One of My Gurus

Nancy Bauer, OSB

Frederick Buechner allows mystery to exist. So, it would seem that God can exist whether or not we humans prove that existence. In fact, he says: “It is as impossible to prove or disprove that God exists … as it is to prove or disprove that Goodness exists beyond the various and conflicting ideas people have dreamed up about what is good.” Or “It is as impossible for man (sic) to demonstrate the existence of God as it would be for even Sherlock Holmes to demonstrate the existence of Arthur Conan Doyle.”

Then Buechner sits back and laughs at himself and at all who try to penetrate the mystery of God’s existence. He writes: “All-wise. All-powerful. All-loving. All-knowing. We bore you to death with our chatter. You cannot be expressed but only experienced … In the last analysis, we cannot pontificate but only point out.  A Christian is one who points at You and says: `I can’t prove a thing, but there’s something about your eyes and your voice. There’s something about the way you carry your head, your hands, the way you carry your cross — the way you carry me.'”

How I wish I had written those words.  It’s exactly what I would have said after experiencing a 93-year-old saint yesterday!  She spoke about nothing but Jesus except when she told me she had a glass of wine for me. That glass of wine was what kept her – and me – and even Jesus grounded. I kept listening as she told me Jesus had asked her to dance with him, that he had done “silly, little, lovely things like that often.”  She, in turn, wrote journal after journal of prayers in which total surrender – on her part– was what kept popping out at me as I avidly read her responses. As the sacrament of presence began to wipe away anything in me of jealously, disbelief or doubt, I simply wanted to surrender, too!

 You're right, dear guru.  God is in the way my 93 year-old-friend is being carried!

Renee Domeier, OSB