The Burial of Francis Berger’s Why

Francis Berger, the international writer, philosopher, and blogger who lives in Hungary is a friend of mine.

I have never met the man, never spoken with him on the phone, and he has never (yet) bailed me out of jail. But he is my friend, and I say this because he fulfills the criteria for that term, and because I have considerable respect and even affection for this distant man. I have no idea whether Francis considers me a friend or not, and even if he showed up at my farm and told me that he does not consider me his friend, it wouldn’t change a blankety-blank thing. That’s the thing about friendship. It can be one-sided, and it can exist outside the parameters that men erect.

Francis Berger is a friend of mine.

And he’s written an astonishing post over at his blog, a post in which he holds his own everyday actions up against the penetrating light of eternal worth. More importantly, he stares hard at the why of what he does with his words, with his life, with his intentions, with his gifts. He makes clear that he’s “anything but a wild-eyed mystic.” He might not be wild-eyed, but I believe Francis is a mystic, at least in the sense that a good friend of mine once defined the term: one who seeks a direct experience with God and is prepared to accept the consequences of that experience.

Me, I probably qualify as a mystic in that particular sense, and have been told that I am certainly somewhat eccentric, and possibly even a crank. But I’m rational enough to recognize truth and beauty and hard work. Back when I first read Francis’s novel (which he gave me, a complete stranger at the time, as a gift), I said that The City of Earthly Desire was the sort of book that costs a man to write. I stand by that assessment.

So read Francis Berger. The time spent doing so is always a good investment.

~ S.K. Orr