By: Rev. Meg Allred Finnerud
For those who have participated in 12-step recovery programs or those who have family involved in them, this opening phrase to a prayer will be very familiar. The so-called Serenity Prayer can show up at virtually any point in a gathering of “12-steppers” and very often is used to conclude such a meeting. Meeting participants often join together to recite it while holding hands. (Imagine such closeness!) And this tradition of reciting the prayer not only holds true in this country. In fact, 12-step groups all over the world have embraced this simple prayer of 20th-century, Reformed Christian theologian, Rheinhold Niebuhr, regardless of their own faith tradition or complete lack of religious faith. Just as religion and religious people have been less and less respected in western cultures and especially in the US, this simple prayer continues to be embraced and provide comfort.
But what’s the prayer really about? How does serenity actually come about? The next two words really get to the “how” of serenity. “To accept,” follows that opening phrase. The prayer doesn’t talk about something miraculous happening or about getting some particular blessing. The prayer asks God to assist in realizing one’s limitations: “to accept the things I/we cannot change.” That sounds pretty simple and straightforward. But for those of us who have lived in a competitive culture, acceptance surely isn’t our usual “go-to.” We’re about instigating change. We Greenwich people like to be adaptive and innovative and resilient. We like to solve problems not sit back and wait on God. Acceptance to circumstances as they are or surrender to some far away God surely doesn’t seem like the best means of comfort or peace for us. Isn’t it counterintuitive to say that by doing nothing one can accomplish something?
How can that possibly work?
But the prayer continues and asks God to help us tell the difference between things beyond our control and things within our control as human beings. And the prayer asks God to give courage to make change whenever possible. And then, finally, the prayer asks God for wisdom. The wisdom will give the ability to tell the difference between what can be changed and what cannot. Serenity and peace come from this wisdom. From this place of wisdom, we can know when to act and when to accept. The prayer starts and ends with acceptance.
Surely after this past year we’ve all had encounters with acceptance. The pandemic has surely insisted on lots of acceptance of things beyond our control even if we have been fortunate to be spared of illness. Whatever life we had one year ago surely isn’t the life we have now. In the past year, we have certainly engaged in lots of ways of coping and staying safe. Some days we’ve probably almost gotten used to it. But even after all of this time, do we feel as if the thing to do would be to practice acceptance? After all, we know things are changing again but we don’t know exactly how. And we surely don’t know exactly how things will ultimately be. There’s more time to wait and wonder even after so many months of vigilance. All of this means there’s still more to accept. How often have we thought that the best we could do would be to pray for acceptance and courage and wisdom? Not so much, I suspect.
Reinhold Niebuhr probably isn’t a name you’ve ever heard. He began his life in ministry as a pastor in a small church in Michigan. There was nothing special about his first placement. His job was visiting people in his community and being with them in their everyday lives. He was just trying to keep a small congregation afloat. And even though he eventually became a professor of theology in New York, his prayer surely has more fame than he ever imagined he might have in ministry. And Niebuhr’s prayer wasn’t intended for any particular situation or condition. He wasn’t thinking about addiction. He just wanted to help. That’s why he wrote the Serenity Prayer. It seems to me—no matter what our experience over the past year—the thing we surely need most would be serenity as we face an unknown future. And even though we cannot yet gather, let’s virtually join hands. Let’s imagine there’s a divine presence that is listening. Let us simply pray using Niebuhr’s words. “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”
