Frederick Buechner

A novelist and Presybeterian minister who lives in Vermont, Buechner should be on most anybody's list. And continuing the theme of wailing on a bad country song, here is what he says (written a generation ago with non-inclusive language):

But notice this: that love is not really one of man's powers. Man cannot achieve love, generate love, wield love as he does his powers of destruction and creation. When I love someone, it is not something I have achieved, but something that is happening through me, something that is happening to me as well as him.... wherever love enters the world, God enters.