'...let the preacher remember this and preach to us not just as men and women of the world but as children, too, who are often much more simple-hearted than he supposes, and much hungrier for, and ready to believe in, and already in contact with, more magic and mysterty than most of the time even we are entirely aware of ourselves. "Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of Heaven" (Matt. 18:3), Jesus says, and he is not just being sentimental as he says it. Let the preacher stretch our imagination and train our credulity and make our jaws drop because the sad joke of it is that if he does not, then of all people he is almost the only one left who does not. Scientists speak of intelligent life among the stars, of how at the speed of light there is no time, of consciousness as more than just as epiphenomenon of the physical brain. Doctors speak seriously about life after death, and not just the mystic anymore but the housewife, the stockbroker, the high-school senior speak about an inner world where reality becomes transparent to a reality deeper still. The joke of it is that often it is the preacher who is the one who holds back, prudent, cautious, hopelessly mature and wise to the last when no less than Saint Paul tells him to be a fool for Christ's sake, no less than Christ tells him to be a child for his own and the kingdom's sake.'
Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth, p.97.
