July 17, 2005

Reading

Peace in a Time of War, by Marge Piercy

A puddle of amber light

like sun spread on a table,

food flirting savor into the nose

faces of friends, a vase

of daffodils and Dutch iris.

This is a evening of honey

on the tongue, cinnamon

scented, red wine sweet

and dry, voices rising

like a flock of swallows

turning together in evening

air. Darkness walls off

the room from what lies

outside, the fire and dust

and blood of war, bodies

stacked like firewood

burst like overripe melons.

Ceremony is a moat we have

crossed into a moment's

harmony, as if the world paused--

but it doesn't. What we must do

waits like coats tossed

on the bed, for us to rise

from this warm table

put on again and go out.

Reading

The Serenity Prayer, by Reinhold Neibuhr

God, give us grace

to accept with serenity

the things that cannot be changed,

courage to change the things

that should be changed,

and the wisdom to distinguish

the one from the other.

Sermon

"God, Give us Grace"

Bill Neely

God, give us grace

to accept with serenity

the things that cannot be changed,

courage to change the things

that should be changed,

and the wisdom to distinguish

the one from the other.

If you are ever in the market to buy something with the Serenity Prayer embroidered or etched onto it, have no fear, eBay is here. The online auction web site has a vast host of items up for bid with those succinct, famous prayerful lines somehow crammed onto them. A brief, very brief exploration of the 229 items up for bid recently included sun catchers and pillow panels galore, innumerable small porcelain figurines-often of little girls praying the prayer, money clips, rubber stamps, audio cd's, clipboards, a serenity prayer counter top water fountain, a musical book, stamped Belgian linen, a teddy bear at pray, bookmarks, a wall plaque with a thermometer, a chocolate serenity prayer mug, a bronze coin, a collector's plate, a Tibetan wooden Mala Bead serenity prayer bracelet, a serenity prayer card claimed to be formerly owned by the mobster that the Godfather book and movie were based on, a small statue of a Cherokee woman praying the serenity prayer, and the only one that I was really tempted to bid on, and I don't even smoke, a serenity prayer zippo lighter. I have this image of lighting our chalice with a serenity prayer zippo lighter, an act that is either wonderfully symbolic or a quite sacrilegious, and I'm not sure which one.

The prayer's central role in the work of many Alcoholics Anonymous groups has heightened it's visibility so that it is now common in our culture's lingo, at least as common as any modern prayer is, particularly, a prayer useful in interfaith settings. Certainly, followers of one faith are, perhaps, more familiar with the historical and doctrinal prayers of their faith, but the Serenity Prayer has become a liturgical piece in the civil religion of American life. Because its strongest association is with a deservedly well-respected support group, it's religious phrases take on a useful ambiguity, allowing the prayer to be an entry point into deeper relationships for people of different, or of no particular, faiths. It's kind of a safe prayer, one that speaks to the core of our unclear roles in a very tenuous world with an open simplicity that many find inviting.

The first time I said that prayer was at a time in my life when I was not very interested in prayer. For a couple months when I was in college, I participated in daily protests of Pat Robertson and the Christian Broadcasting Network, commonly known as CBN. The world headquarters of CBN are about fifteen minutes from where I used to live, and a Christian gay rights activist named Mel White had come to town to address some of the extremely homophobic slurs that dripped from the sanctimonious lips of Robertson and his fellow fear-mongers. Mel White and the Christian activist organization he started, SoulForce, believed that Robertson's words directly contributed to cultures of violence against bisexual, gay, lesbian, and transgendered persons, violence by others and violence by self.

So Mel, who actually used to be the ghostwriter of some of Pat Robertson's works, came to town to meet with Pat to discuss his grievances, following to the letter what the Christian scriptures direct someone with grievances against someone else to do. Pat refused to meet Mel, Mel refused to leave the building, so Mel was arrested and sat in jail on a hunger strike until Pat, at the urging of the local sheriff, met with him.

The whole time Mel was in jail on his hunger strike, a few dozen of us would meet every day at noon to witness in support of him. Most people stood on the sidewalk outside of CBN and held a silent vigil, but about a dozen would walk slowly onto the compound and over to the administrative building where Pat's office was. We would have a letter from Mel that we would attempt to deliver to Pat. The building was always locked, so we would leave the letter at the door and walk back to the silent vigil.

I did this several times, and even though we knew the door would always be locked and no one would ever greet us, even though we knew the only people we would see would be employees of CBN bustling between buildings and very intentionally ignoring us, even though we knew that the security employees who mirrored our steps would never accept the letter or do anything but monitor us, it was still always disheartening to walk up to the door and see the big, red, lock that they put through the handles to keep us out. Even though there was no surprise, there was still something saddening about that, something angering, too, but moreover saddening, no matter how often it happened.

And usually we would just turn around and walk back out to the folks participating in the silent vigil. But one day, the leader did something different. She asked us to form a circle and pray. We did, and the time for silent prayer that I was expecting became a time for communal prayer. She said those first familiar words, "God, grant us the serenity ... " and by the time the prayer was over, I could not hear her words over everyone else's. This was one of very few group unison prayers that I encountered after I left the Presbyterian Church of my youth, but the initial shock wore off quickly when I realized how appropriate those words were for those moments, when I felt largely powerless, even as I witnessed for something I believed in. Sadness and anger began to melt into a feeling of calmness as I began to feel less responsible for the non-responsiveness of those we were trying to connect with and began to know, that in my place with those other activists, that while our actions were producing no visible results, they were transforming us, and others, too.

God, give us grace

to accept with serenity

the things that cannot be changed,

courage to change the things

that should be changed,

and the wisdom to distinguish

the one from the other.

The history and authorship of the prayer is the source of much discussion and disagreement. It's sometimes attributed to St. Francis of Assisi but more often it's attributed to a German by the name of F.C. Oetinger. Now this gets really complicated so bear with me, Oetinger was an 8th century theologian and the name was also the pseudonym of a mid-20th century German professor named Theodor Wilhelm. Wilhelm had been sent the Serenity Prayer in the 1940's by a friend who called it an "old little prayer," without naming specific authorship. Wilhelm then included it a book he authored under his pseudonym, which again was that of the 8th century theologian, Oetinger. The result was that when the prayer was published in Wilhelm's book, people believed it to have been written by the 8th century Pietist theologian Oetinger, not the mid-20th century professor Wilhelm, or the prayer's actual author, the 20the century preacher, pastor, professor, and activist, Reinhold Niebhur. Niebhur wrote the prayer in 1943, as World war II raged on, and to further confuse things, his first biographer transposed the numbers and said that the prayer was written in 1934, instead of 1943.

None of this really mattered to Niebuhr, who had originally written the prayer for a summer church service that he was leading. Nor was he interested in becoming rich off of the prayer, even though there were opportunities for that. He allowed it to be used, and adapted, with no great fanfare, by early creators of the Alcoholics Anonymous program and to be included in the Book of Prayers and Services for the Armed Forces. But the prayer's history is very important to his daughter, Elizabeth Sifton, whose memoir, The Serenity Prayer, reflects on the life of her father and the story of his most popular work with familial tenderness and a fiery sense of liberal political activism.

Her work explains to us that the author, her father, was the son of a German American pastor who decided to grow up and be like dad. From the time of his ordination in 1915 to the time of his death in 1971, Niebuhr was known for his passionate beliefs that the church should actively engage the injustices of society. From labor laws, to racial equality, and most influentially, to the voice of religion in the world wars during his life, Niebuhr decried that passivity and isolationist stances that many churches, Catholic and Protestant, took in the face of injustice and Hitler's promotion of anti-Semitism. Particularly as it relates to the build-up and devastation of World War II, Niebhur was sharply critical of organized religion's irrelevant rationalizations of non-involvement in situations that were threatening and killing millions. Their hesitancy, or refusal, to work to change what should be changed, which to Niebuhr meant consistent opposition, including military opposition, to Nazism and it's targeting of Jewish people, was morally bankrupt.

This context really helps highlight the complexity of this seemingly simple little prayer. At first read, it seems as though it may be a justification for inaction-a very pragmatic approach to problems so large that one person can't possibly do much about them. In the face of huge, global issues, or of deeply-rooted personal ones, we ask for serenity in the realization of the limits of our ability. The common re-write of the prayer by folks in Alcoholics Anonymous adds to this appearance of the prayer focusing on the individual accepting the finiteness of her or his influence in the world. Niebuhr wrote, "God give us grace to accept with serenity ...", while most popular versions now read, "God, grant me serenity ..." Aside from the shift from an explicit request for grace to an implicit one, the popular version's shift from "us," to "me," further heightens the sense that the prayer is all about the individual coming to terms with what is possible and what is not.

And some of that probably is what Niebuhr was getting at, but Niebuhr's prayer was a communal prayer, rooted in God's grace. In Niebuhr's theology, nothing great or small could be done without God's grace. The position of humility that the prayer proposes and many, including me, take in as a breathe of fresh air in a prideful and conflicting world, was actually the basis of Niebuhr's understanding of life to begin with. Existence, life, family, joy, all of these were signs of God's grace. For Niebuhr, and most of Christianity, grace has something to do with the undeserved showering of divine love, with the undeserved eternal care of the Almighty. We use grace, when we use it, more to describe unexpected and unwarranted moments of joy and peace, attributed to whatever source we feel called to. But the absence of grace in the common version of the prayer shifts the meaning from the petitioner praying for a sense of feeling rooted in the all-surrounding grace of God in the Niebuhrian version, to the petitioner praying for a one-time jolt of comfort in the knowledge that there are some problems so large the she or he can't solve them. The assumption of grace puts the petitioner in the constant company of God, the absence of grace puts the petitioner on outside, asking God for connection.

Which really is how we feel sometimes, particularly in moments when we might find ourselves praying the Serenity Prayer. There are times when all of us feel outside of the company of the Holy, unsure of what we are called to do, and conflicted over decisions we might make. There are times when in the panorama of choices before us, none seem desirable, or we know that the desirable ones are also the more dangerous ones, and we wrestle with the pending choice before us.

It's during moments like those when our thoughts often turn to something outside of ourselves-friends, family, or mentors who might help or a practice that helps us center our lives. Sometimes, we just remind ourselves to breathe. And sometimes, we even turn to something more transcendent, to that constantly evolving relationship with whatever animates our lives.

We seek a moment of deeper connection, a second saturated in the palpable evidence of grace, where we can understand the map before us. And somewhere between Niebuhr's constant grace and the common version's "grace when you really need it" is the scope of the life. Hopefully, in typical everyday moments when nothing horrible is happening, and certainly when something delightful is, we can be comfortable with some understanding of grace in our lives. And when something difficult comes our way, when our bodies wrench with anxiety and fear and confusion, we find ourselves praying, wishing, dreaming for reminders of something greater at the source of life.

The other major shift in the common version of the prayer is the shift from "us" to "me." Niebuhr had us all praying the prayer together, voicing in unison those shared conditions and yearnings of humanity. The common version is more individualistic, prayed more to a personal God than a corporate one. Here again, the context helps. During the build-up to World War II, Niebuhr was one of a small group of American, German, and English clergy warning of the dangers of Nazism and the destructiveness of Fascism. Isolationism was a popular American response to Hitler's increasing power, both in politics and in religious life. Church and state alike sought to separate themselves from the pending conflict and in America, that continued even up through the beginnings of the war. Niebuhr and his circle grew more and more impatient with the passive opposition or silent assent that mainstream churches offered in response to the evils of anti-Semitism in Hitler's regime. His plea in the prayer for "us" to change what should be changed can be read as a thinly-veiled urge for religious people in America to oppose the unchecked growth of Fascism-something that even after the war started, many churches were unwilling to do.

But it can be read in another way, also. Niebuhr believed that the core of evil that was working it's way through Europe was present in every human heart. He believed, as I do, that the urge to commit evil is something every human possesses and must wrestle with from time to time. He also believed that the church's tentative or non-existent response to what was happening in Germany existed because people feared the internal association that they felt with some of the evil that was happening across the ocean. Rather than turn toward these associations and work to change the feelings, they tried to ignore the entire scenario, and thus ignore the pulse of evil that beat in the hearts. Niebuhr didn't blame people for the pulse of evil, he saw that as part of being human, he knew that his heart contained these same impulses.

But he did believe people should work to change it, that they must, actually. It was not accidental that Niebuhr's phrasing was "courage to change the things that should be changed," while the more common version replaces the "should be changed" with a "can" be changed. Niebuhr saw working to transform the evil in our hearts as just as much of a moral imperative as working to stop the mass execution of Jewish people. Whether or not it could be completely changed wasn't really the question, the question was, can we find the fortitude to do what all we can do to understand and transform evil, be it inner or outer.

God, give us grace

to accept with serenity

the things that cannot be changed,

courage to change the things

that should be changed,

and the wisdom to distinguish

the one from the other.

Serenity, courage, and wisdom, sourced to us from the Mystery beyond our comprehension to guide us in moving through a world that is also often beyond our comprehension. The decades-old prayer of a preacher living in a time of conflict that today, guides innumerable people through their own times of conflict. May the prayer continue affecting the lives of petitioners worldwide, challenging seekers and questioners even in it's simplicity and brevity. May it's words never grew stale so long as we hold them in our heart and explore them in our minds. May they always bring those who seek them back to that of most meaning in our lives.

Blessed be, and Amen.