Frederick
Buechner
 
Frederick Buechner was born on July 11, 1926, the oldest of two children
of Katherine Kuhn and Carl Frederick Buechner, Sr.  He was named after
his father, who committed suicide when Frederick was 10.  As the senior
Buechner took new jobs, the family moved from residences in New York
City to Bermuda to North Carolina.  As a child, the younger Buechner was particularly fond of the Oz fantasies by L. Frank Baum; much later he would retell the journey to the Emerald City in his novel, Entrance to
Porlock (1970).

In 1941, during their stay in North Carolina, Frederick attended
boarding school in Lawrenceville, there deciding that he wanted to write
professionally.  Here, also, he met the poet James Merrill, with
whom he established a lifelong friendship. “Together,” writes
Buechner, “we were a match for the world.” After Lawrenceville,
Buechner pursued studies at Princeton University until WW II
interrupted.  He served two years in the military (1944-46), then
returned to Princeton where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in
1947.

A year later in 1948, he returned to Lawrenceville as a teacher in the
English Department.  Two years later he published his first novel, A Long
Day’s Dying, to great critical acclaim, and resigned from his teaching
position in 1953.  Secure in his new success, he moved in 1953 to New
York City “…to be a full-time writer, only to discover that I could
not write a word.”  He attended Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church,
pastored by George Buttrick, “…whose extraordinary sermons,” recalls
Buechner, “had played such a crucial part in my turning to
Christianity…”

Following Buttrick’s suggestion, Buechner attended Union Theological
Seminary where he studied under theologians Reinhold Neibuhr, Paul
Tillich and James Muilenburg.  Again his education was interrupted, this
time willingly.  He took a year sabbatical to travel, write The Return of
Ansel Gibbs – and soon fell in love with Judith Fredericke Merck, whom
he married.

He returned to Union Theological Seminary for the final two years to
complete his Bachelor of Divinity Degree, which he received in 1958.
After that, he was ordained as an evangelist in George Buttrick’s
church.  Although “evangelist” was his official designation, Buechner
preferred the word apologist to describe his vocation, “My job…was to
present the faith as appealingly, honestly, relevantly and skillfully as
I could.”  And he would accomplish this through his writing.

Following ordination, Buechner accepted an offer to inaugurate a
full-time religious program at Philips Exeter Academy of New Hampshire,
the position expanding to duties as school minister.  Buechner taught nine years at Exeter (1958-1967). His family, now including three daughters, often took their vacations in Vermont.  Departing Exeter, he moved to a farm in Vermont where he commenced his career as a full-time writer and speaker.

In 1985, Buechner accepted an invitation to teach a semester of
literature at Wheaton College, his first full-on exposure to
Evangelicalism.  There he attended nearby St. Barnabas, “an
extraordinary church,” he writes in his memoirs, “…full of shadows,
full of secrets.”
 
Thus far, Frederick Buechner has composed three memoirs: The Sacred
Journey (1982); Now and Then (1983); and Telling Secrets (1991). Still
writing and occasionally lecturing, he and his wife divide their time
between Vermont and Florida.
  

  

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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 life itself is grace.

Frederick Buechner