I am my secrets...

There are a few authors that I have had the opportunity to revisit multiple times during different seasons of my life. Among this group of authors are Zora Neale Hurston, Anne Fadiman, Brian McLaren, Parker Palmer, and Ayn Rand. Each time I encounter them, I learn something new, and often it is from reading the same text multiple times. I've had people tell me that my fascination with re-reading the same books over and over again is strange. My reply is always that normalcy is highly overrated.

Another of these authors is Frederick Buechner. There is something special about my relationship with Buechner that was born out of grieving. I first encountered his book Telling Secrets in December of 2008, just after my best friend’s younger brother committed suicide. After spending the weekend mourning with my friend and his family, I needed help and guidance. I had never before been around such a situation. When I read the book then, I was struggling with the idea of memory, of remembering truth versus reality. In the first chapter, Buechner speaks to that dichotomy so well:

“By a kind of miracle, the make-believe story became the real story or vice versa. The unalterable past was in some extraordinary way altered. Maybe the most sacred function of memory is just that: to render the distinction between past, present, and future ultimately meaningless…” (pg. 35)

This was my struggle. In those moments sitting with that hurting family, we tried to speak into the past, to see the happy times. We ended up laughing raucously on many occasions because my friend’s brother was a funny kid. Yet we were not dealing with the reality of what had just happened. And at that time we did not need to do so. We were living in the intersection of past and present, and we were stumbling our way into the future as best we could.

I recently read Telling Secrets again, but this time I read it very differently. This time, Buechner helped me find my voice. As I have struggled through the last two years trying to discover who I am meant to be as a theologian, I have felt my way through different conversations in the greater theological discourse. Through that process, I found a great deal of what I encountered in Christian history to rub against my claimed theology. But Buechner reminded me how important dealing honestly and generously with these forebears is:

“It seemed to me that if your principles keep you from being able to draw on the wisdom of writers of earlier generations who didn’t happen to share those principles or even to be aware of them, you may keep your principles intact but at the same time do yourself a tragic disservice” (pg. 63).

This speaks to how important it is for us to allow equal space for all perspectives to be heard. I may not like most of what reformed theologians have to say about salvation and questioning, but Calvin has many things to say from which I may learn. As I encounter these voices, I learn more about who I am as theologian.

I also appreciate that Buechner speaks about the therapeutic nature of recovery groups. If I have learned one thing over the last year, it is that the church is a recovery group and a group in recovery. There is part of a prayer Buechner presents in the third chapter of Telling Secrets that stood out to me as something we might pray together at my own church. It is a prayer of the people, for the people, and Buechner words it in a way that speaks to the nature of how telling secrets can set a person free:

“Go where your best prayers take you. Unclench the fists of your spirit and take it easy. Breathe deep of the glad air and live one day at a time. Know that you are precious…Know that you can trust God. Know that you can trust these people with your secrets because they have trusted you with theirs” (pg. 92).

As someone who has had and continues to have many secrets, this prayer is so important. It articulates something of which I often speak, the idea of ubuntu, that we are people through other people. Buechner says, “I not only have my secrets, I am my secrets” (pg. 39). He learned that the love of God respects the freedom of our humanity. That love speaks into who we are and allows us to discover it, to learn its secrets.

I am my secrets. And I don’t have to tell my secrets to everyone. But giving voice to them helps me inhabit the space in which I have been created. It allows me to live out the vocation placed on my life. And as I continue to give speech to these secrets of who I am, I learn that we aren’t so different from each other at all. No, in fact, as much as we may think our struggles to be unique, we are not alone. And it’s time for that secret to spoken.