Buechner on Memory

I could think about this quote all day and still see new nuances to it. Few can put words together like he can.

"Memory is more than a looking back to a time that is no longer; it is a looking out into another kind of time altogether where everything that ever was continues not just to be, but to grow and change with the life that is in it still. The people we loved. The people who loved us. The people who, for good or ill, taught us things. Dead and gone though they may be, as we come to understand them in new ways, it is as though they come to understand us - and through them we come to understand ourselves- in new ways too."

Fredrick Buechner, The Sacred Journey: A Memoir of Early Days, page 21-22