The Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change.
The courage to change the things that I can.
And the wisdom to know the difference.

Serenity:   The state of being calm, peaceful, and untroubled.
Accept:      Receive as adequate, valid, or suitable; to receive (something offered) willingly.
Courage:   The ability to do something that frightens one.
Wisdom:    The quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment.

I'm always a little surprised at the implications of the word "accept."  To me it implies that I'm being forced to take something unpleasant against my will, but it really means that I'm receiving willingly, that I'm seeing that what I'm getting is the right thing.  I'm drawn to the constructs of accepting punishment or accepting a beating or accepting that I'm not going to get what I want which is obviously unfair.

I also like that wisdom is a combination of book smarts, life experience, and the ability to combine the two so that I make good decisions.

I think the tricky part of The Serenity Prayer surfaces in the last segment.  I have the tendency to batter the holy shit out of anything I see as an obstacle and only when I've done everything in my power to get my way do I "accept" my fate, frustrated and angry.

Not the idea.  Not a happy application of "serenity" into my life.  It is The Serenity Prayer, after all.  It isn't The Spend All Day Pissed Off Because I Didn't Get My Way Prayer.

When I spend some time pondering AA I believe that Bill and Bob and the first few hundred members weren't recreating the wheel.  Most of the stuff in our literature - especially the spiritual stuff - has been around for a long time and can be found in all kinds of spiritual and theological texts.  They didn't discover inventories and sharing yourself with others or the power of a higher . . . . well, power.  They were more along the lines of social architects - combining spirituality, medicine, psychology, sociology, and various theories of addiction treatment into a form that made sense to alcoholics and was therefore effective.

Personally, I believe that the words in our texts are God-inspired.  Look 'em up - you'll be amazed at how the nuances in the definitions really make the literature sparkle.