Who Were You Fighting Today?
Day 33
Buechner begins a new chapter ‘The Presence of Peace’ by suggesting a way of praying.
“It seems to me that one could do worse as a form for prayer at night, when you turn out the light and wait for sleep to wash over you like a tide, to think back over the news of your day, that particular day that's coming to an end. To remember not just the wars fought on a national scale, but also the wars that we're all of us engaged in -aggressive wars to gain control, to get the upper hand, to have the last word, to get our way, fought not with weapons or even letters, but with silences and tones of voice and all the ways we know of fighting with each other.
“We're often at war with the people we love the best. We often engage in wars with no particular goal in sight, but rather for the sort of dark pleasure of fighting a war between husbands and wives, between parents and children, between friends In these aggressive wars and defensive wars we all, I think to some degree, fight to survive. We camouflage ourselves very often in ways that don't suggest we are indeed really warring at all. But at the end of the day, as you look back over your wars, ask yourself, How did your wars go today? Who were you fighting today? How did they work out? Did you deliver the knockout blow? Was it worth it? Were you knocked out? What does winning a war with somebody mean? What does losing a war with somebody mean?”
Frederick Buechner, The Remarkable Ordinary: How to Stop, Look, and Listen to Life, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, pp109-110.
To help you reflect…
Who or what are you fighting? How is the “war” with them going?
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