Editorial: Frederick Buechner: ‘All moments are key moments’

I was introduced to Frederick Buechner like so many others—through his quotes. He wrote a lot of things and has been quoted abundantly. He may be best-known for the following: “Listen to your life. … All moments are key moments.”

For those like me captured by Buechner’s words, two simple sentences like those above can set us to hours of contemplation—even if only a few minutes of those hours look to the world outside our minds like contemplation. The rest of those hours, the words are bouncing and echoing around in us as we go about our “real work.” That’s part of Buechner’s genius.

The broader passage from which the quote is pulled fills it with meaning, just as the quote brings the broader passage to its point.

Here is the broader passage from Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation: “If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this: 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 all life is grace” (p. 87).

This broader passage sits within the wider context of Buechner—pronounced BEEK-ner—recounting his family’s move to Vermont, the challenge of writing, and understanding his calling.

A few pages earlier in that same chapter, Buechner provides further insight into his realization that “all moments are key moments:” “What you tend to forget, looking back this way at key moments of your life, are all the other moments that appeared to be so unimportant by comparison and yet were in their own way no less key themselves—were, in fact, the major part of your life” (p. 82).

Frederick Buechner died August 15. “All moments are key moments.”

The weight of the momentous

One of the great difficulties of our present time is that all moments really do seem like key moments. Everything feels pressing and urgent and dire. Everything seems … momentous. And we’re not sure there are any “other moments” in our lives at present that are or even appear to be “unimportant by comparison.”

Preachers and editors feel this sense of weight at least once a week—preachers on Sunday and editors at deadline. We feel the expectation that whatever we say or write is to be momentous and relevant to momentous things. Otherwise, why listen to or read us?

The grace in Buechner’s phrase is that even the mundane, the seemingly inconsequential, the background noise of the clothes dryer running and filling the silence between one important phone call and the next—even the mundane as mundane is key, if we will but listen.

Those of us who feel our entire lives are inconsequential by comparison to the lives of others are “in [our] own way no less key.”

But our culture only listens to the noise makers. Those are the important, key people worthy of our attention, so we believe.

The piddly matters of our days, the ones we worry must be forced into significance, are “in their own way no less key themselves.” When we stop and pay attention, we realize they are “in fact, the major part of [our lives].”

But our culture only cares about the stand-out moments. We ignore, overlook, forget everything else. The “unimportant by comparison” just doesn’t sell.

How much of God speaking do we not hear, because God speaks in “a gentle whisper,” a “still, small voice” (1 Kings 19:11-13), an unassuming and mistakenly unimportant voice?

That unobtrusive voice asks, “What are you doing here?”

What are you doing here?

If you’re unsure about the word “vocation” used in the title of Buechner’s memoir, or how he might have defined the word, he addressed that, too. In Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, he wrote: “It comes from the Latin vocare, to call, and means the work a man is called to by God.”

It should be noted: Buechner wrote that definition at a time when the pronoun “man” represented all people. In addition to men, he believed God also calls women.

The trick to this call by God, he noted, is discerning God’s voice from all the other voices calling us to do something—such as the voices of “Society … or the Superego, or Self-Interest.”

Buechner was confident a person was hearing God’s voice when the following two variables coincided: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet” (p. 95).

Do you know “your deep gladness?” Have you listened to your life enough to know? In the midst of what seems like noise, we can hear our deep gladness calling out, if we will but listen.

If we will listen to what sounds like noise upon noise, we will hear the world expressing its deep hunger for justice, purpose and connection; for love, mercy, grace and forgiveness; for redemption, reconciliation, salvation—all of which God has in abundance.

All of our moments are key moments through which God calls us to call the world to all God has to give.

In our worst moments, we are wrapped up in ourselves and are controlled by fear, anger, pride or greed.

In our better moments, we are wrapped up in what we hope is doing good—real good—for others and ourselves.

In our best moments, we are in tune with God’s call and are living into what God made us and called us to do.

May we live more of our lives in our best moments. The world hungers for it.

Eric Black is the executive director, publisher and editor of the Baptist Standard. He can be reached at [email protected]. The views expressed are those solely of the author.