Wars.......................

      So wars: what does it mean to win, what does it mean to lose?  And the wars, of course, against yourself.  I certainly am always at war one way or another with myself, and some of them are wars I must fight to try to slay the demons, to kill the dragon, to lay the ghost to rest.  But there are other wars you fight with yourself to be more, to do more that you have it in you really to do or to be.  I think of that wonderful line from one of the poems of my  beloved Gerard Manley Hopkins whare he says, "My own heart let me more have pity on."  My own heart let me more have pity on.  That's a lovely phrase.  Be merciful to yourself, stop fighting yourself quite so much.  Maybe what you are asking of yourself, what you're driving yourself to do or to be, what you put a gun to your own back to make yourself do, is something at this point you needn't have to think about doing.  So, think back at the end of the day to the wars you're involved in.  How are they going?

Frederick Buechner,  The Remarkable Ordinary