Frederick Buechner turns 92 on Wednesday (long may he drive the darkness back), but this is a word best heard gearing up for a Sunday.

“Life is extraordinary, and the extraordinariness of it is what Jesus calls the Kingdom of God. The extraordinariness of it is that in the Kingdom of God we all belong to each other the way families do. We are all of us brothers and sisters in it. We are all of us mothers and fathers and children of each other in it because that is that we are being called together as the Church to be. That is what being the Church means. We are called by God to love each other the way Jesus says that God has loved us.

…

Loving each other doesn’t mean loving each other in some sentimental, unrealistic, greeting-card kind of way but the way families love each other even though they may fight tooth and nail and get fed to the teeth with each other and drive each other crazy yet all the time know deep down in their hearts that they belong to each other and need each other and can’t imagine what life would be without each other — even the ones they often wish had never been born.”

— Frederick Buechner

from “The Church” in The Clown in the Belfry (pp. 149-159). San Francisco: Harper, 154.