#BlogElul 4: Accept

I had an instant reaction when I read the word for today, “I accept nothing.” 

This feeling that accepting is somehow giving in.   

Then I stopped and took a breath and realized that while that may be my first, visceral reaction it is not completely true.  I do accept a lot of things.  Some of them I have learned I have to accept even though I don’t want to, and some I accept even though I shouldn't.

There is a prayer that we all know, and because of that we tend to blow off, but I had heard Krista Tippet’s show on Reinhold Niebuhr, which first aired back in 2005, and so for a long time I had been carrying around this interpretation based on how Paul Elie talked about it.

I had not realized that this was a prayer handed out to the troops in World War II, or even that Reinhold Niebuhr had written it.  And really it is such a deep prayer when you look at it. 

There are things that need to be fought against; all the injustices that are in the world that we need courage to stand up to.  But there are things that we can never change, and learning to accept, let alone accepting with serenity, is very hard.  And, as Niebuhr points out in this prayer, being able to tell the difference between what to accept and what to work to change is sometimes a tricky proposition.

So learning to accept, and knowing what to accept.  That I need help with.