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.

My grandmother kept a copy of the Serenity Prayer on her bathroom mirror. Today, I honor her by doing the same. I remember visiting her as a young girl and reading the prayer in her bathroom every morning. What I mainly remember is that I thought, “This is a ridiculous prayer! If there is a problem, I know if I try hard enough, I can solve or fix it!”

Many years later, many trials later, I have learned the truth of the Serenity Prayer the hard way. There are so many things I cannot change. The only thing I can change is myself and my reactions to others and the situations I encounter. I cannot change others. I try to share my firsthand experience with spiritual friends, but others like myself often need a firsthand rather than a secondhand experience to see this truth.

I wonder if it took my adoring grandmother as long as it did me to discover and learn to live the truth.

I wonder if she had as many setbacks as I often do—thinking I can change situations and others.

Daily Prayer Practice

Tickle: Daily Prayer Practices

Canticle: A Song of Pilgrimage 

“Before I ventured forth,
even while I was very young,*
I sought wisdom openly in my prayer.
In the forecourts of the temple I asked for her,*
and I will seek her to the end.
From first blossom to early fruit,*
she has been the delight of my heart.
My foot has kept firmly to the true path,*
diligently from my youth have I pursued her.
I inclined my ear a little and received her;*
I found for myself much wisdom and became adept in her.
To the one who gives me wisdom will I give glory,*
for I have resolved to live according to her way.
From the beginning I gained courage from her,*
therefore I will not be forsaken.
In my inmost being I have been stirred to seek her,*
therefore have I gained a good possession.
As my reward the Almighty has given me the gift of language,*
and with it will I offer praise to God.”—Ecclesiasticus 51:13-16, 20b-22.

This “Song of Pilgrimage from Ecclesiasticus” is one of the Canticles offered for Morning and Evening Prayer in Enriching Our Worship 1, one of the early alternative Canticles for the Book of Common Prayer.

Christians inherited a pattern of daily prayer from the Jews, who set aside specific times for worship three times a day. More diligent Christians later took to heart the Psalm 119:164 verse, “Seven times a day do I praise you.”

By the Middle Ages, monks had developed a tradition of seven daily prayer times: Matins before dawn and Lauds at daybreak, combined into one service. Then, at sunrise, midmorning, noon, and midafternoon came Prime, Terce, Sext, and None; Vespers was observed at sundown and Compline at bedtime. Monks and nuns in monasteries faithfully kept this schedule over the centuries. Lay people could come when possible.

In 1549, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, in the first English Book of Common Prayer, developed the structure to enable ordinary people to follow a prayer schedule and praise God at the beginning and end of each day through two services: Morning and Evening Prayer. The 1979 BCP, as it stands today, restored Noonday Prayers and Compline. (See A User’s Guide to Morning Prayer and Baptism by Christopher Webber.)

Phyllis Tickle, the theologian, writer, and founding Religion Editor of Publishers Weekly, reintroduced a shorter version of daily observation of the Divine Hours in a series of books that many now follow. There is a pocket edition for easy carry. Her shorter versions of morning, noon, evening (Vespers), and bedtime (Compline) prayers, readings, and Scripture offer a way to pause our work and reconnect with God frequently during the day and evening.

The readings are also online at http://www.explorefaith.org/prayer/fixed/hours.php and http://annarborvineyard.org/tdh/tdh.cfm.

Consider observing at least one of the daily offices. Noonday prayers are offered on St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock’s Facebook page. Morning Prayer is offered on weekdays in the chapel.

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

 

 



 

 

Kairos Time

Kairos Time

“Music helps us ‘keep time’ in the sense of keeping us in touch with time, not just time as an ever-flowing stream that bears all of us away at last, but time also as a stream that every once in a while slows down and becomes transparent enough for us to see down to the streambed the way, at a wedding, say, or watching the sunrise, past, present, and future are so caught up in a single moment that we catch a glimpse of the mystery that, at its deepest place, time is timeless.”—Frederic Buechner in Beyond Words.

Buechner writes that artists who paint work with space, while time is the medium for musicians, as the changing sound of one note follows another in different time intervals. I hear each bird singing outside my window with an identifying rhythm. Even the silent wind makes a variable sound as it moves through nearby trees.

The rain also sounds at regular and irregular beats on our bedroom roof, often like an alarm clock in the early morning. Our grandchildren once loved to lie in our bed and listen to the sound of rain beating on our roof as we watched movies together.

Each day, we awaken to a new gift of time. Buechner goes further to say that the movements of a symphony teach us about the movements of our daily lives, streaming from one sound, one instrument to another, often in repetition. Our favorite musicians and nature’s constant sounds help us keep time for these movements to flow through our lives.

Sometimes, this stream of music in our lives slows down just enough for us to see clearly the bottom of the stream and live in the present moment at sunsets, graduations, births of our children, weddings, funerals, and sacred liturgies. We realize the mystery of how time is timeless. This is living is Kairos time, God’s time, eternity.

I had a similar experience while writing my last book, Letters from My Grandfather, as I responded to letters from my grandfather written fifty and sixty years ago. I experienced an absence of linear time and sensed a timelessness between us. Here, it was not music but writing where time became timeless.  

Joanna joannaseibert.com https://www.joannaseibert.com/