Above the Horizon: Buechner

Another moment I have always remembered was walking out on deck one night after supper and finding a young red-haired officer peering into the dark through binoculars. He told me he was scanning the horizon for signs of other ships, and the way to do that, he explained, was to look not at the horizon but just above it. He said you could see better that way than by looking straight on, and I have found it to be an invaluable truth in many ways. Listen not just to the words being spoken but to the silences between the words, and watch not just the drama unfolding but the faces of all around you watching it unfold. Years later when preaching a sermon about Noah, it was less the great flood that I tried to describe than the calloused palm of Noah’s hand as he reached out to take the returning dove, less the resurrection itself than the moment, a day or so afterward, when Jesus stood on the beach cooking fish on a charcoal fire and called out to the disciples in their boat, “Come and have breakfast.”

- Frederick Buechner via the internetmonk.com