A few excerpts from Buechner’s Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation

“To become, through loving and needing them, as involved in the lives of others as I was involved in the lives of my children is in the long run to risk being both crippled and crippling. Because we love our children as helplessly as we do, they have the power to destroy us.”

“But unlike Buddhism, Christianity nevertheless affirms this love that suffers and, what is more, affirms it for the reason that to love others to the point of suffering with them and for them in their own suffering is the only way ultimately to heal them, redeem them, if they are to be redeemed at all.”

“I do not know what adventures I will have along the way or what new sights may await me around the next bend, and not knowing is fine with me. There are times when I suspect the world may come to an end before most of us are ready to–which would have the advantage at least of our not having to leave, one by one, while the party is still going strong–but most of the time I believe that the world will manage somehow to survive us, and that has its advantages too.”