year ago, and everything he writes resonates so deeply with me. I, too, am thankful for this post. And Susan, your comment is so devastating and true. I get it, sister.