Frederick Buechner Interview.

DOOR: Being an evangelist, you must have heard of the four spiritual laws?

BUECHNER: I can't say that I have.

DOOR: And you call yourself an evangelist? Bill Bright would not be happy.

BUECHNER: Who is Bill Bright?

DOOR: Seriously? You have never heard of the founder and president of Campus Crusade, an evangelical organization committed to reaching the world by 1984? An organization in the process of raising one billion dollars to reach the world for Christ?

BUECHNER: He hasn't reached me.

DOOR: Your religious books don't seem very religious, which is a compliment, by the way.

BUECHNER: Well, I've never learned to talk about the Christian faith in the accustomed way. I've talked about it the only way I can. In some ways it has created a dilemma for me as a writer, because my religious books are too colloquial and too secular for church people, yet too churchy for secular people.

DOOR: So are you primarily a writer who happens to be a minister, or a minister who happens to be a writer?

BUECHNER: People sometimes say to me, "Why did you get out of the ministry?" I find that deeply upsetting, because I don't, in any sense, think of myself as giving up the ministry. But I do think of writing as a ministry.

An excerpt from The Door interview with Frederick Buechner, by Mike Yaconelli. Read the complete interview here.

Of Beachside Bars in Asia & the Communal Enjoyment of God.

If you’re like me and have traveled very much at all, you’ve likely stumbled upon instances in time, generally between the stubborn language barrier and the annoyance of pushy tuk tuk drivers, when all that is right in the world coalesces for just a moment, and you’re left breathless, wide-eyed, dying to know if anyone else is noticing the magic. In these moments you experience - you taste - something of perfection.

Of course, while traveling you also experience moments of aching loneliness, if you’re anything like me, because those who wander off the beaten path in life must be prepared to go it alone, perhaps for only a season, we can hope, but alone nonetheless. In these times, more than anything, more than a million dollars, all you want is to all of a sudden find yourself in the company of those you love, who also remarkably love you.

Maybe it isn’t surprising that on journeys travelers experience both magic and loneliness, but it can be perplexing to discover that these moments are often one and the same. But one and the same they are, because when you happen upon something inherently and unequivocally good, something in you demands that it be shared with those you love.

Last year in October, I went to the beach in Cambodia by myself for the weekend. By night I slept in a simple bungalow with a bed and a bare light bulb, and by day I sat in the open-air beachside bar, reading, writing, staring out at the Gulf of Thailand, sipping on a banana and coconut milkshake. As Day said hello to Dusk, who then ushered Evening into our midst, the staff at the bar set candles out on the tables and my milkshake was replaced with white wine. I sat there in the beachside bar with the seabreeze swirling lightly around, sipping on my Chardonnay - surrounded by strangers from Europe and Australia I would never talk to, who would also never talk to me, along with the Asian waiters and waitresses who had lived all their days in this lazy beach town. In this moment, all was well; all was right. And yet there was the emptiness. It was the same emptiness I had felt in other magical places in other parts of the world. If only, I kept thinking, if only. This is too good. It shouldn’t be kept to myself.

But of course you don’t need to travel to know what I mean. God in his grace is always slipping bits of goodness into the tedium of our days and the darkness of our nights, and these graces are ours for the taking, for the enjoying, if we’ll only reach out and accept them, not as rights, but as undeserved gifts. And it’s not entirely uncommon, even among otherwise self-seeking creatures like you and I, to respond to the receiving of an undeserved gift not by hoarding or devouring but in some unexplainable way by turning around and extending to others an undeserved gift of their own, and to do so with next to no rational thought and yet with all the firm resolve in the world.

I don’t think it’s an accident that God has placed us in real places to live our lives among real people, just as I don’t think it’s an accident he slipped a bit of goodness into my life on the beach that night in Sihanoukville. And I certainly don’t think it’s an accident that he has slipped bits and pieces of goodness into your life here and there, amidst the tedium and chaos and darkness and distraction and unknowns of it all, and I’m guessing that these bits of goodness in your life have in all likelihood at least occasionally been accompanied by aches of loneliness, reminders that gifts are not to be enjoyed alone.

May we heed the reminders, friends. And as we delve deeper and deeper into the mutual enjoyment of these God-given bits of goodness, may we not forget those for whom these doses of goodness might at least appear to be fewer and farther between, for whom the communal enjoyment of God’s goodness is not yet a reality.