I've grown concerned over the years that my Christian experience might somehow be incomplete, based on the recurrence of various pastors' reverential adoration for one particular writer. Tonight I am quite pleased that I too have read Buechner. His writing is remarkably simple and straightforward. He's modest about his own talents and fame, and yet confidently able to relate himself to Flannery O'Connor. I especially appreciate how he's able to use the exact right example or two to convey his point, without having to explain it. This whole collection is brief and worth reading. The ones that influence me the most were "Light and Dark," "The Emerald City: A Commencement Address," and "The Good Book as a Good Book." Buechner lived from the Great Depression to the Gulf War, which spanned several cultural revolutions and plenty of questioning about the meaning of faith. He wrote not from a lofty pulpit but from the view of a child's sick bed and dark movie theater seats. He connected modern personalities like Flannery O'Connor and the Wizard of Oz to the real Jesus Christ. And he made the early church seem so much more real as well. ( )