serenity prayer

Wikipedia as usual is my starting point. I'm going to reformulate Reinhold Niebuhr's prayer so that it works better for me.

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can;and wisdom to know the difference.

I took out "God", because I'm an agnostic Buddhist. Now you can add your higher power in front of that statement if that works for you. For me my higher power is the Dharma, wait, actually the three jewels; The Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. They don't so much grant me those things, but they are my higher power. An important component of the higher power isn't any metaphysic or dogma, it's just plain conditionality, cause and effect in the world.

Maybe I would rewrite it

May I be in touch with the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can;and wisdom to know the difference.

And it goes on:

Living one day at a time,

Enjoying one moment at a time,

Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,

Taking, as Jesus did,

This sinful world as it is,

Not as I would have it,

Trusting that You will make all things right,

If I surrender to Your will,

So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,

And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen

As awesome as Jesus is, I would take that out for me. I don't accept that I was necessarily born in sin. I like the taking one day at a time, and enjoying one moment at a time. I like the idea of being reasonably happy. That's a good pairing of words you don't always hear. It kind of puts a cap on our rampant materialism. I'm not so sure about the "next world", and think about the denial of death.

So I could write it for me this way:

Enjoying one moment at a time,

Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,

Seeking strength by surrender to my higher power

So that I may be reasonably happy in this life.

Or even better for me:

Enjoying one moment at a time,

Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,

eyes wide open to how things really are

So that I may be reasonably happy in this life.

What I like about the serenity prayer is that it is a kind of way of accepting and yet still fighting our place in the world.

(I think Cheryl Strayed captures it well in this quote.)