In The Sacred Journey Buechner recalls: " Virtually every year of my life until I was fourteen, I lived in a different place, had different people to take care of me, went to a different school.

Annie Dillard ( Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek ) says: " Frederick Buechner is one of our finest writers.

" Buechner then enrolled at Princeton University.

During his senior year at Princeton, Buechner received the Irene Glascock Prize for poetry, and he also began working on his first novel and one of his greatest critical successes: A Long Day ’ s Dying, published in 1950.

" The contrast between the success of his first novel and the commercial failure of the second was starkly visible, and it was on this note that Buechner left his teaching position at Lawrenceville to move to New York City and focus on his writing career.

In 1952, Buechner began lecturing at New York University, and once again received critical acclaim for his short story " The Tiger ," published in The New Yorker, which won the O. Henry Award in 1955.

While at Union, Buechner studied under such renowned theologians as Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, and James Muilenberg, who helped Buechner in his search for understanding:

Following his first year at Union, Buechner decided to take the 1955-6 school year off to continue his writing.

In the spring of 1955, shortly before he left Union for the year, Buechner met his wife Judith at a dance given by some family friends.

" During his tenure at Exeter, Buechner taught courses in both the Religion and English departments, and served as school chaplain and minister.

One of Buechner's biographers, Marjorie Casebier McCoy, describes the effect of his time at Exeter as follows: " Buechner in his sermons had been attempting to reach out to the " cultured despisers of religion.

" However, in 1968, Buechner received a letter from Charles Price, the chaplain at Harvard, inviting him to give the Noble Lectures series in the winter of 1969.

By examining the day-to-day workings of his own life, Buechner seeks to find God's hand at work, thus leading his audience by example to similar introspection.

Inaugurated in 2008 at King College, the Buechner Institute is dedicated to the work and example of Frederick Buechner, exploring the intersections and collisions of faith and culture that define our times.

The Buechner Institute sponsors convocations on most Mondays at 10: 30 a. m. in Memorial Chapel on the campus of King College that feature speakers from a variety of backgrounds who examine the ways in which faith informs art and public life and cultivate conversation about what faith has to do with books, politics, social discourse, music, visual arts, and more.

" These literary passes at contemporaneity are out of keeping with the biblical tone Mr. Buechner sustains, and with his faithful adherence to the original narrative.

* 2008 The Buechner Institute inaugurated at King College

Dr. Howard A. Buechner, M. D., professor of medicine at Tulane and then Louisiana State University, wrote two books on the spear.

* Interview w / Karl Buechner at Lambgoat. com

Buechner played a pivotal role in rescuing the Daniel Chester French sculptures from destruction due to an expansion project at the Manhattan Bridge in the 1960s.

In the U. S. military " Investigation of Alleged Mistreatment of German Guards at Dachau " conducted by Lt. Col. Joseph Whitaker, the account given by Col. Howard Buechner ( then a Colonel in the United States Army and medical officer with the 3rd Battalion of the 157th Infantry ), to Whitaker on 5 May 1945 did not contradict the Sparks account.

The Buechner Institute sponsors convocations on most Mondays at 10: 30 a. m. that feature speakers from a variety of backgrounds to examine the ways in which faith informs art and public life and cultivate conversation about what faith has to do with books, politics, social discourse, music, visual arts, and more.

His later novels, including the Book of Bebb series and Godric, received hearty praise ; in his 1980 review of Godric, Benjamin DeMott summed up a host of positive reviews, saying “ All on his own, Mr. Buechner has managed to reinvent projects of self-purification and of faith as piquant matter for contemporary fiction, producing in a single decade a quintet of books each of which is individual in concerns and knowledge, and notable for literary finish .” In 1982, author Reynolds Price greeted Buechner ’ s The Sacred Journey as “ a rich new vein for Buechner – a kind of detective autobiography ” and “ he result is a short but fascinating and, in its own terms, beautifully successful experiment .”

All songs written by Karl Buechner.

Godric is told in Saint Godric's own voice: Buechner intentionally uses style, tone, and word choice to evoke a " mediaeval " manner of speaking.

" In The Sacred Journey, Buechner tells us that we must learn to hear in our lives the sound of the holy.

His predecessors in this role were none other than Richard Niebuhr and George Buttrick, and Buechner was both flattered and daunted by the idea of joining so august a group.

After contacting most of the members of the alleged expedition and others involved, including Hitler Youth Leader Artur Axmann, Buechner became convinced the claims were true.

Of writing the series, Buechner says: " I had never known a man like Leo Bebb and was in most ways quite unlike him myself, but despite that, there was very little I had to do by way of consciously, purposefully inventing him.

Buechner has occasionally been accused of being too “ preachy ;” a 1984 review by Anna Shapiro in the New York Times notes “ But for all the colloquialism, there is something, well, preachy and a little unctuous about making yourself an exemplar of faith.

Buechner did not witness the alleged incident, however, and there was no mention of a second shooting in the official investigation report.

Buechner ’ s books have been translated into many languages for publication around the world.

He is best known for his works A Long Day ’ s Dying ( his first work, published in 1950 ); The Book of Bebb, a tetralogy based on the character Leo Bebb published in 1979 ; Godric, a first person narrative of the life of the medieval saint, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1981 ; Brendan, a second novel narrating a saint ’ s life, published in 1987 ; Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner ( 1992 ); and his autobiographical works The Sacred Journey ( 1982 ), Now and Then ( 1983 ), Telling Secrets ( 1991 ), and The Eyes of the Heart: Memoirs of the Lost and Found ( 1999 ).

Buechner ’ s work has often been praised for its ability to inspire readers to see the grace in their daily lives.

During Buechner ’ s early childhood the family moved frequently, as Buechner ’ s father searched for work.

Even George Buttrick, whose words had so inspired Buechner, observed that, " It would be a shame to lose a good novelist for a mediocre preacher.

As the first book he had written since being ordained, The Final Beast represented a new style for Buechner, one in which he combined his dual callings as minister and as author.

" Among these students was the future author John Irving, who included a quotation from Buechner in the preface of his book A Prayer for Owen Meany.

Published in the years from 1972 – 1977, it brought Buechner to a much wider audience, and gained him critical acclaim ( Lion Country, the first book in the series, was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1971 ).

" In this series, Buechner experimented for the first time with first-person narrative, and discovered that this, too, opened new doors.

The process of writing Godric once again indicated a new path for Buechner: the writing of his own autobiography.