What’s a ‘Buechner’?

For the last forty years of my life, the word “Buechner” has been more than a strange-sounding surname to me. Yes, it rightly pairs with “Frederick,” the 96-year-old Christian and author who died on August 15. I mean in no way to diminish the memorable life of this gentle New Englander who could almost have been cast as a supporting actor in Dead Poets Society. In fact, the novelist John Irving, a student of Buechner at Phillips Exeter Academy, gave his old prep school teacher a generous acknowledgement in his novel A Prayer for Owen Meany.

Still, for me, Buechner has come to feel less a name and more a noun. So what is a Buechner? No single definition suffices. May I suggest…

– A KEY to a safety deposit box full of “peculiar treasures,” especially of a theological variety.
– A DEEP SEA DIVER who uncovers barnacled saints like Godric of Finchale and Brendan the Navigator and brings their broken holiness above the surface of the deep.
– An APHORIST (I checked — it is a word) who crafts sayings which embed themselves into one’s core theology, on topics such as…

Lust : “The craving for salt of a person who is dying of thirst” (Wishful Thinking).

Calling : “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet” (Wishful Thinking).

Holy listening : “Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that 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 moments are key moments, and life itself is grace” (Now and Then).

– A PREACHER’S PREACHER who has inspired those who are regularly called upon to inspire us, especially as they learn how to preach the truth of the gospel.

– A LIFEGUARD brave enough to write his way towards the flailing; someone who, through memoir and sermon, novels and essays, through sharing with transparency about one’s own doubt and pain and failure, assists with the rescue of those succumbing to this world’s harsh waves.

In a grateful review I penned some years ago on Godric, I highlighted a monk named Reginald who was trying to write Godric’s hagiography. Reginald’s airbrushing techniques do not sit well with the old saint. When Reginald tries to tell Godric that his name is Saxon for “God reigns,” the saint corrects him and says his name means “God’s wreck.”

Maybe that most defines what Buechner means to me — an IMPROBABLE POSSIBILITY that a wreck like Godric, like Frederick, like you and like me, is yet God’s wreck and can, somehow, by grace, float.