Wisdom

I’m not sure who is still out there reading this, but I’m going to try to use this post for discernment feedback. As I’ve written before, I’m trying to figure out what work to do next. There is one idea for a book that has kept coming back to me over the years, so I’m going to post a few paragraphs below and see what thoughts they evoke. The general idea would be a book length work called The Wisdom to Know the Difference, based on many personal interviews and covering issues ranging from the individual (like birth and death) to the societal/global (like poverty and the environment). It might start something like this:

God grant me
Serenity to accept the things I cannot change
Courage to change the things I can change,
And Wisdom to know the difference

I started contemplating The Serenity Prayer while I was pregnant with my first child. On the one hand, I realized that I could not control the miracle growing inside me. From the baby’s health to the timing of labor, I was going to need the serenity to accept that I was not completely in charge. On the other hand, I understood that I had unprecedented control over someone else’s life, and I was going to need courage to face this daunting responsibility. One of the first challenges came when my pregnancy went post-term, and along with my doctor, I needed the wisdom to know how long to wait patiently and when to intervene with labor inducing drugs. Talking to other mothers, I noticed how our personalities and our childbirth philosophies influenced where we each drew the line between accepting and acting, challenging me to consider how I drew the line myself.

The Serenity Prayer continued to hold special meaning for me as my children grew and I needed to insist on boundaries and car seats. On the one hand, what I did as a parent was critically important to their safety and development. On the other hand, I felt powerless to make my daughter forgive her brother, let alone guarantee her protection in a world inhabited by drunk drivers and terrorists. As my aunt, my uncle, and finally my mother approached the end of their lives, I faced new questions about the ethical relationship between action and acceptance and the dance between fighting for life and accepting the inevitability of death. As I sat with my mother during her last hours, I was reminded of the hours waiting for my daughter’s birth, hoping for the wisdom to know what to do and how to just be.

What the Serenity Prayer calls “The Wisdom to Know the Difference” is central to my definition of a well-lived life. We waste energy when we rail against things that can’t be changed, and we waste grief when we put up with what we shouldn’t, not just in personal matters like birth and death, but in societal concerns, like poverty, injustice, and war. In fact the original Serenity Prayer was written in the plural “we,” and it’s author Reinhold Neibur was concerned with racism and anti-Semitism at least as much as with individual spiritual concerns. The individual wording made famous by Alcoholics Anonymous in some ways robs the prayer of its bigger challenge, to see the relationship between my individual actions and the wider world around me.

There are many more ideas, but that’s a taste. What do you all think?