That is
Frederick Buechner, pictured above. I have mentioned him before - for instance in
a blog posting from 2023 that reported on one of his books,
A Room Called Remember. I really loved that book, which I obtained from a "
Little Free Library," found as I was walking around the city. Those who live in my hometown of Santa Cruz, California, are fortunate. There are a lot of those Little Free Libraries in Santa Cruz, and they seem to be located almost everywhere.
To prove that point, let me report that I also found another one of Beuchner's books in a Little Free Library - in this case a
different Little Free Library. The name of the second Beuchner book I found is
Listening To Your Life, and let me recommend it! The book presents itself as "Daily Meditations," with one entry per day, the entries beginning on January 1st, and then ending on the 31st of December. Impatient reader that I am, I just picked up the book and read it straight on through. Let me recommend that book, again, and suggest that you read it any way you want to!
As an example of what you'll find, here is Beuchner on boredom (that's an entry marked for May 31st):
ACEDIA, BOREDOM, is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. It deserves the honor.
You can be bored by virtually anything if you put your mind to it, or choose not to. You can yawn your way through Don Giovanni or a trip to the Grand Canyon or an afternoon with your dearest friend or a sunset. There are doubtless those who nodded off at the coronation of Napoleon or the trial of Joan of Arc or when Shakespeare appeared at the Globe in Hamlet or Lincoln delivered himself of a few remarks at Gettysburg. The odds are that the Sermon on the Mount had more than a few of the congregation twitchy and glassy-eyed.
To be bored is to turn down cold whatever life happens to be offering you at the moment. It is to cast a jaundiced eye at life in general including most of all your own life. You feel nothing is worth getting excited about because you are yourself not worth getting excited about.
To be bored is a way of making the least of things you often have a sneaking suspicion you need the most.
To be bored to death is a form of suicide.
My blog is mainly a commentary on "politics." The title of the blog, "
We Live In A Political World," reveals this preoccupation. I strongly urge you not to think of politics as "boring," yet I think many of us might be doing that, and quite probably as a kind of self-defense measure. In other words, to go just a step beyond what Beuchner says, we might try to avoid "politics," by finding it "boring," as a way to insulate ourselves from a responsibility that we may feel inadequate to discharge. This is a more specific version of Beuchner's observation that "You feel nothing is worth getting excited about because you are yourself not worth getting excited about."
Well, we ARE worth getting excited about, where politics is concerned. At least according to the system we have set up, and with which we have been living with for almost 250 years, we are "self-governing," the "rulers," not the ruled. If we think of ourselves as "bored" by politics, that may well be a defense mechanism. Do we really want to be responsible and accountable for the business of government?
Well, I think we had better be! I want to urge you to examine your own involvement in politics. If you are not deeply and personally engaged in "politics," which is the beginning point for self-government, you are letting someone else rule over you.
Anyone too "bored" to get involved in politics is actually committing a kind of political "suicide."
Think about it!
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