Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation

by Frederick Buechner

Spiritual and autobiographical reflections on the author's seminary days, early ministry, and writing career.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Religion, Spirituality, Christianity, Biography, Christian

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Frederick Buechner is a highly influential writer and theologian who has won awards for his poetry, short stories, novels and theological writings. His work pioneered the genre of spiritual memoir, laying the groundwork for writers such as Anne Lamott, Rob Bell and Lauren Winner.

His first book, A Long Day's Dying, was published to acclaim just two years after he graduated from Princeton. He entered Union Theological Seminary in 1954 where he studied under renowned theologians that included Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, and James Muilenberg. In 1955, his short story "The Tiger" which had been published in the New Yorker won the O. Henry Prize.

After seminary he spent nine years at Phillips Exeter Academy, establishing a religion department and teaching courses in both religion and English. Among his students was the future author, John Irving. In 1969 he gave the Noble Lectures at Harvard. He presented a theological autobiography on a day in his life, which was published as The Alphabet of Grace.

In the years that followed he began publishing more novels, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist Godric. At the same time, he was also writing a series of spiritual autobiographies. A central theme in his theological writing is looking for God in the everyday, listening and paying attention, to hear God speak to people through their personal lives.

Reviews

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of the three memoirs that Buechner wrote, this was probably my least favorite. I can’t bring myself to give this book less than 4 star. There are some hidden wisdom-gems that spoke especially to my life right now. Buechner writes of his middle life and college teaching career. He compares and contrasts Christianity to Buddhism and it is in those pages that I leaned the most from this book. He explains that the two religions are based around the same fundamental principal, love, but the ultimate goal and purpose for Love is quite different. Buddhism has 4 levels of Love and the last and highest form is upekkha- “the detached, dispassionate love which no longer makes or even recognizes distinctions of any kind but loves all people impartially, whether they are torturers of children or great humanitarians. There is something a little too cold-blooded and inscrutable about it to equate it to the Christian concept of agape as God’s love that shines forth on both the just and the unjust.” (P. 52)
After describing the feelings of being a new parent Buechner writes: “‘He who loves fifty has fifty woes… who loves none has no woe.’ Said the Buddha, and it is true. To love another, as you love a child, is to become vulnerable in a whole new way. It is no longer only through what happens to yourself that the world can hurt you but through what happens to the one you love also and greatly more hurtingly. When it comes to your own hurt, there are always things you can do… But when it comes to the hurt of a child you love, you are all but helpless... There is no way to make him strong with such strengths as you may have found through your own hurt, or wise through such wisdom, and even if there were, it would be the wrong way because it would be your way, not his. The child’s pain becomes your pains, and as the innocent bystander, maybe it is even a worse pain for you, and in the long run even the bravest front is not much use… Side by side with the Buddha’s truth is the Gospel truth that ‘he who does not love remains in death.’ … To suffer in love for another’s suffering is to live life not only at its fullest but at its holiest.” (P. 56) Buechner never spells out how God’s love is like the love described above, but you come to that understanding as you read through the book. There is peace in that too, because God is much more able to handle our struggles than we are each other’s. Our love is messy, His love is perfect, and He is able to bear the burden of loving enough to let us grow. It’s also reassuring that the ultimate purpose of this whole thing isn’t nothingness or disconnected, but a full embrace of our humanity and our role in God’s epic story.
This book is slim but dense and worth a read. (If you only have time to read one, read The Sacred Journey)

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, poetic. This passage sums it up. . .

"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."

[Sumangali Morhall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now and Then is the second in a trilogy of short memoirs by Buechner, along with The Sacred Journey and Telling Secrets. This is my favourite of the three, though I enjoyed them all. It covers the author’s rather shambling journey to seminary, and a gradual growing into life as a Christian minister. I love the stark realism in the stories, and his broad-minded approach to religion. His melancholy, self-deprecating honesty is utterly endearing, and the writing is sublime. His views on writing itself, and how it may dovetail with a spiritual life, are brave and consoling. While the sentences can be long, tiring journeys, the destination is always worth the effort. These are books I will treasure and re-visit.

[Despond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Second in his memoirs, first one I read. Buechner lived a long life, past 90’s, died in 2022. He grew up in a different time so some of it is foreign for us. He was a novelist and minister, more former than latter. The book narrates how he got to be a minister but most of his life was writing. He was a good writer, very reflective and it can be seen in this book. He has good pithy sayings that leaves a mark, some a bit confusing. Nevertheless, I found some really good nuggets. Hoping to read a bit more by him.

Fav quotes:

If love is a matter of holding fast to, and identifying with, and suffering for, the ones we love, it is a matter also of standing back from, of leaving space for, of letting go of. To become, through loving and needing them, as in volved in the lives of others as I was involved in the lives of my children is in the long run to risk being both crippled and crippling. Because we love our children helplessly as we do, they have the power to destroy us. We must not let them, for their own sakes no less than for our own. A distance must be kept-not just from our children but from everyone we love.“
104

“I think of Jesus himself, who in the profoundest sense bled for people but was never what is meant by "a bleeding heart"; who did what he could for the sick and suffering who came his way and then moved on; who wept for Jerusalem but let Jerusalem choose its own way; who kept his own mother at arm's length and, when Mary Magdalen reached out to embrace him at the end, said, "Do not touch me."

We are to love one another as God has loved us. That is the truth of it. But to love one another more than God has loved us-to love one another at the expense of our own freedom to be something like whole and at peace within ourselves, and at the expense of others' freedom, too-is the dark shadow that the truth casts. This is what I started to learn when Katherine and Dinah went away to school in 1975 and launched forth on lives of their own. What event could have been less earthshaking? Yet for me it shook the very foundations themselves and marked the beginning of a new leg of the journey which I am in the midst of still.”

Listen to your life

All moments are key moments.

You sit down at your desk in front of your typewriter, or if, like me, you don't use a desk and a typewriter, sit down wherever you sit down with a pad of paper in your lap and a pen in your hand. Is it a book you are going to write, or a letter to a friend, or a diary, if you keep one? Or are you sitting down not to write anything at all, maybe, but just to think, to remember, or just to pray, maybe, which is another kind of thinking, another way of remembering? Whichever it is you sit down to, the process is much the same. Writing, thinking, remembering, praying-you need words for all of them. Words are put together out of letters, all twenty-six of them. So the alphabet is your instrument. Everything you have it in you to say must be said by means of A's and B's and C's and D's. By means of vowels and consonants, you must put together the best words you can-words that, if possible, not only mean something but evoke some thing, call something forth from the person you address with your words. Christ himself both spoke such a word and was such a word.

Words-especially religious words, words that have to do with the depth of things-get tired and stale the way people do. Find new words or put old words together in combinations that make them heard as new, make you yourself new, and make you understand in new ways."

[Beth]

This is the second volume of Buechner’s memoirs, mainly telling the story of his vocation in just over 100 pages. It is, perhaps, a less compelling read than The Sacred Journey and Telling Secrets. But inasmuch as Buechner’s fiction is essentially autobiographical, more so than any other author I’ve read, Now & Then is an important chapter in the story. If you haven’t read Buechner don’t start here. But if you’re interested in getting to know this delightful and complex author, by all means settle in. The last chapter in particular provides helpful commentary on the Bebb novels and Godric.

[Savannah Knepp · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book in one sitting and it made me eager to read more Buechner, although I probably won't reread this one.

I loved his repeated emphasis on the holiness of the commonplace and one section of the book that made me so delighted that an unexplained tear rolled down my cheek was when he was describing a friendship from college and included that, "..we at one point had contemplated setting down our combined wisdom in a single volume which was to consist of nothing but the words _I don't know_ repeated again and again over hundreds of pages"

[Othy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first and only memoir of Buechner's that I have read, and I think I liked it. It was definitely Buechner in terms of style, which was beautiful to get into again, but the wisdom seemed somewhat compact. It was almost as if you could see the strings of each section and where he was going. This didn't limit the wisdom, but it made it less expensive than it was in his novels and his other, non-memoir non-fiction.

[JD Waggy · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I've said before, one of the ways I chart whether or not a book is good is if it makes me want to write.

I very much wanted to write while reading this.

I kind of came in mid-stream, as this is part of a larger series of Buechner's autobiographies. This was loaned me by a friend, so I didn't know much about it until I sat down and started reading it. I was not, at first, impressed, as the foreword and the second edition introduction were both very self-conscious and humble and felt rather like the medieval trope of false self-degradation.

Once the book itself started, however, I realized it was not at all false, and that the text was worth the wait. Hurrah for this Christian admitting that Christianity is rough and weird and not something easily claimed in the early days because of its reputation. Hurrah for awesome theological musings and beautiful word paintings. I loved the first half of this book and the adventures in education. The back half was a little less fun, as it felt rather like a flesh-and-bone annotated bibliography of Buechner's other works; granted, now I want to read his other stuff, but telling me about it was a bit slow reading.

There are also several nods to Buechner's own writing style and temperaments; these sections felt a little like Stephen King's On Writing, which I maintain is still one of the best books on the craft out there.

This is a very slim autobiography/memoir/theological study/bibliography, but worth it as an introduction to the man. I do recommend it, if you're into any of those categories.

[Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of those books that ended up on my reading list from who knows where, and I was pleasantly surprised.

“Every morning when you wake up," he used to say,
"before you reaffirm your faith in the majesty of a loving God, before you say I believe for another day, read the Daily News with its record of the latest crimes and tragedies of mankind and then see if you can honestly say it again."

I was less a man praying than a man being a man praying, and no clear answer came, none that I could hear anyway, and maybe that in itself was the answer: that there was no clear right, no clear wrong, but that whichever way I chose, I would have to make it right, both for me and for the one I prayed to.

I discovered that if you really keep your eye peeled to it and your ears open, if you really pay attention to it, even such a limited and limiting life as the one I was living on Rupert Mountain opened up onto extraordinary vistas. Taking your children to school and kissing - your wife good-bye. Eating lunch with a friend. Trying to do a decent day's work. Hearing the rain patter against the window. There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him or not to recognize him, but all the more fascinatingly because of that, all the more compellingly and hauntingly.

Listen to your life.
All moments are key moments.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second of Buechner's memoirs and again excellent. This one covers his time at Union Theological Seminary becoming a Presbyterian minister, through a nine year stint as a teacher of religion at a high school, his marriage and children, and several of his books, ending with the writing of his (Pulitzer Prize-nominated) novel Godric. While at Union, he studied under Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich.

Actually, it's from a Tillich quote that the book takes its title... "We want only to show you something we have seen and to tell you something we have heard ... that here and there in the world and now and then in ourselves is a New Creation."

Buechner covers off various biographical details, various angsts and joys, and insights, and the "now and thens" from himself that are a New Creation glimmer throughout.

[Longfellow · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now and Then: a concise review.

Great idea to publish multiple memoirs, each with a specific focus, Now and Then being “A Memoir of Vocation.” Three chapters, 109 pages total. I recommend reading each chapter in a single sitting. The first chapter, “New York,” is my least favorite, largely because I was distracted by the glaringly obvious life of privilege with which Buechner has been blessed. It recounts Buechner's time at Union Theological Seminary. The second chapter, “Exeter,” is my favorite because of its references to literature and reflections on teaching. The third chapter, “Vermont,” covers Buechner's transition from a decade of teaching to life as a full-time writer. Once again, this chapter testifies to a life of privilege that will be obvious to readers who have had more modest opportunities and resources.

Though I’ve focused on Buechner’s privilege in this brief commentary, Buechner doesn’t reference it at all, which I suppose is fair. He is focused entirely on what it’s like to decide how one should live one’s life and how best to positively influence the world in the brief time we have. In each of these chapters, Buechner’s talent for writing and the reflective quality of his mind and life are on display in satisfying ways. I intend to eventually read each book in his series of memoirs.

[Elizabeth Clayton · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautiful prose as always, and wonderfully helpful context for much of his other works

“unless you become like a child, Jesus said, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven, and maybe part of what it means is that in the long run what is good about religion is playing the way a child plays at being grown up until he finds that being grown up is just another way of playing and thereby starts to grow himself. Maybe what is good about religion is playing the Kingdom of Heaven will come, until—in the joy of your playing, the hope and rhythm and comradeship and poignance and mystery of it—you start to see that the playing is itself the first fruits of the Kingdom’s coming and of God’s presence within and among us”

[David Eiffert · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery 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."

Buechner writes better than anyone.

[Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buechner’s memoir touches on his work life. While there were many aspects I could not connect to (he seems brought up in privilege and leisure afforded to the well-off), I identified with his search for “real” work as a minister. He reflects that much of what was meaningful in his vocation was in the very earthy details of life and family, and the Spirit of God that seems to blow between them.

[Cal Davenport · Rating 5 out of 5]

Buechner is a companion to all introverted, literary Christians. In this, one of several of his memoirs, he admonishes us to "listen to our lives," then provides his own as an example. His subtle, quiet prose is peace imparting, here as always.

[Jackson Wangaard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cant get enough of this guy. Randomly thrifted this one and it was awesome.

[Sam Luce · Rating 5 out of 5]

“What’s lost is nothing to what’s found” as Godric says, “and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup.”

[Jeanne]

I like Frederick Buechner. Reading his books is much like sitting next to my great-grandfather when I was a child.

[Sarah Westfall · Rating 4 out of 5]

I often carry a tension between wanting to craft well-written stories, without pontificating or preaching or tidied up endings, while also wanting to carry on conversations about the deep things of God. The two often feel at odds. There always seems to be the risk that one could cheapen the other. But in Buechner’s words and the way his life wove in and out of both writing and ministry, this book gave me hope that I do not have to choose. That maybe these two passions are simply still learning how to hold hands with one another.

[Tanner Hawk · Rating 3 out of 5]

“We are so used to hearing what we want to hear and remaining deaf to what it would be well for us to hear that it is hard to break the habit” (3).

“Maybe the God who offered everything, at the same time demanded everything” (11).

“Jacob reeks of holiness. His life is as dark, fertile, and holy as the earth itself. He is himself a bush that burns with everything, both fair and foul, that a man burns with. Yet he is not consumed because God out of his grace will not consume him” (20).

“I was less a man praying than a man being a man praying, and no clear answer came, none that I could hear anyway, and maybe that in itself was the answer: that there was no clear right, no clear wrong, but that whichever way I chose, I would have to make it right, both for me and for the one I prayed to” (32).

“To suffer in love for another’s suffering is to live life not only at its fullest but at its holiest” (56).

“The past is the place we view the present from as much as the other way around” (57).

On preaching: “If you are any good at all with words—if you are any good at all as an actor, with an actor’s power to move people, to fascinate people, to move them sometimes even to tears— you have to be so careful not to make it just a performance, however powerful. You have to remember that it is not what you are saying that is important for them to believe in, but only God. You have to remember how Jesus consigned to the depths of the sea those who cause any who believe in him to sin and how one sin you might easily cause them is to believe in yourself instead” (70).

“Maybe what is good about religion is playing that the Kingdom will come, until—in the joy of your playing, the hope and rhythm and comradeship and poignance and mystery of it—you start to see that the playing is itself the first-fruits of the Kingdom and of God‘s presence within us and among us” (73).

“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” (87).

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frederick Buechner grew up agnostic, as a man of the world, and then, in his mid-20s, after being mysteriously moved at a church he had just wandered into, gave up his current life in favor of conversion to Christianity. He had already published his first novel. Rather than focus on a follow-up, he entered Union Theological Seminary to become a minister.

This book, Now and Then, picks up at this point, right where the first half of his autobiography, The Sacred Journey, left off. It follows his maturation from his time at seminary, where he is taught by such theological powerhouses as Reinhold Neibhur and Paul Tillich, to his time as chaplain at a prep school full of atheists, to the point where he picked his writing back up again and penned such masterpieces as Godric.

In reading any autobiography (especially that of a literary figure), I find myself identifying with the main character, trying to figure out what he or she was doing at my age, calculating how I stack up against the greats. With Buechner, this impulse is even greater, as he espouses many of my deeply-held convictions, such as doubt always being mixed with belief, the importance of comparative religion as a way to shed light on Christianity, and the need for new language to describe old truths. Reading Now and Then was like reading someone live out one of the lives I want to live.

[James Klagge · Rating 4 out of 5]

The middle one in a series of memoirs, running from entering seminary in his late 20's, till his 50's. Reflections on finding holiness in the every-day: as he quotes Tillich (with whom he studied at Union): here and there even in our world, and now and then even in ourselves, we catch glimpses of a New Creation.
While in seminary he worked in East Harlem doing something approximating to community development work--or at least he was involved with and impressed by those who did. This led to a need in himself to choose between that sort of ministry and the more intellectual ministry of writing, which he ultimately chose. This reminded me of a similar choice I made after working for 2 summers with an inner-city Christian ministry in Chicago in the late 1970's, when I made a similar choice to pursue an academic rather than an activist career. Here is what he says about that choice (p. 30): "In any case, theirs was a road I did not take because I did not have either the stomach for it or the gift for it, but like other untaken roads, it haunts me still….On the road that I took instead, have I ever done anything or been anything to match in its own half-hearted and fragmentary way their degree of self-sacrifice? I genuinely don't know and feel sure that I'm better off not knowing. If I have, then it was by grace alone. If I have not, then I can only hope that at the end of the journey, where all roads finally meet, grace may prove sufficient."
A nourishing read.

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not his best. Buechner is one of my all-time faves, but he does occasionally tend to swerve uncomfortably close to a cheap kind of universalism for me, and that's on full display on some of these pages. There are gems here, to be sure. I don't think he's capable of writing anything that doesn't have at least some soul-piercing truths. But his chronic doubt chafes a bit here, whereas elsewhere in his work it seems humble and honest and beautiful. It's really not necessary to follow every assertion with some variation of "but maybe not".

He also goes a little deeper into Buddhism here than I cared for, and I deeply disagree with what I took as his belief that the Buddhist concept of radical detachment can teach us about not loving people too much. I think the cross showed us that there's no such thing as going too far with love. Maybe he meant something else and it was just over my head, I dunno.

In summary, it's short and worth a read, but not his finest. And when Buechner is good, he's the BEST.

[Светлана · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buechner is consummately skilled as a writer. His nonfiction style is the perfect blend of truth and ephemera.
He gives us a tour through several unspectacular events and places in his life, yet draws the truth out of them like an unlooked-for flavor in a meal prepared by a master chef. He speaks truth more unobtrusively than almost any other author I have read, and in that I would see him as a predecessor to Donald Miller. (Or, others would say Donald Miller is a succesor of his.)
This book carries forward an idea present in his other books, about seeing God as the main character in your own autobiography. “Listen to your life,” he says more than once.
Where I was less impressed is his theology proper. I sense a deep sympathy in some paragraphs where he mentions times of doubt or depression. In other paragraphs, I felt that Buechner was betraying more skepticism than is becoming of a preacher, and perhaps that is why he is so popular in theologically mainstream-to-liberal circles.
As just another instance, when he cites examples from Buddhism, they are, for the most part interesting, but I can’t help but feel that it is a ploy to keep less religious readers engaged, especially when he backpedals and says that the Christian view is more encompassing.
Of course, Buechner himself mentions this dillemma of audience, which tries to straddle the line between those who are “in” and “out” of this club we call religion. He is neither the first nor the last to experience this dillemma, but all in all I feel that, whoever his reader is, Buechner truly has something to say, and says it powerfully—not so much like a trumpet, but more like rising string overture, a gentle reminder that your soundtrack is already playing, the camera is running. This is your life. What is God saying through it?

[Claire Cash · Rating 4 out of 5]

would give 3.5 stars if goodreads allowed half ratings.
did i enjoy this book? i don’t think i could confidently say i enjoyed it thoroughly, however, there were many wonderful glints of wisdom entrenched within the pages of it. i loved the whimsical way buechner writes and i always had a pencil in hand to underline things to carry with me in my heart after i’d turned the last page. i didn’t like how he tended to generalise all non-believers and a portion of this memoir where he writes about the argument he gave for required church at the university he ministered at reminisced strongly of the fear-mongering sermon given in the middle of ‘portrait of the artist as a young man’ by james joyce. he had an open-mindedness regarding reading and internalising the bible that i admired (a quote about this: “on the one hand, it was to be read with the eye of faith and to the heart’s uplifting; on the other hand, it was to be read as critically as searchingly as anything else”). i chose to read this book to get an inside look at a strong believer’s mind since i don’t communicate with many myself and this book did not disappoint in what i was searching for.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second book of the trilogy of autobiographical works of Frederick Buechner. While the first book explores his childhood experiences that leads to his conversion and calling, this book explorers how God was working and speaking and in through his vocation.
I appreciated his insights gained from Seminary, where he learned two encounter God in the scriptures, even while treating them as a historical document.
I appreciate his willingness to struggle with skeptics as a school teacher, where he encouraged people to ask tough questions. He offers particularly helpful insight in the area of Buddhism, differentiating between the goal of detachment from love for Buddha, verses they're willing, sacrificial, redemptive Love Of Christ.
And lastly, it is helpful to learn from his major decisions through different phases of life, as he pursued his dream of writing, while also making a living in supporting a family. Through it all, he was listening for God's whispers through the people he met and the experiences he encountered.

[Gerald McFarland · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second volume in an autobiographical trilogy. It covers Buechner's middle years from getting a degree from Union Theological Seminary through to marriage, the birth of three daughters, and setting up a religious studies department at Exeter Academy. He writes skillfully in an understated style, refraining from spending a great deal of the text on explicitly Christian themes, although they are there and are movingly evoked. Two brief quotations sum up that aspect of his book: "Listen to your life; all moments are key moments," and "Life is grace--the givenness of it, the fathomlessness of it, the endless possibilities of it becoming transparent to something extraordinary beyond itself."

[Drake Osborn · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.8 // Buechner is, as always, a solitary author. He is, in his own words, "too religious for secular readers, and too secular for religious readers." For this reason he is less read then he should be, because he is a master of at least several different genres, memoir not withstanding. His skill as a writer in this volume is on display not so much by his sentences or passages (although there a few good ones) but by his dogged persistence to "listen to his life" and in so doing, expose it to others. There is a dependent humility in that calling, something very human and compelling. For that, Buechner is always worth the effort, and a worthy companion into thoughtfulness.

[Phillip Block · Rating 4 out of 5]

This year (2020) I’m rereading the Frederich Buechner books in my library. I own six of them, written at various times in the 1970s into the 1990s. I last read through my Buechner books in 2015 and 2016. The second time through, I’m finding even more to like than when I first read them.

Now and Then, another of Buechner’s autobiographical novels, documents three different periods in his life: 1) His years at Union Seminary in New York City; 2) His nine years on the faculty of Exeter Academy afterwards, and 3) his early years in Vermont, where he and his family moved after Exeter.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

While sold as a memoir about vocation, it's really just Buechner writing about his work. He talks about attending seminary, becoming a minister, running the religion department at a boarding school, and then being an author. So it's his vocation more than how to find your vocation. But it's still interesting, especially as he talks about how various books came to be. He also has wonderful insights and turns of phrase here and there. It feels a bit like the left over autobiography that only a real Buechner nut would be interested in.