Serenity Prayer

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.

－－Reinhold Niebuhr



Joy

Tears may flow
in the night,
but joy comes
in the morning.

Psalm 30.5b

Where there is love, there is life
－－Mathatma Gandhi




Change your thoughts
and you change your world
－－Norman Wncent Peale

Yesterday is history.
Tomorrow is a mystery.
Today is a gift.
That is why it is called present.
－－Anonymous



Hope sees the invisible,
feels the intangible,
and achieves the impossible
－－Anonymous

It is choice
not chance
that determines your destiny
－－Jean Nidetch

[YuGong]

Thank you very much for sharing your prayer.
Good night.

[苗青青]

“Hope sees the invisible,
feels the intangible,
and achieves the impossible“


“today is a present"---- It is true.

Best wishes to you!

[林贝卡]

blhw72 , thanks, Good night.
来源: 林贝卡 于 07-06-12 19:58:57 [档案] [博客] [旧帖] [转至博客] [给我悄悄话]

回答: Rebecca, it's a great one. My husband and I just shared it. Both 由 blhw72 于 2007-06-12 16:13:46

Here is the download link for the background music:

http://e.mms.blog.xuite.net/e/c/f/8/16273242/blog_596139/dv/9830534/9830534.mp3

[林贝卡]

Rebecca, it's a great one. My husband and I just shared it. Both

来源: blhw72 于 07-06-12 16:13:46 [档案] [博客] [旧帖] [转至博客] [给我悄悄话]

回答: Serenity Prayer Author: Reinhold Niebuhr 由 林贝卡 于 2007-06-12 04:26:23

of us love it.

Unfortunately, I can't open your music because my Mac doesn't match the file.

[林贝卡]

melly,

My pleasure.

Good night,

Rebecca

[melly]

Thank you Rebecca. The prayer is so beautiful. I feel serenity in my mind even only read it.

[林贝卡]

Serenity Prayer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Serenity Prayer is the common name for an originally untitled prayer written by the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in the 1930s or early 1940s.

History and text

Niebuhr seems to have written the prayer for use in a sermon, perhaps as early as 1934 (the date given in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 16th edn., ed. Justin Kaplan, 1992, p. 684), perhaps in the early 1940s.

Elisabeth Sifton's book The Serenity Prayer (2003) quotes this version as the authentic original:

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 earliest verifiable printed texts so far discovered are an approximate version (apparently quoted from memory) in a query in the "Queries and Answers" column in The New York Times Book Review, July 12, 1942, p. 23, which asks for the author of the quotation; and a reply in the same column in the issue for August 2, 1942, p. 19, where the quotation is attributed to Niebuhr and an unidentified printed text is quoted as follows:

O God and Heavenly Father,

Grant to us the serenity of mind to accept that which cannot be changed; the courage to change that which can be changed, and the wisdom to know the one from the other, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
The prayer became widely known when it was adopted in modified form by Alcoholics Anonymous; an AA magazine, The AA Grapevine, identified Niebuhr as the author (January 1950, pp. 6-7), and the AA web site continues to identify Niebuhr as the author (see External Links).

Many mythical accounts of the prayer's origin appeared after 1950. One persistent myth attributes the prayer to Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702-1782), but this attribution is the result of a misunderstanding of a plagiarism of the prayer by Theodor Wilhelm, an ex-Nazi professor at the University of Kiel. Wilhelm printed a German version of the prayer as his own work in his book, Wendepunkt der poltitischen Erziehung; he published the book under the pseudonym "Friedrich Oetinger" (the book did not pretend to be the work of the 18th-century Oetinger; the name was merely a pseudonym, apparently chosen because the author's wife was descended from pastors who shared the theology of the 18th-century Oetinger). Theodor Wilhelm was apparently unaware that the US Army and the USO had been distributing the prayer in Germany since the end of World War II, and later writers who were unaware that "Friedrich Oetinger" was a pseudonym (even though the book was clearly written by a 20th-century author) confused this name with the eighteenth-century Oetinger. Wilhelm apparently chose to publish under a pseudonym because his Nazi past was widely known in Germany at the time.

Other mythical claims for the authorship of the prayer (none of them supported by any evidence whatever) include one that the prayer was written by Boethius, a stoic philosopher, just before his execution in the year 525 or 526.

The prayer is reliably reported to have been in use in Alcoholics Anonymous since the early 1940s. It has also been used in Narcotics Anonymous and other Twelve-step programs; such as, Serenity Groups.

Niebuhr's original text, shown in Elisabeth Sifton's book The Serenity Prayer [1], is as follows:

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
The slightly edited Alcoholics Anonymous version below omits the word "grace" from the first line and shortens some of the remainder:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
An expanded version exists, but its origins are not clear:

God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer