A Crazy, Holy Grace: The Healing Power of Pain and Memory

 By Frederick Buechner

Zondervan     2017

141 pages     Spiritual

I can’t imagine my writing a book blog without including something by the master of spiritual writing, Frederick Buechner.

Buechner is now 96 years old, and has written in his lifetime more than 30 books, fiction, theological, and spiritual. This is not the first of his books that I have read, but apparently the first that I have written about. We are discussing it in my spiritual growth book group next Tuesday.

A Crazy, Holy Grace is a compendium of Buechner’s writings on pain and loss. He discusses “the power of hidden secrets, loss of a dearly beloved, letting go, resurrection from the ruins, peace, and listening to the quiet voice of God. And he reveals that pain and sorrow can be a treasure—an amazing grace. Buechner says that loss will come to all of us, but he writes that we are not alone. Crazy and unreal as it may sometimes seem, God’s holy, healing grace is always present and available if we are still enough to receive it.”

I came to Buechner’s book following a very bad week.. My friend’s 40-year-old daughter had died of cancer. She had a two-year-old son, and her death brought back for me all the pain I had suffered many years ago when my 41-year-old husband died, leaving me with a two-year-old, as well as two older children. That sort of pain never leaves a person, and Buechner speaks to that type of pain as he describes the suicide of his father and the resultant anxiety all these many years later.

I just kept underlining passages that meant a lot to me personally. An example. “If God started stepping in and setting things right, what happens to us? We cease to be human beings. We cease to be free.” He goes on: “But I sensed the passionate restraint in the silence of God, which was both silent and yet eloquent.” He closes the chapter: “Joy is the end of it. Through the gates of pain we enter into joy.”

I especially appreciated the final chapter: Reflections on Secrets, Grace, and the Way God Speaks. I like how Buechner is liberal in the way he speaks of God. A non-believer in the word “God” can find as much to appreciate in this final chapter, as the passionate evangelical. In this chapter, he speaks of death, suicide, funerals, and each person’s sacred journey. “In other words, all our stories are in the end one story, one vast story about being human, being together, being here.”

A Crazy, Holy Grace meant a lot to me because I had a lot of anxiety that needed calming. His words can have a powerful impact on hearts in need of grace and peace.