pickI love Buechner‘s writing—his use of language has a poetry to it that makes me slow down to savor each sentence. Here, he frames his discussion as a charge to the preacher, exploring elements of tragedy, comedy, and fairy tale within the Biblical story. I love the progression of his text, as he writes of how the tragedy must come before the comedy, the mystery before the answer. A beautiful little book—my November #DoubleSpin!
Let [the preacher] use words which do not only try to give answers to the questions that we ask or ought to ask but which help us to hear the questions that we do not have words for asking and to hear the silence that those questions rise out of and the silence that is the answer to those questions.
“Before the Gospel is a word, it is silence… It is life with the sound turned off so that for a moment or two you can experience it not in terms of the words you make it bearable by but for the unutterable mystery that it is.”
“…part of what he saw was his own shame and horror, the sight of his own folly, the judgment one can imagine he found even harder to bear than God‘s, which was his own judgment on himself, because whereas God is merciful, we are none of us very good at showing mercy on ourselves.”
This has been on my #TBR for a while, so I picked it as my letter T for #LitsyAtoZ... but I haven't gotten to it yet! However, it seems a good pick for #maybookflowers #truths. 😊
All this has disappeared overnight, and what you look out on is not the snow of Narnia but the snow of home, which is no less shimmering and white as it falls. The earth is covered with it, and it is falling still in silence so deep that you can hear its silence.
Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale | 
