Frederick Buechner's Thought on Life After Death

Frederick Buechner’s Thoughts on Life After Death

Guest Writer: Larry Burton

“So, what do you think about life after death?”

  As an Episcopal priest, I’ve heard that question, or others like it, more times than I care to count. I’ve come to think the Resurrection may not answer the question of what happens when we die as I once thought it did. “But,” a friend said, “that was Jesus. This is me.” Fair enough.

A group of us has been reading Frederick Buechner’s A Crazy, Holy Grace. Buechner, who died at age 96 in 2022, was a prolific author and theologian whom many of us greatly admire. In part of this book, he imagines a conversation with his beloved grandmother, who has been dead for more than forty years. She tells him that death is like stepping off a trolley car. However, life doesn’t stop but instead continues toward a deeper understanding of God’s grace and love. That imagined conversation stopped me in my tracks.

For most of my life as a theologian, I have thought (and taught) something similar, but it was far more abstract and ultimately unsatisfying. Buechner has his grandmother put humanity on my abstractness and offers an image of continuity in God that, as I said, stopped me flat. Did I believe what I had been teaching? Yes. No question. But now the abstract has taken on a form that both challenges and delights. 

So I had my own conversation with my preacher father and stepmother. Both are dead now, but they were delighted to talk with me. “Sorry you had to wait so long to understand,” Dad said after I told him about Buechner’s book. (My father was a Buechner fan, so he was way ahead of me.) My stepmother added her two cents: “I always thought I’d suddenly ‘get it,’ but it didn’t happen that way. There are always new layers or new heights, and my heart! My heart just continues to open wider and wider.”

My words in their mouths? Or their words in my mouth? Buechner’s grandmother challenges her grandson, as I am challenged. Buechner’s central point is that memory can be an incredible portal into the wonders of God. So, what do I think about life after death? I am more convinced than ever that, as a beloved child of God, I have access to the reality of God’s love, which is far more cosmic, mysterious, and wondrous than I had imagined. It is more than Resurrection; it is a continuing transformation moving toward God’s very heart.

Larry Burton

Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Frederick Buechner’s birthday was this week July 11th. (Also, Stuart Hoke’s birthday. Also, the Feast day of St. Benedict)

Remembering Frederick Buechner on his 100th Birthday

What Frederick Buechner Means to Me

July 11, 2026, Celebrating Buechner’s 100th Birthday

I wish I could remember the first time I read Frederick Buechner or who told me about him. Perhaps his first piece appeared in the Listening for God series, in which Buechner reflects on his life and invites us to do the same. What spoke to me was his honesty, his deep understanding of his own suffering, and the way he lived through it. The video also showed a very sympathetic minister who navigated life’s grief and joy along a deeply personal path. 

I have been receiving his daily emails since they began and have been a faithful member of his Writing for Your Life group and conferences. I once attended the College of Preachers at the National Cathedral at least twice a year and would buy all the Buechner books I could find there. I have used his quotations in so many conferences, especially “The place God calls us to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” I speak and write this passage so often in conversations with other deacons in the Episcopal Church and in Spiritual Directions. I write a Daily Blog called Daily Something, and Buechner is the author I quote most often. I have read as many of his sermons as possible. They inspire me to new lines of thought and new ways of looking at faith. I can easily say that Rev. Buechner has been the person who has most influenced my writing. I give thanks daily for him and for his ability to share his ministry so fully with the rest of us.

Which of Buechner’s books have been most meaningful to me? This is so difficult. I look through Listening to Your Life and Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner and find so many underlines and notes in the margins. I reread these books year after year. I try to absorb and remember small doses of Buechner’s wisdom each day. It is his honesty and his humorous, insightful prose that stay with me. When I need to understand his thoughts on a word or name, Wishful Thinking and Beyond Words have also become daily reads and resources. When I am preparing a sermon or talk, I turn to Secrets in the Dark, A Life in Sermons, The Faces of Jesus, and The Magnificent Defeat. There, “in the dark,” with my friend of so many years beside me, I wait in silence and find inspiration.

Buechner’s later book, A Crazy Holy Grace: The Healing Power of Pain and Memory, has also been life-changing. In those few pages, Buechner urges us to find sacred spaces to revisit old memories and reconnect with the unconditional love of the past, so that great healing can now live in the present. The book finally reminds me how sacramental Buechner’s writings have always been.

The Rev. Joanna Seibert, M.D.

Deacon, Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church

Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics and Radiology, Arkansas Children’s and University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences

Seeing Angels in Our Lives

 Seeing the Angels in Our Lives

Rarely do I not think about my grandfather at some point during the day. He taught me about unconditional love. No, my grandfather was unconditional love. In addition, I know he also saved my life on at least three occasions.

My grandfather saved my life for the first time while we were swimming in the Mattaponi River beside his farm. He had taught me to swim, and I knew I was a good swimmer because I would later spend hours swimming along the shoreline. This near-tragedy happened when I was in primary school. I suddenly could not stay above water. I think it was high tide, and I had unconsciously drifted beyond the dock, where the water was now over my head. I panicked when I could not touch the bottom. My grandfather quickly rushed to my side and swam me to shore. I remembered much later that it best described the depth of his love for me.

Want to read about the other two times Joanna’s grandfather saved her life? You’ll have to get the book to read her essay, along with the many essays and poems (and one short story) inside.

ALL NIGHT, ALL DAY: life, death & angels was released on June 20, 2023, at a fantastic party at Novel Bookstore in Memphis, Tennessee. I was thrilled to meet and hear from the other authors.

About the Book

There is something mystical about holding a person’s hand, “crossing over.” It can be heartbreaking, of course, but also deeply holy and beautiful. Some pieces in this collection share the experience of personal loss after the death of a loved one. Often, the presence of an angel or another mystical experience is described. But not only in death–there are also stories of how the mystical world interacts with us in daily life. And not only angels, but also mothers, fathers, sisters, grandfathers, and friends.
All Night, All Day is an inspirational collection of personal essays, stories, and poems by outstanding women authors who write about the appearance of the divine in their lives. Some angels come to save a life or change a flat tire. Some appear to warn people, tell them what to do, and suggest more vegetables and maybe better shoes.
Contributors: Cassandra King - Suzanne Henley - River Jordan - Sally Palmer Thomason - Natasha Trethewey - Sonja Livingston - Johnnie Bernhard - Frederica Mathewes-Green - Angela Jackson-Brown - Christa Allan - Renea Winchester - Jacqueline Allen Trimble - Mandy Haynes - Wendy Reed - Lisa Gornick - Jennifer Horne - Ann Fisher-Wirth - Averyell Kessler - Lauren Camp - Cathy Smith Bowers - Nancy Dorman-Hickson - Joanna Seibert - Susan Cushman - Claire Fullerton - Julie Cantrell.

I will always hold dear the friends and authors who attended the June release of All Day, All Night at Novel Bookstore in Memphis, especially Susan Cushman, who planned it all.

Joanna. joannaseibert.com

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