I have mentioned Frederick Buechner before - for instance, on Sunday, September 14, 2025, citing to his book, Listening To Your Life. I have also previously mentioned Buechner's book, A Room Called Remember, on October 15, 2023. On that occasion, though, I didn't provide you with a picture of the book. Now, you've got one!
I picked up A Room Called Remember at one of the Little Free Libraries that abound in my hometown of Santa Cruz, California. That's the book that got me started on Buechner. Buechner identifies A Room Called Remember as "a grab bag, a handful of sermons preached at places like Harvard, the Pacific School of Religion, the Congregational Church of Rupert, Vermont, and one that has never been preached anywhere at all ("A Room Called Remember")..."
In that never-preached sermon, which is the first chapter in the book, Buechner reports on a dream he once had, one of the rare ones, he says, that "wake you up with what I can only call its truth." The mystery of dreams like that, Buechner says, are their power to let you "glimpse a truth truer than any you knew that you knew..."
The "truth" that Buechner reports on, in A Room Called Remember, is the truth that no matter how fallible and failing we are, we can always remember and recapture those times and moments in the past when we somehow did receive guidance and support that was beyond our own competence and capacity. The "Room Called Remember" can always be reentered, and we will, as we do remember those times when we did not fail to live up to our hopes and expectations, be reconnected with the power that assisted us then, and that sustains us in all things.
I have had that kind of experience, myself. Buechner is asserting that we all have, and that we can all reenter that "Room Called Remember."
In times like those in which we are now living, when both despair and desperation so often seem to surround us, and to overhwhelm us, let us not forget that we can find access to the power that has sustained us and emboldened us before - that can and will sustain and embolden us, always. There is a place to go, at the very time when we need to fortify ourselves, again, with a power that the Bible says can be called out as the "peace of God, which surpasses all understanding." It's a "Room Called Remember." So, let's not forget!
I wrote a note in the copy of A Room Called Remember that I found in one of those Little Free Libraries. My handwritten note said, simply, "A wonderful book!"
If you can stand some "religion," I am recommending that book to you.
There's no better place to get (re)acquainted with faith than Buechner, and you might even find your way into religion that way, though I don't think it's a necessary destination. I read him when I'm lost, then discover I'm not.
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