Recycled Poetry

            Since I’ve signed up for nanowrimo, November is not a good month to blog. I should be writing my future best-selling novel. I'm trying. Actually, I should be participating in the never-ending cycle of lesson plans, teaching, testing, and grading. And I am.

            I also should be working on Advent readings for my church. And I will. I was waiting for an original idea, and it came this morning while listening to my pastor pray.

            So as not to totally ignore my myriad blog followers (all 19 of you, I love you!) I have decided to recycle poetry. I have found poetry inspiring to write and impossible to sell. I exaggerate, since I have actually been paid for 2 or 3 poems; believe me not enough to report to the IRS.

            I remembered this poem when a young friend and former student posted the famous Serenity Prayer on his Facebook status. Disagreement exists about the origin of the prayer; SKdesigns.com attributes it to Reinhold Niebuhr, and includes a longer verse after the one that’s so familiar. Niebuhr’s version begins:

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.

             Here is my take on the prayer. Maybe it applies to all the things that I want to do and have to do in November.

God grant me sweet serenity

What I can’t change to receive

With contentment from my Father

And in his goodness believe.

God grant me compelling courage

To change what I can’t abide,

Striving to serve God’s family,

His Word and Spirit my guide.

God grant me unwav’ring wisdom

To rightly discern the two

In prayer first, and then in living

As the Savior did, to do.

© 2007 Roberta Tucker Brosius