No one escapes. From the beginning, men and women “are born to trouble as sparks fly upward.” These words from Job speak to us from the form of an ancient poem, a universal cry against the troubles and the fires and the travails of being human. That poet wrote out of that anguish. The writer Red Smith is quoted saying, “Writing is easy, all you have to do is sit down at the typewriter, cut open a vein, and bleed.” To what end, we may ask? The sound of their own cry to the heavens? For surely the words are sent heavenward, just as sparks rise from the fires here on this earth into the air above. Do the words cry out for justice and help from God? Do they cry out because we need to share our miseries with other humans? All of the above, I imagine.

There is something else, however, that comes from these writings and travails. We the listeners are lifted up like the sparks, but in life-affirming ways. We who hear the words are willing to journey with the writer, maybe into the darkest of darkness, and then, mysteriously, we are loosened from some of the burdens of our own journeys. They are wonderful, these written words, because these writers imagine that God the Divine is calling from just such depths as these, that deep calls unto deep. The writer of Job imagined it so. He cries ( or maybe he whispers) that God’s calling to us, these words which include the recounting of God's mighty acts, “are too wonderful for me.”

The lives and the writings of three men who write out of just such depths, just such longings, are intertwined. H. Louis Patrick, Frederick Buechner, and Tony Abbott became friends; these three men became influencers; these three men wrote of a journey towards God, no matter the depth of their darkness.

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Janet Vass Sarjeant has lived with her husband Dale Sarjeant in Charlotte, North Carolina, for 47 years. An English Professor at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte for 25 years, she now spends her time writing and enjoying the families of her sons Daniel and Christopher. She has been a member of Trinity Presbyterian Church for all these 47 years. The saints there and along the way have inspired this book.