THE SERENITY PRAYER

Just about everyone in the Western World is familiar with the first part of the prayer written by Reinhold Niebuhr which is usually referred to as "The Serenity Prayer." I said "the first part," because there is much more to that Niehbuhr prayer/meditation than the part that is almost universally known as The Serenity Prayer":

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; 

courage to change the things I can;

and wisdom to know the difference.

That was, as I said, only the first part of the Niebuhr prayer. After that opening, it continues:

Living one day at a time; 

Enjoying one moment at a time;

Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; 

Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; 

Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will;

That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever in the next.

Amen.

Those of you who know me might suspect, rightly, that I have some problems with the theology underlying the second part of The Prayer, not to mention what seems to me to be rather tortured syntax, but that's okay; it's the first part that I want to deal with here, anyway. I don't think I have any problem with that.

The Prayer seems to presuppose that every negative situation we face falls into one of two categories: Things We Can Change, or Things We Cannot Change. I agree with that. If something I'd rather not deal with is something that I can't change, then I have to muster up (or, I'd say pray for) the grace and serenity and strength to accept it as it is. If, on the other hand, it is something that I really can change, I pray for the guidance and strength and courage to do so. While it is sometimes obvious into which category a specific situation fits, that is not always the case, so if I don't really know whether something can be changed or must be accepted, I pray for the guidance and wisdom to understand which it is.

What I must never do, however, is to expect the world and Reality to adjust to my desires and perceptions, rather than adjust my desires and perceptions to the world and Reality. I have a friend who sees the former as the very essence of insanity; I see it as the perfect example of immaturity.

If I observe a huge tapestry and concentrate my attention on only one thread in that work, that one thread may be plain, insignificant, even ugly. But as I pull back and take in the grand sweep of the tapestry, I may begin to see how that little thread fits into the whole, how it contributes to the composition, the beauty of the work. Likewise with Life; I may be overwhelmed by any specific circumstance, but if I am able to take a longer-range view, I will see that each occurrence in my life has a lesson to teach me; I can grow from every circumstance; each situation contributes to the beauty and worth of my life.

I believe that. And that's why I find the first part of The Serenity Prayer to be so meaningful and powerful.

My THREE LESSONS of Life

I plan for this to be a very short, succinct post. I don't know why, but I feel very strongly compelled to compose and publish this, even though I'm right in the middle of posting something completely different. I don't know why, but that's okay; I don't have to know why I feel inspired to do this, I just need to do it.

In this post, I plan to share with you the three simple but all-important lessons that I have learned in my long, long life. I'm in my eighth decade of life on this plane, and I've learned many things, but I believe that the important lessons can be summarized in these Three Lessons of Life:

I

I believe that every situation in my life can be placed into one of two categories: Things I can do something about, and Things I can't do anything about.

If the situation I face is one which I can change or do anything else about, I pray for or affirm or muster up the strength and courage to do it. If it's a situation that I am absolutely powerless to change, I muster up or pray for or affirm that I have the strength and courage to accept it. Of course, it's fundamentally important to know which category any particular situation should be placed in, so I have to pray for wisdom and guidance in determining that.

Many of you will see that these are the principles underlying the famous Serenity Prayer, one version of which says:

God grant me the

Serenity to accept things I cannot change, the

Strength to change things I can change, and the

Wisdom to know the difference.

II

I believe that the will of God for me is always more wonderful than anything I can possibly will for myself; it is always for my true happiness, soul unfoldment, and only what is good. So, I can --- and should  --- try always to entrust everything in my life to the loving care of my Father in Heaven.

III

I believe that God is always blessing me, whether it seems like it or not, but that I must accept His blessings willingly; God never forces anything --- including blessings --- on us. Except for life itself, I believe that the greatest gift God gives to His children is freedom of choice.

When the sun is shining, gentle winds are blowing, birds are singing, and I feel wonderful, healthy, and energetic, it's easy for me to acknowledge that God is blessing me. But I firmly believe that it is at least as vitally important for me to remember that God is blessing me even when things do not seem to be going well. In general, the tougher or more seemingly negative things appear to be, the more lessons I can usually learn from them, the more I can usually grow from dealing with them. Any single thread may be plain, or even ugly; but, as I back away and see that thread interwoven with other unique, often ugly individual threads, I can see how they all fit into a beautiful tapestry. Likewise with my life: Any specific incident or situation may seem terrible, but when I'm able to put it in perspective, I can see how it fits into and becomes part of the beautiful tapestry of my life.

There is a three-part mantra which has been a vital part of my life for several years now, and I can tell that it has made a very big difference in my life, even though I have faced some horrendous financial and health challenges over the last few months. Very regularly throughout each day --- especially, immediately upon awakening, immediately before falling asleep, and whenever I feel overwhelmed by a particular situation or incident, I remind myself that God is blessing me now...God is blessing me now...God is blessing me now...

After a period of repeating this to myself, I am just as emphatic in reminding myself that I accept God's blessings now...I accept God's blessings now...I accept God' blessings now...

Then, very importantly and very emphatically, Thank You, Father!

I don't do this exercise in order to convince God of anything or to do anything; it's to remind me of what God is already continuously doing for me, and thanking Him for it.

As I said above, I don't know why I feel absolutely compelled to post this right now instead of completing another post that I've already started, but I do feel so strongly about this that it's what I'm doing. At some point down the line, sooner or later, maybe I'll know why. Or not.

CREDO

"Just what do you believe?" 

"Are you a Christian?" My answer to that question depends on who's asking it. I'm old enough and I've been around the block enough times to know that what many people mean by the term "Christian" is something I definitely am not. In fact, by what even a moderately progressive Evangelical would mean by that term almost certainly would not describe my personal place on the theological spectrum.

"Do you believe that Jesus was the Son of God?" Yes, I do --- just as I believe that we are all divine sons and daughters of God. 

"Do you believe that Jesus died for your sins?" I can't answer that question in the space I have here. My response would most definitely not be any one word, either Yes or No. This will have to be the subject for later posts.

"Do you believe that the Bible is the Word of God?"This question I can answer in one word: No. I believe that the Bible contains the words of God, but those words are often hidden among the imperfect words and concepts of human beings. I certainly believe that the Spirit of God inspired many of the people whose writings have been canonized as Judaeo-Christian Scripture, but I also believe that such inspiration was often filtered through erring human minds and expressed in limited, imperfect human language. I believe that the Spirit of God has inspired many people since the last book of the Bible was written almost two thousand years ago, and I also believe that God has inspired other people, including some who were not Jewish or Christian, whose writings are not included in any recognized collection of Judaeo-Christian scriptural writings.

Illustrative of that last point, I can't get past this: There's not one word, not one syllable, of the Judaeo-Christian Bible in which racism or the institution of slavery is denounced. Most civilized people today consider both of them to be monstrous evils, but neither one is challenged in the Bible. In fact, in the Bible, in the New Testament, Christians are counseled in more than one place to "obey your earthly masters." One prominent New Testament writer even exhorts Christian slaves to obey especially those masters who treat them harshly. Not once are slaves told to rise up against their masters or to declare their freedom from slavery; no, they're told to "obey your masters." So, according to what "the Bible says," I should probably be down in Mississippi or someplace picking cotton, not sitting here in Los Angeles pecking on a computer keyboard. The idea that racism is wrong, or that slavery is an indefensible institution, has evolved or developed since the close of the Judaeo-Christian biblical canon. The living Spirit of God has, in my opinion, revealed this in later years, so it was not a Biblical idea. That is just one of the reasons why I do not subscribe to the idea, set down in the 39 Articles of the Church of England (Mother Church of the Anglican Communion, of which my Episcopal Church is a member) that the Bible "contains all things necessary for salvation." Setting aside the idea that the word "salvation" meant something very different to First Century Palestinian Jews and Christians from what it does to 21st Century Evangelicals and Fundamentalists, I absolutely cannot accept that the Bible "contains all things necessary for salvation," however that word or concept is defined.

"So, you pick and choose what you believe, and what you don't believe, huh?" In a word, Yes --- just as does everyone else. The Bible is a collection of writings, with concepts and instructions ranging from the very primitive and inhumane all the way up to the very sublime and inspiring. I'm sure you'd be horrified to read how "the Bible says" a woman could be divorced in ancient Israel. 

"The Bible says" (or, at least, St. Paul wrote) that Christians are to regard all earthly authorities as having been put in office by God, so they and even their unjust laws should be obeyed. Now, I'll say this for Paul:  Not once do we read any hint of his complaining about being horribly and painfully punished for being a Christian (which was against the law in the Roman Empire); he submitted meekly to the consequences of his deliberately breaking those laws. But modern-day, supposedly "Bible-believing Christians" rebel against immigration laws, for instance, and "Bible-believing" undocumented immigrants flaunt the laws they don't like with impunity. Not exactly doing what "the Bible says," are they?

And don't even get me started on the black women who jump up and down in all their Sunday finery, in lively church services, with their little kids (born out of wedlock) next to them, or their second or third husbands at home watching the Sunday sports specials on TV. "The Bible says" (in FAR more than one place) that those women who had children before or outside of marriage, or those women who'd been divorced and remarried, were "living in sin." But who cares about that? That may've been true in AD 13, but it's not realistic for 2013, we're told.

And something else I don't understand: According to those from the Evangelical/Fundamentalist wing of Christendom, no one can be so good as to merit or earn his or her way into Heaven; salvation comes, according to them, from Divine Grace. It is an unmerited gift to those who trust in the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. No one can be so good as to deserve that grace, or too bad to be beyond its reach, right? Unless: You're gay or lesbian. Good, born-again, Bible-believing Christians jump through all kinds of spiritual and intellectual hoops to explain how adulterers, fornicators, thieves, extortionists, and even murderers can be saved and wind up in Heaven if they understand that they're saved only by the shed blood of Jesus. But, there's no such provision for gays and lesbians; I guess that, despite what they believe and profess, no one from the LGBT community can really trust in Jesus' death for his or her sins, huh? Well, that is simply not true; I happen to know many gay and lesbian people who absolutely believe that they have been saved not by their own inherent goodness, but by the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Even though that's their faith, and that is enough to save everyone else, they're still lost, according to many of my friends who are True Believers. I don't understand.


So, what do I believe? Above, I've written a little about what I don't believe, but what, exactly, do I believe? I'll deal with these and other ideas in later posts, but here I'll just quote from my Facebook Profile:


Divine Paternity is the article by which my faith stands or falls. For me, it is the summary and synopsis of all Christian Truth. I believe that all Christian theological thinking must begin with this article, center in it, and culminate in it. As the various facets of a fine gem catch, refract, and reflect the light, so does the phrase, "the Fatherhood of God," give brilliance to every phase of Christian revelation, and in turn each facet of Christian Truth sheds new brilliance on this central idea. The Gospel which Jesus proclaimed and demonstrated was the two-sided Golden Coin: Divine Paternity/Human Divinity.

Truth is unfolding and continuing. I value the Bible, but I prefer to rely on fresh individual guidance from the Spirit of the living God which inspired the Bible rather than follow only what has been revealed through and recorded by others.

Maybe I'm not really a GOOD Episcopalian, but I think I'm in pretty good company; like Sir Isaac Newton and Thomas Jefferson, I am a nontrinitarian Anglican -- and no, I don't think that's an oxymoron! I'd say that theologically, I'm closer to such New Thought groups as Religious Science and Unity, but the Anglican liturgy, as it developed over the centuries, speaks to me spiritually.


I might add that, when I'm in Boston, Massachusetts, I usually worship at King's Chapel, the oldest church in the United States that still meets weekly as a congregation (please see http://www.kings-chapel.org and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King's_Chapel). It started life in 1686 as an Anglican church, but became Unitarian about 100 years later, in the early 1780s, and uses its own Book of Common Prayer According to Usage in King's Chapel, Boston (see http://archive.org/details/bookofcommonpray00kinguoft). Frankly, I wish I could find a similar church here in the Los Angeles area. I was a pre-seminary student in college, and I regret that I didn't have the courage and spiritual strength to found a congregation like that back then.

In later posts, I'll explain other of my spiritual and theological views for those who're interested. And, as always, I welcome feedback from those who do not agree with me.

My FIRST RULE of Life

I WARNED AT THE BEGINNING OF ONE OF MY EARLIER POSTS THAT IT WAS VERY EPISCOPALIAN-SPECIFIC, SO NON-EPISCOPALIANS WOULD READ IT ONLY AT THE RISK OF BEING BORED TO TEARS. I should give a similar warning for those encountering this post; it is very, let's say, BELIEVER-SPECIFIC. I am not a skeptic or a non-believer, and the following is written from the standpoint of one who has a clear belief and deep faith in a Higher Power.

Before reading this post, I suggest that one read or re-read the post entitled, My FOUR RULES OF LIFE. Clicking on that title in the "Popular Posts" section below those ads on the right will take you to that short post, in which I promised that I'd explain what I mean by each of these Rules. So, here goes:

My First Rule is, I believe, the most complicated one, but it is probably the most important one: To love, trust, and obey God. That seems fairly simple and straightforward until one considers my definition of Love: Concern for happiness and welfare. Obviously, mere humans have no power to enhance or detract from the happiness of God, nor does God need to have any creature be concerned for His welfare. So, my definition of "Love" is either faulty or falls short; I believe it is more the latter than the former. The ancient Greeks had four distinct words for love, depending on how this love was expressed. I think that I have two distinct meanings, but English is flexible enough to include both in one word. I suggest that love of any being other than God is an expression of concern for that being's happiness and welfare, while love of God is a desire to be like and to be with God. 

No matter who loves a creature --- whether it is God or another creature --- that love may be defined as "concern for the creature's happiness and welfare." Please note that I did not say "pleasure" and "comfort." Sometimes, when one is happy, one feels pleasure, but not always; there are way too many examples of people who have been deeply happy even in the midst of physical deprivation and even torture or pain. And, sometimes one is spiritually and emotionally well even though he or she is emphatically not comfortable. So, we must be clear: True love for anyone other than God is concern for that creature's real happiness and welfare.

One of the unique characteristics of Christianity is its insistence that the relationship between God and humans is essentially the same as the relationship between an ideal father and his children. Thus, Jesus repeatedly referred to God as, not just his "Father," but as "our Father." I happen to believe that the core of the Christian Gospel is the two-sided Golden Coin, Divine Paternity/Human Divinity (we'll go more into that idea in later posts, also). Nothing pleases a human father more than his little son's wanting to trail along everywhere his father goes, and when asked what he wants to be when he grows up, to answer, "Just like my daddy." That's a natural, dimmer expression of the love we develop for God; when we have that kind of love, we want to be as much like God as possible, and to spend as much time with Him as we can.

What is God like? First of all, I have to emphasize the fact that I am a finite human being, with finite intelligence, so there's no way I can grasp or understand, let alone describe, God or infinite Truth or Reality. I think that an amoeba can understand the person and ideas of Stephen Hawking far more easily and completely than I can comprehend or describe God, but in my feeble, limited human way, let me say that I happen to believe in a personal God; to me, God is not merely The Ultimate Reality, or some impersonal Infinite Principle. In addition to the fact that I believe God's relationship with His creatures is much like that of a perfect human father (if there were such!) to his children, I believe that the cardinal attributes of God are Love and Order. While this isn't the time or post to get more deeply into this idea, I'll say that I think it's the attribute of divine Love which impels God to create beings who can progress spiritually, and thus grow in spiritual happiness, and since I believe that this Divine Love is the strongest force in the universe, I can't believe that, ultimately, there will be any of God's creatures who will not eventually find perfect happiness in the divine Presence and family --- and yes, that's probably a roundabout way of saying that I'm a universalist. To the degree that we develop and display love and order in our own lives, to that degree are we displaying our innate divinity; to that degree are we being more like God.  

The Person and Love of God are, for want of a better term, magnetic. Thus, the more we become like God, the more we will want to be with Him. So, we spend time in prayer, in other acts of worship, and in service, and all of these acts mold us more into the Image and Likeness of the One Whom we want to be like and be with.

The more I am with God and grow to be like God, the more I will trust God. In other words, the more I love God, the more I will come to trust Him. In this human phase of our spiritual growth, we encounter many problems and obstacles, but we should come to understand that every single one of them has lessons to teach us, and every single one of them plays a part in developing us into the person each one of us should be. In another post, I explain that I believe that each human's very being is made up of three elements: His or her natural talents and abilities; his or her interests; and his or her experiences. No two human beings have the same interplay of those three elements, and as we grow older and experience more, we come to understand that each of those elements is equally important in molding the person. 

A simple example: If we were to look at a single thread, it might seem plain, uninteresting, and maybe even ugly; but if that thread were woven into the design of a tapestry, and we could move back far enough to view the tapestry in its entirety, we might see that what we may have seen as a single unremarkable or ugly thread is actually an important part of a beautiful whole. Each person's life may seem the same; each person may go through really rough, trying times, but as we come to relish the Presence of God in our lives, we come more to trust that even those things which seem most undivine may, actually, be true blessings; we can grow and learn lessons from every experience in our lives. As I say each morning during my First Period of Prayer, I can "trust everything in my life to the loving care of my Father in Heaven, knowing and trusting that His will for me is true happiness, soul unfoldment, and all that is good."

As sort of a personal mantra, I remind myself regularly throughout every day that "God is blessing me now." It is easy to believe that I am being blessed when things seem to be going my way and I am happy with the circumstances of my life. But, I believe that it is especially when things do not seem to be going well that I most need to understand that I am being blessed, because it is through those trying experiences that I can really grow and learn the life lessons that I need to learn.

The final commitment I make in this Divine/human relationship is to obey God. This will be dealt with very quickly, because we've already hinted at what I believe God asks of each of us. I believe it pleases God for us to want to be with Him and like Him. His cardinal attributes are, to use human terms, Love and Order, so it pleases Him for us to display those qualities in every area of our lives, so we should try to develop them. Order would imply balance, so we should seek to develop ourselves in all the four areas of human life --- spiritually, physically, mentally, and socially (according to Luke 2:52, that's exactly how Jesus developed). Most importantly, I believe it pleases God for each of us to examine ourselves thoroughly, to see how our native talents, our interests, and our experiences point toward the path God would have us take, then to pursue that path diligently.

One thing about all this is very striking to me: How each of the three elements of the First Rule of Life leads smoothly and naturally to each of the other two: If I truly love God, I will trust Him and obey Him; if I trust God completely, I will grow steadily in my love for Him and in my desire to please Him; and as I obey God to the best of my ability, my love for Him and trust in Him will grow.

This First Rule of Life is foundational; as I observe it, I find that the other three Rules seem to fall into place.