I’m not sure when I first encountered the Serenity Prayer, or when it first occurred to me to ask who wrote it. For much of my life it never occurred to me that prayers were the kind of things that people actually wrote down, especially something as popular as the Serenity Prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to tell the difference.”
This simple, powerful sentence has been reprinted on everything from key chains and coffee mugs to tattoos and tea towels. For many people, it is probably most closely associated with 12-step recovery programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous. There, the prayer serves as a reminder both of human limits and of the fact that they do not define us.
