Nothing. When I woke up yesterday, I decided to do nothing. After a packed and scheduled week, I rationalized that I owed it to myself to do nothing. I almost succeeded.

To do nothing, I soon found out, I had to do something. I could not just lie in bed with my eyes shut. Keeping my eyes shut was doing something. They naturally open when I’m awake. And my ceiling is a usual boring ceiling, so to try to do nothing doesn’t work when your mind automatically tries to find patterns in a patternless ceiling.

Beside me on the bed, lay reading material I’d purchased last week at the Calvin Faith & Writing Festival in Grand Rapids, MI. I’d taken a few things to bed with me in case I wouldn’t fall asleep right away. But with all the walking and unhealthy calories of my day in airports, I had no need or desire to read anything.

But this morning, when I decided that to do nothing could be defined as doing nothing physically, I picked up a book, Jeffrey Munroe’s Reading Buechner (pronounced Beek-ner). I had talked with Munroe at the festival and told him my former pastor at Fourth Pres in Chicago had mentioned him often, and I’d thought I should learn something about this man.

I had come to the right place. Buechner was prolific in his writing (40+ books), and Munroe had written his book as an introduction to Buechner’s most important works, plus about his life. The subtitle reads: Exploring the Work of a Master Memoirist, Novelist, Theologian, and Preacher. Munroe, a noted expert on Buechner, was a charter member of the advisory board of the Buechner Institute of Faith and Culture.

You’ve surmised the rest. I’ve been reading all day. This book is not a beach read, but it’s written in an understandable, teacherly way, so that I’m beginning to see which of Buechner’s books I may want to read.

At one point, Munroe (p. 40) quotes Buechner’s core philosophy: “Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.” (Buechner, Now and Then, p. 87)

There’s much more on grace (“a gift unearned and unearnable” p. 40) and I’m eager to read it. If you’ve read my Marv Taking Charge, you’ll have seen how grace played an integral part in our lives with Marv’s terminal illness.

I see more days of doing nothing ahead! If you’re as curious as I, pick up a copy of Reading Buechner. You will be inspired by his life raised in an “almost completely secular, nonreligious environment” (p. 15) to become “one of the most important theological writers of our time.” (Michael Card, songwriter, author of Inescapable). Meanwhile, Listen to your life!