Year of Reading Buechner: Crazy, Holy Grace

Near the beginning of the year, just as I was starting this year’s reading series, I picked up a few of Buechner’s books to have on hand as the year progressed. As Crazy, Holy Grace (published in 2017) was one of his newer books, it was readily available, unlike some of the older volumes. I started to read it as the second book of the series, back in February. But I quickly realized that this was not new material, but a compilation of  sections of other works. As some of the books included were ones that I had been planning to read this year, I set this one aside to read as my final Buechner book of the year, to serve as a bit of a summary and reminder of what I had been reading all year.

And here we are, December already! This is my last month in my Year of Reading Buechner series, and I will be sad to see it go. I will write a little more about the year’s books in a final summary of the series in January, but for now I will say that I have enjoyed his books very much, on many different levels.

This book is subtitled, The Healing Power of Pain and Memory, and the excerpts from various of his works all touch in some way on those topics. However, they are pretty loosely related, in some cases, and because this book is a compilation, it doesn’t have the same flow that his other books do.

Which I missed. Buechner is a careful and precise writer, at his best, and although his books are short, they pack a lot of punch because of the thought he puts into not only the words he uses but the structure of the book. Crazy, Holy Grace feels like a bit of a hodgepodge in comparison.

That’s not to say that the book has no value. The book is divided into three sections. Part I is Pain and God’s Crazy, Holy Grace, and it consists of just two chapters, a new essay, “The Gates of Pain”,  and a chapter from his first memoir, A Sacred Journey.  The first chapter  is a wise reflection on the different ways we deal with pain in our lives, and how facing it instead of burying it is the way out of the pain into healing and joy. He uses the Parable of the Talents, found in Matthew 25:14-30, to show us why it is important to be good stewards of our pain, not to ignore it or bury it. In the parables the man who is given the one talent (unit of money) and ends up burying it, is condemned as being a “wicked and slothful servant”. As  Buechner reflects on this, he writes,

…sloth is what this man is condemned for. Sloth is getting through life on automatic pilot. Not really being alive. Not really making use of what happens to you. Burying what you might have made something out of. Playing it safe with your life. To bury your life, bury your pain, to bury your joy. To bury whatever it is that the world gives you, and then live as carefully as you can without really living at all.

It’s a good reminder to try not to miss all that we can learn from the events in our lives, and to not neglect share what we have learned with others.

Part II, The Magic of Memory, consists of four chapters, one from A Room Called Remember, and the rest from his second memoir, The Eyes of the Heart. These all touch on memory and the power of remembering your life and trying to see beyond the simple events that happen down to the deeper meaning, to where God has met you even when you may not have noticed.

Part III, Reflections on Secrets, Grace, and How God Speaks, consists of little snippets of his writings from various books on those topics.

This book touches on many of the themes that resonate through Buechner’s writings: pain, memory, loss, faith, meaning, And in that way it could serve as a good introduction to his writing. But because we only get bits and pieces of his works, a reader new to Buechner’s works would miss the real depth and breadth of his skill as an author.

But even bits and pieces of Buechner are better than nothing! Crazy, Holy Grace was a good reminder of the power of his words, and a fitting end to my reading series this year.