It is this; it's littleness and it's lack of presumption, that makes it so grand. We gain our theology in great swigs: from our parents, from our preachers, and from the great deeds of people we sanctify (in one regard or another.) But that isn't faith. Although we may be inspired by a Mother Teresa or an Saint Augustine, that isn't the core of grace.
Nor is the heart of faith in the most saleable aspect of religion; the great moment of conversion. The Slacktivist (slacktivist.typepad.com) describes these moments far better than I ever could, but they still aren't the heart of what faith means. As a matter of fact, the moment of conversion, whether my personal favorite, Anne Lamott's ("I hung my head and said, "Fuck it: I quit." I took a long deep breath and said out loud, "All right. You can come in.") or perhaps more simple, Pascal's ("Fire. Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.") all have one thing in common. They are the moment (perhaps the only moment) of complete and total realization of the existance of God. The one moment, blinding in it's glory and it's simplicity, where we see beyond the curtain.
But that's a topic for later.
The conversion moment, and for the fortunate, one or two more moments in a lifetime, are moments of complete certainty. Faith is the rest of life. Faith is the great sustainer.
And that is what Buechner gives us. A portrait of one man's faith. Not the faith of the great men and women on the front lines (although the diary of Mother Teresa shows that even their faith is not unshakeable) but of one small man who questions everything in his world, including his God.
The reason this is such a magnificent book is that faith does not express itself in the great and glorious. It is in the small graces of everyday life. Children, loved ones.
But perhaps it is something quintessentially American, or merely the human, but not many of us are capable of this. In a bit of a paradox, it can be easier to take a stand as a martyr or great man of faith than it can be to simply live day to day, loving and being, giving thanks for what we have. Not the man fighting for the homeless, but the poor schlub dolling out the soup.
Or as Buechner puts it:
"My interlocutor is a student who under various names and in various transparent disguises has attended all the religion classes I have ever taught and listened to all my sermons and read every word I've ever written, published and unpublished, including diaries and letters. He is on the thin side, dark, brighter than I am and knows it. He is without either guile or mercy. ...The interlocutor speaks. He is sitting at the opposite end of the Harkness table where I teach, as if to raise the question which is the head of this table and which is the foot. He tips back his chair. "You mean you think you should be down there in the thick of it, right? Salving your conscience in one of the more plausible ghettos? Slogging it out beside Spock and Coffin. Marching on the Pentagon. Delivering turkeys at Christmastime. The trouble is you don't have the face for it, sir. You don't have either the face for it or the guts for it. If you ever left this room and entered the real war, you know what you'd end up doing, don't you?"
I know, of course, but I shake my head. I would rather have him be the one to say it.
"You'd end up rolling bandages," he says.
"Maybe I should be rolling bandages," I say."
That is the Id of faith. The Alpha and the Omega of faith.
You can fight the big fights, and get all the glory here. But the people who receive grace, the people of God, are those who have the faith to keep slugging it out, without the accolades of the world, and in the face of a distant a seemingly unloving God. Because faith doesn't need big shiny medals, or even a little voice in the back of your mind patting you on the back. Faith simply is.
And faith rolls the damn bandages.
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