The Alphabet of Grace

Theologian, writer, humanist, Frederick Buechner taught at Exeter, then Harvard, then left for the Vermont hills. The Alphabet of Grace conveys the limits of language in expressing the ineffable. God manifests at odd moments, in peculiar ways, in the details of nature. For Buechner the "clack-clack" of two apple tree branches in the wind is a beginning point, a portal to inwardness.

"The invisible manifests itself in the visible."

In his convincing reflections on grace, Frederick Buechner divides the day into 3 parts: gutturals, sibilants, absence of vowels. Tracking the small half-miracles of everyday life, the glimmerings of grace, Buechner makes reference to the opening of Anna Karenina.

Prince Oblonsky awakens to a new day and the hope of forgiveness, despite the fact that his wife has banished him to the sofa in the study for carrying on with the French governess. "What's to be done?" Oblonsky asks. What are the needs of the day? Tolstoy implies. Prince Oblonsky puts on a grey dressing gown lined with blue silk, ties the tasselled cords round his bare waist, and approaches the window, feet turned out, striding forward confidently.

Buechner's grandmother comments. How French: that focus on the feet. And this is what Buechner finds most interesting about the Tolstoy passage. Those feet.
Yes, those feet. Writers imply. Readers infer. And both Tolstoy and Buechner suggest that our feet are what keep us grounded and moving forward.
"What's to be done?" frets Oblonsky at the window.

What is to be done...? What are the needs of the day? Meet them fully, Tolstoy implies. Walk confidently in the direction of your dreams, Thoreau says. Forget yourself by moving forward into the drift of everyday life.

"What is the hope that there is?" Buechner posits. Look for it, he implies. Walk towards that hope; walk in the hope.... with faith to "live this day out as if it were the first day of my life.Take any day and be alive in it." He suggests that It is the first day because it has never been before, and the last day because it will never be again.

We meet the needs of the day by following our feet.

"Where your feet take you today is who you are," Buechner exhorts. "Guide thou my feet."

This is the holiness of every day life. The sanctity. Every day is all there is.

Take little steps. One at a time.