Blind Men

"Ailred, I know hours well enough," I said. "Stick a twig into the soil and watch the shadow turn. Or take old Wear out there. Let him rise another inch or two, and either we'll grow gills or shipwreck sure. That's hours for you. It's inch by inch and hour by hour to death. It's hours gone and hours still to go. No puzzle there. A child can count it out. But what is time itself, dear friend? What is the sea where hours past hours still to pass, but all of them instead was? Is there no time yet to come that's not here now?"

... "You speak of time, Godric," Ailred said. His cough for once was gone. "Time is a storm. Times past and times to come, they heave and flow and leap their hands like Wear. Hours are clouds that change their shapes before your eyes. A dragon fades into a maiden's scarf. A monkey's grin becomes an angry fist. But beyond time's storm and clouds there's timelessness. Godric, the Lord of Heaven changes not, and even when our view's most dark, he's there above us fair and golden as the sun." And so it is.

"God's never gone, my gentle, ailing Ailred said. "It's only men go blind."

- Godric, Frederick Buechner