Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale
7 quotes
"The fatted calf, the best Scotch, the hoedown could all have been his too, any time he asked for them except that he never thought to ask for them because he was too busy trying cheerlessly and religiously to earn them."
Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale
"... the preacher speaks both the word of tragedy and the word of comedy because they are both of them the truth and because Jesus speaks them both..."
Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale
"God in his unending greatness and glory and man in his unending littleness, prepared for the worst but rarely for the best, prepared for the possible but rarely for the impossible."
Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale
"In answer, the news of the Gospel is that extraordinary things happen. ... Lear goes berserk on a heath but comes out of it for a few brief hours every inch a king. Zaccheus climbs up a sycamore tree a crook and climbs down a saint. Paul sets out a hatchet man for the Pharisees and comes back a fool for Christ."
Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale
"They are prepared for a God who strikes hard bargains but not for a God who gives as much for an hour's work as for a day's. They are prepared for a mustard-seed kingdom of God no bigger than the eye of a newt but not for the great banyan it becomes with birds in its branches singing Mozart. They are prepared for the potluck supper at First Presbyterian but not for the marriage supper of the lamb..."
Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale
"... the world can give you these glimpses as well as fairy tales can--the smell of rain, the dazzle of sun on white clapboard with the shadows of ferns and wash on the line, the wildness of a winter storm when in the house the flame of a candle doesn't even flicker."
Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale
"Every person has one particular time in his life when he is more beautiful than he is ever going to be again. For some it is at seven, for others at seventeen or seventy, and as Laura Fleischman read out loud from Shakespeare, I remember thinking that for her it was probably just then."
Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale