Customer Reviews

Telling Secrets

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"I not only have my secrets, I am my secrets. And you are your secrets. Our secrets are human secrets, and our trusting each other enough to share them with each other has much to do with the secret of what it is to be human."

In Telling Secrets, Buechner does just that. He tells the details of his most intimate life. He tells of his struggles and his tortuous search for answers to life. And Buechner finds some answers. He finds that so much of the secret of live is to love and to love means being able to lay bare that core of our being, that soul with the "print of God's thumb still intact." And this book is just that. In an tremendous act of love, Buechner is baring his most essential soul and allowing the reader to connect and learn.

It's difficult for me to express how much I love this book. It is short, but each page holds enough wisdom to fill volumes. Telling Secrets is a book that has earned a prestigious spot on my bedstand where I can reach it easily the times I need it most.

In this little reflective book, Buechner shows us the importance of recollection... the redeeming quality of memory. As in all of his autobiographical work, Buechner is remarkably transparent and honest. Whether or not you have enjoyed his fiction, (and I have) I believe there is something here for us all to relate to and identify with. Two passages in the book are very TELLING as they apply to the SECRETS that we all have: Firstly, "We cannot undo our old mistakes or their consequences any more than we can erase old wounds that we have both suffered and inflicted, but through the power that memory gives us of thinking, feeling, imagining our way back through time we can at long last finally finish with the past in the sense of removing its power to hurt us and other people and to stunt our growth as human beings." Secondly, "It is through memory that we are able to reclaim much of our lives that we have long since written off by finding that in everything that has happened to us over the years God was offering us possibilities of new life and healing which, though we may have missed them at the time, we can still choose and be brought to life by and healed by all these years later."

Reading the first two books in the memoir series (The Sacred Journey and Now And Then) are not prerequisites to enjoying this one, for its message is self-contained. But if you start here, you'll want to look into the others.

I first read this book in 1994, and have re-read it numerous times since. Buechner leads the way in challenging us all to share the secrets of our lives only known to self and God, knowing that "maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I, of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely these stories in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us most powerfully and personally." (p. 30). We all have secrets. Buechner picks up the gauntlet of boldness in breaking the prison of silence, only to find freedom and forgiveness waiting on the other side of the prison doors. My margin note summarizes the message of this book best: "telling secrets + forgiveness = peace!

This has been one of the most moving texts I have read in many years, both emotionally and spiritually. No book has touched me to the core at this point in my journey than "Telling Secrets" - for Buechner has pricked my heart like no other.

In an unassuming style and a tender but poingient language, Buechner draws out of the reader their own secrets, portraying the healing that comes from vulnerability, and helping us become human along the way.

This is not merely a Christian or spiritual book, but a book wrapped around humanity which encompasses our faith, feelings, hearts, minds and bodies.

Thank you Fredrick for your secrets.

Buechner is an overlooked author who produces profound insights and writes in a vivid, accessible style. The book opens with a recollection of his father's suicide when Buechner was a boy. It is told without a trace of self-pity, yet captures a youngster's perspective. He writes of his mother's damaging narcissism without any of the rancor typical in contemporary memoir, most likely because he can place his life story in the context of his Christian faith. While he writes from a Christian viewpoint, his story and its theme about being open about our complete selves will touch anyone who has felt loss and doubt.

It is a slim volume, written with a novelist's eye for detail. If only all theologians could communicate like this.

This book is a must-read for anyone who counsels, ministers and teaches others, because it is a soul searching quest for truth. The author reveals the painful and heretofore submerged past of his childhood, and with each revelation or insight, he is one step closer to healing. Thus we are encouraged to do the same - to relinquish secrets that cause guilt and pain is a necessary step to healing. The writing style flows as though we are witness to the author's personal journal, yet the story is amplified so that we the reader can appreciate the lessons he learned from life experiences. A refreshing aside to the book is the author's vulnerability in re-opening certain wounds and through faith is finally able to release and heal. We too are encouraged to let go and let God!

In this book, Buechner places great stress on the influential nature of the secrets we tend to keep. He also places great importance on the power of memory to recall and grapple with the events in our past that impact our lives. I found much of what Buechner had to say to be searching, honest and incisive, if not altogether theologically tight.

Buechner describes 3 sore spots in his past that have greatly shaped his present outlook - his father's suicide, his mother's narcissism, and his daughter's battle with anorexia. He suggests that his over-controlling and over-fretting response to his daughter's illness was shaped by the loss of his father and even the potential loss of the memory of his father. This, he believes, fed a great fear of losing things close to him. He further intimates that his mother's tendency to wall off certain topics and events from discussion left a relational hole that he tried to fill by over-pursuing and over-analyzing his daughter both before and during her illness. He suggests that this suffocation actually contributed to his daughter's crisis.

The best portion of the book is the final chapter in which Buechner delves into spiritual realities. Here, Buechner tells a poignant story of his time at Wheaton, where he discovers that evangelicals are not the close-minded apocalyptics that the culture describes. Instead, Buechner found a principled tolerance that is anchored in a faith that sets a principled direction for all other endeavors. He contrasts this with his time at Harvard, where he observed how brute pluralism often degenerates into all-out factionalism. Buechner is very insightful here. Few are willing to flush out this 'dark side' of pluralism, but of course, the factionalism that Buechner laments is increasingly the norm in American culture today. Tolerance, pluralism, and acceptance tend to be popular buzzwords that in the end, rarely endure the trials and complexities of life unscathed by those who exalt them in theory. Buechner's honest grappling with this dilemma is very refreshing.

Buechner has other insightful points to make as well. He provides helpful balance in analyzing the great love commandment, believing that in addition to loving our neighbors, we need to reclaim some love for ourselves as images of God. Self-loathing defames the image of God as much as loathing others, and loving ourselves biblically doesn't mean being self-absorbed or wanting to bring glory to ourselves. There is a balance that needs to be struck, and Buechner is helpful on this. In addition, Buechner also applies his 'secrets' hypothesis to the church. He notes that the church often bears the marks of a dysfunctional family, where outward community abounds but inner connectedness is in short supply. Like people, the church tends to prefer keeping things unsaid (keeping secrets, of a sort) and unvoiced by chossing to put on a good show rather than acknowledge individual and shared struggle and dealing honestly with it. While Buechner perhaps goes too far in seeing the church more as therapy and group catharsis instead of a place of worship and union with Christ, it is hard to argue with his basic point that both the church and us are often defined by the secrets we keep.

I'm giving the book 4 stars because in the midst of penetrating observation, Buechner seems to not penetrate far enough in some ways. In particular, it appeared to me that the death of his father helped shape some of his views about God that he does not really flush out or hold up to examination. It's not enough to say that experiencing a loss in life makes me afraid of going through that experience again, so that I try to fight it through over-protection and over-meddling. This might be true for as far as it goes, but it also involves something deeper. It involves, at root, a distrust in the goodness of God, and a fear of pain and loneliness; even when we may know intellectually that there is a redemptive character to such pain. In some ways, Buechner seems to see God in everything, but struggles with trusting him in everything. He hints at this toward the end of the book, where 'letting go' is very difficult for him. So ironically, in a book that purports to tell secrets as a result of believing that people are their secrets, I'm not sure Buechner goes far enough in contemplating just how comprehensively his secrets have shaped his view of God.

In the end, Buechner offers us a very penetrating, vulnerable, and often insightful glimpse into his life. The reader will likely be impressed not only by the vulnerability they find, but also in how Buechner's core struggles and secrets might be ours as well. His rather strong statement that we have a right to be happy, as if such a right is owed to us, is no doubt a popular sentiment, though one will struggle mightily to build a biblical case for it. However, robbing ourselves of happiness by obsessing about our fears isn't right either, and this is where Buechner is helpful. Recommended for the discerning reader.

I read this book because it was required reading for my daughter's religion class at college. I picked it up one evening because it was a small book and had an interesting title. I did not find it inspirational-- which I had thought it would be--but was pleasantly surprised that I could not put it down until I read it all that evening. It opened up thoughts and views on the past and how keeping secrets can shape a life. The author was very transparent and expressed feelings that are shared by many people. It was an excellent book proving that "telling secrets" can give revelations to life.

Whether or not you are a Christian, this book will be invaluable to you. Buechner is able to create an image of his life in beautiful, unpretentious prose that really gets through to you. His extended similes are especially noteworthy, and make this book one of the truly great autobiographies I have read. Telling Secrets provides valuable insights into the ethical maxims of Christianity and life in general.

As an avid reader it is difficult to have a "favorite" book ... however, Telling Secrets has become one of my favorites. In fact, if I had the resources I would provide the book to every friend and family member.

From the very beginning of TELLING SECRETS, explaining the rationale of another autobiography, Buechner invites the reader into his story ... struggles, questions, triumphs, joys. His writing speaks in a way that honors his unique struggles but also reveals the similar internal questions and insecurities we share (corporately) as human beings and the impact of these on our life and faith. Regardless of your life story there will be moments of identification for the reader with Buechner's story. Truth is weaved through the book in a way that reminds Christians of the Hope that remains constant despite the daily chaos and complexity of "life".

Do not be afraid of Buechner's writings if you only know him by the label of "theologian" ... he is accessible and understandable regardless of your background or theological training.

I believe I may need to read the book again! :-)