I am a fan of Frederick Buechner. He has a way with words. He often says the most profound things in a simple way – or has a turn of a phrase that catches my mind off guard and causes me to think deeply.

I read from my Mother’s copy of Listening to Your Heart each night before I go to bed. It was a gift from a friend of hers and I am not sure Mother read beyond the first several pages. I doubt Buechner was her “cup of tea”. But it would be a boring world if we were all alike!

Some quotes form Listening to Your Heart (HarperSanFrancisco, 1992):

“We cannot afford to live our lives constantly looking back, listening back, lest we be turned into pillars of longing and regret, but to live without listening at all is to live deaf to the fullness of the music.”

“To grit your teeth and clench your fists in order to survive the world at its harshest and worst – is, by that very act, to be unable to let something be done for you and in you that is more wonderful still. The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed by the holy power that life itself comes from. You can survive on your own. You can grow strong on your own. You can even prevail on your own. But you cannot become human on your own….the one thing a clenched fist cannot do is accept, even from le bon Dieu himself, a helping hand.”

Let’s quit looking backward to regret and open our ears, hands and hearts to the God of love.