{"id":9290,"date":"2024-05-02T02:07:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-02T02:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=9290"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:32:25","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:32:25","slug":"serenity-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=9290","title":{"rendered":"SERENITY NOW"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Most people know the Serenity Prayer, which these days is most often associated with Alcoholics Anonymous. It&#8217;s the poem about knowing what can and cannot be changed in our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If the internet can be trusted, the original <i>Serenity Prayer<\/i> was written in 1943 by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and went like this:<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cO God and Heavenly Father, grant to us the serenity of mind to accept that which cannot be changed, courage to change that which can be changed, and wisdom to know the one from the other through Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For my money, a very similar sentiment is stated more concisely &#8211; and more memorably &#8211; (Although without the appeal to help from the Lord) years before in a tiny poem which Emily Dickinson scrawled on the back of an envelope:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;In this short Life<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That only lasts an hour<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How much \u2013 how little \u2013 is<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Within our power&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dickinson sure knew how to pack a punch in a few words, didn&#8217;t she?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most people know the Serenity Prayer, which these days is most often associated with Alcoholics Anonymous. It&#8217;s the poem about knowing what can and cannot be changed in our lives. If the internet can be trusted, the original Serenity Prayer was written in 1943 by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and went like this: \u201cO God and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9290"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9291,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9290\/revisions\/9291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}