This month (May 2026) my third essay for the Buechner Review was published, “The Dawn Chorus: Hearing God’s Call.” It is a reflection on my own deliberations (and prayers) before answering the call to become Wittenberg University’s 16th President, one year ago. Frederick Buechner’s autobiographical spiritual reflections serve as a framework as well as a model for my own. I am sure readers of his work will recognize the themes. The opening paragraphs are below, then head over to the BR site for the entire essay. – Cb
“The Dawn Chorus: Hearing God’s Call”
I hear the dawn chorus outside my study window and consider that it was one year ago on this day that the Wittenberg University Board of Directors invited me to be their 16th President. I look at the fireplace and the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves built over a-hundred-and-fifty years ago, now filled with my books and tchotchkes, and I reflect on how I came to take on the challenge of leading one of the most endangered species in North America, a liberal arts college.
‘All theology, like all fiction,’ Fredrick Buechner often noted, ‘is at its heart autobiography.’ After reiterating this in the introduction to his first of four volumes of autobiography, Buechner goes on in The Sacred Journey (1982) to reflect on his past in order to hear what God is saying in and through his life. ‘What quickens my pulse now,’ he writes in the introduction, ‘is the stretch ahead rather than the one behind, and it is mainly for some clue to where I am going that I search through where I have been, for some hint as to who I am becoming or failing to become.’[1] I am not writing (or at least I don’t think I am) either theology or fiction, but perhaps Buechner’s insight gives me license to be somewhat autobiographical in this essay, to reflect back upon this past year of my life, which was spent so much in reflecting not only upon what has led me to this point in my life, but looking back upon nearly two centuries of the institution I now lead. All in hopes of receiving some hint as to who we are becoming.
One thought on “Wittenberg, Buechner, and Discernment”