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2003/05/04

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
—Reinhold Niebuhr
God, grant us the serenity to tolerate conduct that does not threaten us, to focus on real threats as priorities for response and to understand what motivates other people.
—Roland S. Homet, Jr.
Hard to fault this excellent article on serenity prayer and similar topics, consisting as it does of very fine references, but wonder whether military and political leaders should be praying and crusading so publicly in the first place. Does the separation of church and state mean nothing?

What of the antics of the chaplains who baptize in the desert as the only available bath for weeks on end (refuted)? My feeling is no, give it up, coerced devotion, like so many other things in the military and pay better. Raise the cost as another reason to not get involved in specious wars. Any prayer, even either serenity prayer, privately offered, should help with this. Embarrassing episode—"U.S. troops in Iraq were criticized by Amnesty International on Friday for their irregular treatment of a group of looters."—should confirm this.

Questions of faith in leadership are raised in Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall be Unhappy, Scene 1, by Tony Kushner, appearing in The Nation, March 24, 2003, which echoes "The Grand Inquisitor" in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. Had quite a time staging a reading. Oh no, not in the church. Nor in the library. This person wouldn't read Laura Bush because of stage fright, and that person said no, "I'd rather not" with a very thin smile. As it happens Poets Against the War didn't mind on May Day, and found space in the social hall after all, but the constituency, the body of Christ freely given, was pretty much conspicuous by its absence, leaving just a hollow act of war protest, which is fine.
posted by TT 7:50 PM

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