I just received a message in a bottle. Think what that means: The message comes from long ago and from a distant place. It suggests, as well, that I am now remote from the civilization that sent the message.
It arrived in a 1951 book, “The Serenity Prayer,” by Elisabeth Sifton, the daughter of the eminent American theologian and intellectual, the late Reinhold Niebuhr. The book gives an intimate, personal view of the life and times of Niebuhr and his colleagues, a host of intellectuals representing many faiths and no faiths, all committed to peace and to absolute human equality, world without end.
Many years ago, one of my students asked me what 10 books I would take with me if I were to be marooned on an island for a long period of time. Among the books I chose were three by Reinhold Niebuhr – “Beyond Tragedy,” “The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness” and “The Irony of American History” – as well as books by Niebuhr’s friends and associates: Paul Tillich, “The Dynamics of Faith”; Abraham Heschel, “The Wisdom of Heschel”; and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Letters from Prison and Other Essays.”
I was impressed then with the brilliance of insights and subtlety of wisdom, which moved people to write so significantly from the tragic depths of World War II. What I did not know until I read Sifton’s book was that these people, writing so powerfully and influencing me so intimately in those years, were colleagues in their visions and labors. And, of course, by aligning myself with them, as I did as teacher and as community leader, I labored alongside them toward their lofty goals for people of all nations, all faiths and all cultures. I continue in that labor.
Thus, when Sifton writes of her family’s friendship with Felix Frankfurter and, later, with Abraham Heschel, I know, first-hand, of which she speaks. I know, as her father did, that we shall have world peace only when friendships, flowing from a sense of absolute equality - no matter what one’s faith is, or is not, bring us to a fellowship of kindred spirits greater than any singular religious perspective can ever achieve.
What is the manifestation of this encompassing, magnanimous disposition toward all of God’s children? For Niebuhr, it was his public addresses and his written prayers. The title of Sifton’s book, in fact, is the title of Niebuhr’s greatest prayer, the “Serenity Prayer,” which he wrote in 1943, at the height of fear and dread during World War II and read for the first time in a small church in Heath, Massachusetts, the summer home of Niebuhr and many of his colleagues. The book focuses on the circumstances, international and personal, which brought forth this marvelous evocation to divinity - to humanity.
A commitment of faith, biblical in language and universal in intent, the “Serenity Prayer” is a reminder, in these uncertain days, of responsibilities so important, so urgent, that we neglect them with awesome consequence for humankind. A distillation of ancient wisdom, Niebuhr’s prayer is the essence of the message in the bottle:
God, give us grace
to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
courage to change the things
that should be changed,
and the wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Robert Cotner lives in Seneca and has a passion for writing. He is engaged in social and church activities and a heavy schedule of reading. He is a former English teacher and founder of a monthly literary journal, among other endeavors.